by Melissa Healy

About the author: Melissa Healy writes for the Los Angeles Times.

It is not the most cherished childhood photo in his mother’s collection, but it may be the most prescient.

The little boy, not quite 2, is perched on a potty seat. A mop of brown hair frames a face with delicate features and big brown eyes. He is wearing a pretty white sundress purloined from his older sister’s closet, a “very girly” frock, according to his mother, that is one of his two favorites. Secreted away elsewhere in the house are the little boy’s other passions: his mother’s fancy shoes and jewelry, his sister’s Barbie doll. And behind the lens is mom, a college professor from Toronto, “collecting evidence” that...