Help, I've got three sexist children!

It has gone 9pm, toothbrushing time. The kids and I are pondering how Peter Capaldi will measure up as the next Doctor Who as the toothpaste is dispensed. I express regret that a woman was not chosen. "Women can't be doctors, only men can! She would have to be his nurse or assistant," they squawk righteously. I am horrified. Did I metaphorically (and literally, one drunken girls' night) burn my bra, and take a feminist history module in the 80s, only to spawn patriarchal preteens 30 years later?

In our follow-up discussion, it emerges that the kids know that women can be doctors (two of our female friends are GPs), but admit they made the outlandish statement "without thinking". So the kids are, by instinct, sexist. Yikes. Covertly, I decide to test their feminist credentials. "What do they know about feminism?" I ask casually over tea the following day. "Ew! Not that!" splutters son Syd, nine, evidently fearing I am about to launch into a sex-ed chatette.

"Did you know," I plod on brightly, "that not so long ago, women didn't have any rights: they couldn't work, rarely got an education and weren't even allowed to vote?"

Blank, bored faces. These are the kids who skip around the house chanting "divorced, beheaded, died" and love outdoing each other with Tudor facts, all because of Horrible Histories. I realise I need to give my feminism tutorial a gory sheen to pique their interest. "One hundred years ago this very year," I wibble on in the mock cockney of a London Dungeon tour guide, "poor Emily Wilding Davison 'ad her skull cracked open by the king's 'orse so you (I waggle a finger menacingly at the girls) are equal to him (the craggy finger turns to Syd)."

There are mumurs of interest. "I thought it was a train?" muses one.

At some point I get on to bra-burning – how it was done as a symbol for women's liberation. Mery, seven, listens intently. When I finish, she appears to gather her thoughts: long pause, furrow of brow, a smile, lightbulb popping on in brain. "Mummy," she beams, "I think I know how the Great Fire of London started …"

Molly, the eldest at 12 and a feisty ex-tomboy turned guitar-toting indie kid is surely a natural, homespun feminist just like her ma. "If women wanted the vote, they should have just refused to have sex," she says, channelling Cosmopolitan magazine circa 1967. "Hang on though, that wouldn't work because poshos like Kate Middleton wouldn't care, so they'd ignore the sex ban."

Blimey, years of me blasting out the angry leftist agitpop of my youth at the kids and lolling on the sofa in front of girlie telly sop has perhaps begot some sort of new shagadelic socialist feminism, after all: republican sexandthecityism, anyone? But alas the Sutherlands have not escaped the pernicious influences of the male-dominated society. I dare to ask the kids the ultimate patriarchy-o-meter question: who's in charge of the family?

"Dad."

"The dog."

"Dad and the dog."

It is apparent that I, the benign mothership, command less power in the household than the stolid Death Star that is my husband Steve. He works in magazines, and was editor of NME. He has been a figurehead, with minions. He is smart, unerringly capable, confident, annoyingly alpha. I strongly suspect that, like a benevolent dictator, a nicer Mussolini, if you will, he sees us, his family, as minion-ish.

Meanwhile, I took 10 years out of work to produce and care for the brood. I suffered the disaffection common to the formerly employed new mother turned domestic drudge: Who was I? When would it end? Where's the wine? And so I nurtured and baked, while Steve earned and moaned.

Before kids I used to be somebody else. I used to play on the wing for Camberwell Old Fallopians women's football club; I stuck two fingers up at all the shitty misogyny prevalent in every office I have ever worked in (as a production editor at NME, I was called a witch for trying to enforce a deadline with the then predominantly male writers); I followed politics, got angry often and had an opinion that was frequently loudly expressed. And now who am I? Mummy to sexist kids.

I have spent years mimsying about, equipping the kids with reasonably gender-neutral clothes and toys, but I might as well have dressed the girls like Katie Price and armed the boy with a Kalashnikov – our stereotypical gender roles have clearly sown the sexist seed in their little brains (witness the Doctor comment).

I realise with mounting despair that it is not just our roles that are enforcing gender sterotypes, but our day-to-day behaviour: dog put dead bird on child's bed, who ya gonna call? Dad (Mum will scream like a wuss). Hair needs a nice swingy ponytail, wotcha gonna do? Ask Mum (bald-headed Dad hasn't a clue). Etcetera. What is more, research by northern Spain's University of the Basque Country has revealed that mums have a greater influence on children's sexist attitudes than dads. It is a no-win situation: women are both the biggest victims and perpetrators of sexist crimes. As a mum, I feel guilty – oops, another gender stereotype … But it's not all my fault. I have my own parents who did for me Philip Larkin-style ("They fuck you up, your mum and dad"). My Scottish ex-military dad frequently visits our house to do DIY jobs and mow the lawn. My wee Scots mum, meanwhile, is the best in the world: she has a large cosy chest for cuddles, and spends all day nurturing and fussing. If the menfolk need tea, she appears cuppa in hand as if by magic.

Nice as being a tea-bearer is, I resolve to make an effort to conduct myself in a less gender-cliched manner for the sake of the children. My first test comes after the kids' bathtime. Molly is wrapped in a towel, lounging in front of the TV when a giant spider crawls across her lap. "WAHHHHH! GERITOFF!" She shrieks.

Careful not to reveal my inner anxiety (I don't like creepy-crawlies), I try to coax it on to the nearest thing to hand – Mery's pink plastic watch. Rather inadvisably, I try to slip the watchstrap under the spider's hooves to transport it out of the front door. But it's so big, it scampers off, growling. Then, in an extraordinary act of non-gendered bravery, I grab the spider with my bare hand and lob it out of the door. "You're my hero, Mummy," squeaks Molly in mock toddler-speak. And I do feel heroic and empowered. For a brief, spider ass-kicking moment I defeated sexism. Sort of.

There is a new wave of feminism right now, apparently (Radio 4's Woman's Hour is always banging on about it, so it must be true). But an "ism" sounds so boringly doctrinal that I worry it will hold no allure for the vajazzled youth of today.

Idle chats are frequently conducted during the long-haul of the summer holidays, often about the impending return to school. "I wish I was a girl during Tudor times," muses Syd, sounding his usual fey self, during one such conversation, "then I would never have to go to school."

Mery, who adores school, drinks in the information that girls were, and are still in many places, considered less worthy than boys. She cannot believe her ears. She is known for her temper, and I watch it rise: "That is not right!" she fumes, angry at the injustice of it all, "I'm not having that."

Ladies and gentleman, a feminist is born.