Seriously, I do not understand these type of women. It’s like they were never girls themselves, they have such a horror of them–I would really understand a man writing some crap like this much better, because at least one could stretch one’s imagination to encompass the idea that females might seem like a dreaded alien species to a man. It’s really hard to understand why a female might seem like one to another female.
Let the pukefest begin!
Why I didn’t want a girl
by some twit named Amy WilsonIn an elevator, in line at the grocery store, waiting for the bus, it always goes like this: Strangers’ eyes zero in on my belly first. Then they dart furtively to my face, as if to make sure I’m not a mutant, just visibly pregnant.
After this, they ask, “Is this your first?”
“My third,” I answer. “I have two boys at home.”
And for the kicker, they unfailingly give me a sideways grin, and say: “Going for your girl?”
“Nooo, just going for a baby,” I reply, gritting my teeth a little. “Another boy would be fine with us.”
I know these people are just making conversation. But this constant assumption leaves me a little offended. What’s wrong with boys? Why wouldn’t I want another one? 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.
In spite of the ick-inspiring title, you see that the article itself didn’t start out too badly. I have two boys myself, and I’m quite happy with them–as I’ve told them several times in the past, if I could have gone back in time and picked my two babies out of a designer baby catalogue, I’d have picked exactly them, down to the last little detail. (It’s true, I swear. They’re so awesome. Excuse me while I go goo over their pictures for a sec–okay, back on task!) I would be annoyed if people harassed me about one of ‘em not being a girl. (It hasn’t happened, to be honest. But it would be annoying if it ever did.)
But yeah, anybody that whipped up that title can’t possibly continue down such a reasonable path.
To these people, I say, “I actually hope it’s another boy. I like boys better.”
She seriously likes some people better than others based solely on gender, without having any other information about them. She specifically applies this to her own children. Gahhh!
And lest you think she’s exaggerating a wee trifle–oh, no. She’s not, and she’s quite happy to tell you why.
I love what I have, and I have what I love: boys. I understand them. I understand the clothes, the toys, and the Matchbox-car skids on my wallpaper.
Not that having two boys is easy — their physical interaction can be, shall we say, overwhelming. But I love even that, because when I say I am the mother of two boys less than two years apart, I get a respectful nod or even a big thumbs-up for having that much testosterone in my daily life.
The night we found out I was pregnant again, my husband, David, said, “Odds are it’s another boy. How do you feel about that?”
I thought for a moment, and answered honestly, “I feel good about that.” He patted my hand. “That’s how I feel, too,” he replied, and we both drifted off to sleep. It was more than good; we were relieved.
Girls’ clothes–ugh! Clearly wildly different from boys’ clothes, so different that it would take seriously thought and practice to even get the little bitch dressed at all that first time. Girls’ toys–ugh! SO different from boys’ toys that never the twain shall meet, much less overlap in the slightest, especially in babyhood–doesn’t everyone know that’s the case, huh? And baby girls don’t destroy wallpaper and she loves her destroyed wallpap–yeah, I know, at this point I was so weirded out I almost quit reading any further. The question begins to arise…has the author ever been around, on the most casual basis, anything other than a male child? Was the author herself actually a male child…? Given that she is pregnant as an adult, it seems unlikely, but it would help explain her bizarre, fantastic ideas about female children.
Then, two weeks later, I called to schedule my next appointment. “Hi, Amy! Your amnio looked great, and it’s a girl! How nice for you,” the receptionist blurted.
For a moment I didn’t know what she was talking about. Then I realized what she had just revealed and I almost dropped the phone. “Wha-what? ” I said. The receptionist heard the bewilderment in my voice. “You knew, right?” she said. “The doctor told me you knew.”
“I didn’t know,” I said, my head spinning. “I’m sorry…I’ll have to call back.”
I sat there in a daze. This child I was just starting to feel stir inside me was a girl? I waited for the excitement to wash over me. It didn’t come. Not only was I not thrilled — I was disappointed.
Mostly, I just hope her daughter never stumbles across this, and wow, do I already feel sorry for that poor kid. And I only got sorrier–
I could handle boys, with their cut-and-dried needs, but girls were so much more complicated. Girls have elaborate hairstyling requirements. They whine and mope, manipulate and triangulate. How was I going to deal with that?
Girls don’t have hairstyle requirements any more than boys do, not for more than a decade really, unless you deliberately choose to inject them into your girl’s life and you don’t even get the option to do that til they’ve actually grown some hair to style, which takes a couple of years after birth. And I’m sorry, I can’t swallow the notion that her sons did not regularly whine, mope, and manipulate as babies, toddlers and small children. Whining, moping and manipulating are what babies and kids do, regardless of gender. Let me repeat–I am the mother of two of that glorious Y-marked gender–and I had a sister who was younger than me–and I’ve babysat enough kids to fill up a small school–yes, all kids, even the Sacred Male brand! whine. And mope. And manipulate. All the time. Is she even raising her own current kids..? Are they drugged to the gills or something?
My sons sneer at all things princess, and so do I. We love to pore over the Birthday Express catalog so the boys can plan the themes of their parties through 2013. My role in this is to gasp, “Oh, I think you should have a pink-poodle party!” “YUCK!! That’s for GIRLS!!” they shriek, and I laugh along with them. What will I do when I have someone who wants a pink-poodle party?
…having already had two children, I’ve learned that you can’t control their hardwiring. If she wants to be a princess, that’s what she’ll be.
Was your misogyny hardwired, lady? Was your sons’ misogyny hardwired, or have you spent years gleefully teaching it to them? What a way to bond with your sons–to put down your own gender! Or have you made it clear that MAMA is special, not like all those other disgusting, creepy females? And yes, I agree–what will you do when your daughter is born, since you’ve taught your sons so thoroughly to despise girls..? God, your poor, poor, poor daughter.
I was hoping that my husband’s reaction to the news would make me feel better about all of this. When I got him alone, I told him that the receptionist had screwed up, and that I knew. He hid his face in his hands. “Well, don’t tell me!” he said. “I don’t want to know!”
That was four months ago. I’ve got three weeks left, and two of my closest friends know I’m having a girl, but my husband still doesn’t.
“Will you be happy either way?” I ask David. “Of course, honey,” he says, and I can tell by his voice he thinks I’m carrying the third boy he wants more anyway. “Three sons would be amazing.”
It’s enough to make you want to cry for that poor little girl. That poor, despised, unwanted little girl–already.
My best friend took her father out to dinner for Father’s Day a few years ago. She’s the fourth of four girls, and of five children–her parents had her brother about five years after she was born. Her father was reminiscing about the past with her, and mentioned in passing that he and my friend’s mother had never really intended to have five children–they had originally meant to only have two. My friend knew this already–it was a long-standing family joke. However, she wasn’t too prepared for what followed:
“Yeah, but we didn’t,” her father commented. “If I could go back and only pick two of you–well, I’d pick my son, of course–I don’t know which of you girls I’d choose.”
My friend was in her early thirties when she got to hear this, but it still made her cry after she got home. But who cares–? She was probably just using her tears to whine, mope and manipulate–! Or at least practice those feminine techniques, since her father wasn’t around to see her tears.
One of my friends who knows the secret thinks a girl will be great for me. “You deserve a girl!” she said, after watching me separate my two fighting boys. “Just think, she’ll be quiet. Calm. Easy.” It’s true: Even inside me, she’s different. When my boys would kick, I’d press against their little feet, and they’d kick back, harder. This baby? If she kicks and I press back, she goes completely still.
Oh, well, that’s all there is to it then! The fact that my older son, as a fetus, was quiet and lazy in utero must have meant that he was really a female fetus. And when my sister and I used to regularly duke it out? Clearly we were really boys! That goes double for my best friend and her three sisters, who spent a large portion of their childhood in intersibling brawls complete with screaming, limbs and handy objects flying. How we all magically managed to change gender once these behaviors ended has got to be the medical mystery of the century.
Maybe this broad is just so stupid that her daughter won’t take her mother’s inanity and senseless cruelty to heart, realizing early on that one must always consider the source. Unfortunately, that isn’t usually how it works out with kids. I wish she’d been sterilized after kid no. 2, and I’m really sorry that she’s even raising the boys she has–they’re either going to grow up to be flaming sexist assholes or they’re going to have a rough row to hoe weeding that bullshit out of themselves as adults. Most of all, I’m sorry I ever stumbled across this article at all.
The little blurb says her daughter is 16 months old now (at the bottom of the CNN site) and that now, mama “gets it.” But why write it?
This is hateful stuff. I mean, if my wife was thinking about cheating on me with a co-worker, and then decided not to cheat, would I want to read about how she thought about fucking another man? No. And surely this little girl doesn’t need to read this.
As the father of a daughter, as one who genuinely didn’t care what sex my child was, I have nothing but absolute contempt for those parents whose happiness is contingent in any way upon the plumbing with which their baby is born.
Yeah, my dad liked to whip out the “I always wanted a son” when he was trying to be emotionally abusive (he had three daughters instead, showing that the universe has a deplorable sense of humor). It’s always hard to hear when your parents basically say “You are not the person I wanted you to be”.
Hey, it could be worse. Her daughter could end up being raised by two parents of the same sex who both love her deeply, have only her wellbeing in mind, and could care less whether she’s a girl or a boy. *shudder*
In untero gender essentialism? Jesus fuck, where do you go from there, complaining about X chromosome carrying sperm doing prissy little butterfly strokes while the rough-and-tumble Y sperm go at it freestyle?
Oy, gevalt!
I hope her daughter is like mine – not calm, quiet, or easy since day one. Giant temper, limitless energy, into everything, taking everything apart to see how it works, irritable and shitty when prevented from getting what she wants…in contrast my stepdaughter is pleasant and easygoing, but already quite the athlete, disinterested in princesses, and mathematically gifted. Ah the contradictions…how does one handle all the divergence from gender norms? It’s simply too much!
She should have tried adoption, so she could guarantee herself a boy. Although I might not mind if the adoption people turned her down for being a terrible parent!
This woman sucks. Period.
First they’ll teach their sons that girls are evil and disgusting (ick! pink! Only GIRLS like that!) and then they claim that gender differences are hardwired (my boys just NATURALLY don’t want to play with girls, I didn’t teach that to them, it just HAPPENED!) and then they claim the patriarchy is something we’re imagining.
I cannot begin to tell you how much these people disgust me.
God, I feel so sorry for this kid. This seriously made me want to cry, thinking about how this woman essentially hated this little baby so much before she even met her, and couldn’t even conceive of a way in which she could love this child.
My best friend’s parents are still pissed at her 30 years later for not being a boy (there were already 2 girls). Best friend pretty much tries to fake being a guy the best she can. I can’t help but think it’s mental compensation.
Yeah, this kid is screwed.
Rachel_in_WY, your daughter sounds awesome:
“how does one handle all the divergence from gender norms? It’s simply too much!”
Sadly, parents unlike yourself can (and do) mock, humiliate, ridicule, shame, shout, punish and beat gender norms and countless other godawful societal norms into children.
In the absence of those methods, each child will determine their own self-defined place in the universe and the world of the future becomes a far better place for everyone (the author of the CNN piece possibly excluded).
Well, to be fair, if you click through you notice that not only has she embraced mothering a girl, but that her title wasn’t even “why I didn’t want a girl”, CNN did that, probably to get this reaction.
While I don’t want to do any disservice to the very real issue of sexism there is today, I really really really want to believe that the author was maybe just an insecure mom, ready to do the daily mom tasks on familiar ground rather than go into the unknown. Before I had boys, I was very apprehensive about mothering a boy and dealing with peni and I thought I could never identify with a boy. I was totally wrong, of course, but ……parenting is scary, we are often insecure, and maybe she’s a perfectly loving mother who was just scared at the time. (In fact if you click through to her personal blog, she actually seems to say that)
I don’t mean to discount her words. She clearly could have expressed her apprehension better. And yes there is so much sexism in what she’s written. I don’t think it was intended that way, though. Poor execution of thought I think.
My sister has all girls, and all of them are obsessed with princesses. Sis and bro-in-law insist that gender is hardwired, because, hey, look at their daughters. Not once have those girls been introduced to other toys, at least not by their parents. They’ve been raised to be girly girls from Day One. (Not that I think there’s anything inherently wrong with that. I was a girly girl and I turned out just fine.)
Wow. I am so grateful to both of my parents for always stating that all they wanted was “a healthy baby” when anyone asked “but don’t you want a boy this time???” (I’m the oldest of 4 girls, so I saw this weird obsession with baby gender played out with all my younger sisters). I do remember my mom being a little apprehensive — privately, not on freaking CNN! — about what if the fourth kid was a boy, because it would be a big change after raising girls for over a decade, but it wasn’t at all like this hateful crap.
The first hairstyle I ever requested was a purple mohawk at the age of 4 or 5. I suppose that *is* a high-maintenance hairstyle…
sadly, i didn’t get my colorful mohawk until 18.
It’s possible this mom was apprehensive about the unknown, but the apparently constant unthinking reinforcement of misogyny in her sons is the really horrifying part of this story. Gods, woman, did you not have a single thought about maybe this isn’t such a hot idea? For practical reasons (I assume you’d like to have grandchildren, and maybe live in the same state with them while they grow up) if nothing else…
[...] used the word “bitch” twice in this post, and that’s a term I regularly eschew. PunkAss’s commentary is excellent, but we need more. We need this bitch (that’s three) to give up her daughter for [...]
She’s not as bad as this guy, who seems to see his daughter largely as a stage prop for his macho chest-beating fantasies about threatening weedy boys and heroically beating up bla- sorry, intruders. And being a LION, ROAAAAH!
[...] as varied and unique as the members of the society itself. Its this kind of reasoning that leads to essays like the one discussed here where a mother dreads giving birth to a girl, because ofher dislike of “girl toys” and [...]