Is there a way to control the gender of your child?
According to the Wikipedia entry for Rune Factory 2 you get to choose whether you have daughter or son, and so which character you play as in the second generation. Essentially the first generation acts as a prologue (or tutorial) for the main story which takes place in the second generation. Since your character in the second generation is the game's main character, the game lets you choose whether you want to play as male or a female.