I installed content profile, because in the standard CORE profile it is impossible to have blank fields and as such really be able to 'require' users to fill in for example in our case: country, gender and date of birth. It doesn't make any difference if you do or not select 'required field' because the first option is always selected. And so most people that sign up are males from afghanistan who were born today....

I red in a post that for a blank option the "|" can be used in CCK fields (not in COREprofile though). I tried in content-profile and a blank option turns up indeed, but still even if required, the blank field is accepted as an option, so that doesn't bring us any further (except for not having so many people from Afghanistan).
Any suggestions for this?

Next, the date fields (from date module) are blank at start and you even get a warning (for each of the fields: day, month and year - maybe, a bit overdone) when you don't fill them out and hit the create a new account button. Unfortunately you also get an additional unnecessary warning that the field date of birth has errors and need to be numbers. Problem is that after getting back on this same page, the dates turn up filled out already, with the first value of each field. And now you CAN create a new account without thouching those wrong values.

Finally it turns out that the profile title is required as well, and that can't be controlled, the fact is we wouldn't even want (need) a profile-title nor body, because at signup we actually only want: - name - email - country - gender - date of birth
but Required (that is blank initial fields, that stay blank until the user chooses an option... like in 99,99% of social sites, yes?)

I am seriously starting to wonder if this is possible in Drupal.