Well before I had children, I yearned for a baby girl. My vision of what it would be like to care for her extended not much further than being able to dress her in a tiny pink pinstriped seersucker dress with a bonnet to match. Yes, a bonnet. I had loved a doll once, a doll who wore a bonnet, until the day my brother wouldn’t let go of her, and I grabbed onto her to get her back, and he pulled, and I pulled, and off came her leg. It was horrifying.
But my fantasies involving the care and feeding of baby girls were not dimmed by this trauma. In fact, if anything they grew stronger over the years, as in time I became a babysitter and had the good fortune to sit first for a ten-week-old wonder named Emily, and then for the most amiable four-month-old you ever did see, named, appropriately, Amy.
At the tender age of fifteen, I went so far as to name my future child. She’d be Kate. Please understand: it wasn’t that I had something against boys. They simply were not on my radar. Yes, I had an older brother, but alas no younger brother to dress up and cart around the house in my dolls’ carriage.
When later I married, and became pregnant, I was even more certain that it was Kate inside of me, biding her time. Imagine my surprise, then, when the technician pointed out something I had not expected to see between Kate’s legs.
I was disappointed, but I knew that I wanted another child, so I supposed Kate would arrive eventually. A dream deferred, she was. And once Ben was born, he was Ben, and it seemed as if it never could have been any other way. Ben was Ben, he was beautiful, he was mine, and that was that.
Four years later, pregnant again, I was just as sure that Kate was there, floating quietly inside of me. But no, Kate wasn’t Kate, she was Jack. Or he was Kate. Or something like that.
This time I was upset. I had not planned to have more than two children, and I knew full well that trying to get pregnant simply to have a girl was immature at best. Besides, I knew I’d end up with a third boy, and then what?
Time has passed since then. Ben and Jack are nine and five, and reality has not only taken fantasy’s place but has led me to wonder why it was that I ever harbored such foolish and naive notions about girls. I have spent the better part of the last decade watching friends of mine with their own girls, observing girls on the playground and at the boys’ schools, and studying their interactions with Ben and Jack when they come over to play.
With my research more or less completed, I have reversed my position entirely and have come to believe that I was meant to have boys, that my disposition is much better suited to raising boys. Why?
Boys are less sophisticated emotionally than girls. This relative immaturity means that they don’t engage in mean and clever indirect bullying, as girls do. If boys have a grievance against other boys, they engage in hand-to-hand combat. Yes, they may come home with torn jeans or even a black eye, but they have resolved their differences quickly and completely.
Boys could not care less what they wear. I suppose this may change in our family when Ben and Jack become teenagers, but now and for the last nine years it has been the case that I shop, unfettered by the slightest concern that the boys won’t like what I buy. They wear whatever I give them to wear. Period.
Boys’ toys are much more diverse, and let’s face it, much more fun than are girls’ toys. I will never have to worry about being pressured to buy a Bratz doll, something I would never consent to buying in any event. Boys have trains, planes, and automobiles. They also have dinosaurs. What could be cooler than dinosaurs? (I am not suggesting that girls cannot play with any of the above; in fact, if I had had a girl, you’d better believe that I’d be buying her trains and dinosaurs.)
And, finally, whenever one of my boys does something so inscrutable, something I cannot for the life of me explain away, I can always put it down to his essential maleness. What I don’t know cannot make me feel guilty.
A question for you who parent girls: are there reasons you are thrilled that you are raising girls instead of boys? And to those lucky ducks who have at least one child of each gender: are you finding there to be innate gender differences despite your efforts to thwart them?
[tags]parents, had boys, wanted girls, love, guilt, maturity, awareness, acceptance, love, fun, toys, [/tags]
Photo graciously provided by =Tom=,
through a Creative Commons license, some rights reserved
15 responses so far ↓
thordora // May 10, 2007 at 12:56 pm
I wanted girls likely because I felt safer with them. I wanted to reproduce all the girly things I never got to do.
2 girls later, I hope to one day adopt a little boy. I love my girls, but I really want to add a boy to the mix, and I’m not sure why. (All the scheming with two girls might have something to do with it)
colleen // May 10, 2007 at 5:08 pm
Great article, I have friends with two of the same sex and this is often a topic of our conversation…
I became a “lucky duck” about 15 months ago and had a girl after having a boy (he’s 4 1/2). We aren’t sure if we are done yet.
Anyhow, so far I see big differences in their personalities and some similarities. Since I started w/ a boy… we really only have boy toys. So my daughter loves the train table and dinos. Still when at a friends house she seems drawn to the girl toys (crowns, jewelery, dolls). I have to say she has been a much easier baby since she was born. I think the big difference is she was sleeping through the night at 12 weeks and my son wasn’t sleeping through the night till 12 MONTHS. I lay her down awake and she just goes to sleep w/o any help from me or a bottle. My son, we would do aerobics with him in our arms until he was asleep and we would ever so gently lay him down… who knows, is it personality, second parent experience, or a gender thing???
I have heard that girls are easier until they get to about fourth grade and then it gets hard until about age 21. Boys are harder when they are small and easier as they get older… that’s what I “hear”!!!
Funny… everyone I know who had two of the same sex and tried for a third ended up w/ the same gender.
bubandpie // May 10, 2007 at 7:35 pm
Just today, Pie astonished me by “punishing” me for making her walk along the path at the park (instead of carrying her). Instead of holding me hand, she wandered off a few feet to the side, throwing me begrudging looks to see if I was properly noticing how I’d been snubbed. Bub has never attempted emotional manipulation of that kind - I don’t know whether to be impressed or afraid.
(My Pie, by the way, has a name VERY SIMILAR to your girl’s name.)
Bon // May 10, 2007 at 7:52 pm
like you, i never saw boys in my future. and two later, as grateful as i am to have one to hold and love deeply, i still wonder about my girl…the one i’ve imagined myself mother to for more than thirty years.
i think it is more not getting what i think i want than not liking what i get, if you know what i mean. i suspect you might. i am also more able to comprehend emotional manipulation than i am hand-to-hand combat…i suppose there’s that.
but i have time to learn.
(and i always wondered what Bub & Pie’s names were…one down!)
Blog Antagonist // May 10, 2007 at 8:21 pm
I wanted girls because I didn’t know how to “do” boys. I had only sisters growing up. Boys were thoroughly alien to me.
I think you articulated perfectly my own feelings about having boys. I don’t have a thing to add so I’ll just say…”me too”.
Amanda // May 10, 2007 at 8:27 pm
I expected to have boys, I really did.I can’t tell you how manytimes I have felta bit guilty because I do not have the “Can’t wait to get them all dolled up” gene. In fact I dress them like little hackey sack playing raggamuffins and delight in the whimsy of mismatched patterns and boyish mixed with mildly girly. I do love raising them and having the inner lover of pink and frills unlocked by dimply pink hands, I didn’t know it was in there under all the tomboy.
De (Sober Briquette) // May 11, 2007 at 5:32 am
I have a daughter and a son.
Although my son is on the cusp of two, so I hesitate to say with certainty what changes the next couple of years will bring as he begins to assert himself, I will venture to say that the innate differences between the genders are well beyond my capacity to “thwart.” Well beyond.
But great to see and learn from! Bringing up children (limit: two) is teaching me so much about people in general.
Her Bad Mother // May 11, 2007 at 5:56 am
I was really mixed about whether I wanted a boy or a girl - which, I suppose, is better stated as, I wanted both. I actually fully expected to have a boy, for complicated reasons, but was thrilled to have the girl that I had.
My dad told me, after WB was born, that he was glad that we’d had a girl, that he’d never wanted anything but girls, because he believed that girls always stayed closer to home. His girls, he felt, would always be his girls, whereas any boy would one day cease to be his boy. I think that he’s wrong, but it was touching all the same.
Slouching Mom // May 11, 2007 at 6:23 am
Thank you all for such thoughtful comments.
De, I agree with this 100%:
I will venture to say that the innate differences between the genders are well beyond my capacity to “thwart.†Well beyond.
But I know some who disagree; my belief is that they must not yet be parents.
HBM: You remind me of the one sadness that lingers for me about having only boys. I will never get to experience my daughter giving birth to my grandchild. And will I be as close to my grandchildren as their mom’s mom will? I hope so, but I fear not.
Suz // May 11, 2007 at 7:00 am
I don’t know. I have boys and they will be my onelies. There’s a little sadness there that I won’t have a little Ellie to dress up, but I’m also really coming to enjoy the boyness of my two little ones.
maggie // May 11, 2007 at 7:19 am
I have only one child, a girl. I adore her and she confounds me. She only wants to wear dresses, she plays with dinosaurs and dumptrucks, she wants sparkle ponies in her hair, and loves to get muddy. I sort of always wanted a girl, and so did my husband - he was a rotten child & teenager (blowing up fingers with fireworks, rolling over VWs) - and I sort of think/thought girls would be easier. But I know there’s all that teenage angst and mean girls and Bratz and make-up that may surface in our future.
LawyerMama // May 11, 2007 at 11:12 am
I always assumed I would have a girl too. Oops.
After two boys, I couldn’t imagine it any other way. I think, too, that I’m better suited to raising boys. I’m just not a girly girl.
I don’t know about the toys and such. Both boys love the traditional boy stuff, but at daycare it seems like they always head for the pretty, sparkly, eye catching girl stuff. When I let the boys pick out new sunglasses last weekend, Holden picked a nice red pair, but Hollis wanted the pink sparly Barbie glasses and that’s what he got.
If it helps any, my husband is very close to his parents. They live far away, but so do my parents. We talk to them every week at least. Ny hubby still tells his parents he loves them at least twice in every phone conversation. It’s very sweet.
whymommy // May 16, 2007 at 12:38 pm
What a great post!
I always wanted a pack of boys, followed by a little girl named Kate. Now that I have my two boys and can’t have any more, I think I’ll always be a little wistful for my little Katie. . . but my boys are somehow more than enough!
=tom= // May 21, 2007 at 12:43 pm
Glad you liked my image. I have two boys and we would like to have a girl but boys are great fun!
Justin // May 21, 2007 at 1:28 pm
That pic probably has the two cutest kids I’ve ever seen!!!!
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