I know a bright, talented and humane young man who is trying to break into children's writing. Like your daughter, he told me he's constantly self-censoring. In fact, he's decided for the moment not to write a (middle-grade) book he planned with a boy protagonist. It's problematic: the boy acts like a boy. Instead, he's writing one with an officially sanctioned "girl-power" theme. We need new institutions, including new publishers.