My friend cried hysterically when she found out her first baby was
going to be a boy. Now, two boys later, she says she'd likely only get
pregnant again if she could guarantee another boy.
So what's the most common question she's asked about the possibility of number three? "So, are you going to try for your girl?"
Writer Amy Wilson has written a compelling piece for Parenting
Magazine about why that question comes so often for mothers of little
boys . . . and why it's just so darn inappropriate.
"It bothers me that people assume I feel incomplete without a daughter,
let alone that it's my motivation for being pregnant with a third child
in the first place," she says.
I
actually have a daughter, my one and only, and I get the opposite
question: "when are you going to give her a little brother?" Or, maybe
worse "when are you going to make your husband a little boy?"
Just as Wilson is disturbed by the notion that her life would be
considered incomplete without a little girl, I wonder why a little boy
is so necessary to round out a family. And why should I be putting the
burden of being one or the other on this little fetus who really has no
control.
Gender preferences are somewhat natural, don't get me wrong.
There's the idea, as Wilson had, that you better understand the gender you
have (with her, the boys) or the gender you are (why many women say
they want a girl, many men say they're shooting for a boy). But those preferences will go
away when a child comes along. They did for my friend. They did for Wilson, whose third baby, it
turned out, was a little girl.
So why does the rest of the world seem to think we can't turn it
off? Or assume it's there to begin with? I can honestly say I didn't
know which (or I should say who) I wanted. I was equally excited and
terrified by each gender. I'd changed boy diapers before, but never
girls. But then again, I am a girl, I know how that works . . . and so
forth. I worried about the still tenuous mother-daughter relationship I
have with my mother. I worried about the father-son relationship my
husband has with his dad. I thought about reading Anne of Green Gables
with a little girl, about my friend's cuddly little ball of love of a
boy.
And, in the end, I got a girl. A beautiful, sweet, sometimes drives
me a little bonkers, girl. I wouldn't trade her in for a boy. I
wouldn't replace her with a boy. And if I had it to do over, I might
even find myself saying "yes, if we could guarantee another girl."
For those of us with one gender of children (be it one, two, three,
etc.), it's really not the end of the world. Really. If anything, it's
just the beginning.
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Also on Babble:
One is the Awesomest Number
Pick a Sex, Any Sex
