Jezebel 
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New York, 3:27 PM
Sun Nov 29
21 posts in the last 24 hours
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But then of course I remember that while that cute little baby boy I may end up with will eventually discover his penis and I will be just as lost in explaining that one, so it probably all evens out in the end.
05/14/09
Gender is a social construct. Don't forget.
05/14/09
I was just thinking about that. 'Oh, I don't have any female friends, they're too catty!' 'I could never raise a girl, I hate pink and frilly stuff!'
Talk about being self-unaware. You can only hear so many women saying this kind of crap before you've got to wonder how they've never found one another.
Plus these are the same types of people who swear it's all ingrained - toy choices, favorite colors, career trajectories. Couldn't have anything to do with parental pressure or expectations.
Here's hoping they can handle little boys who like 'girly things' and/or turn out to be gay.
05/14/09
Side note - I think raising a boy would be more difficult, but I too come from a matriarchy.
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that's the truth right there.
i recall seeing somewhere an adage that with raising boys, you only have to worry about your own, but with raising girls, you have to worry about everybody else's boys. it's an awful adage, but i fear too many parents take that direction all the time.
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05/14/09
The reasons "boys are easier to raise" is because we LET THEM GET AWAY WITH SHIT.
05/14/09
Jezemoms, tell me if I'm off-track but I thought the first overwhelming, innate emotion that overtakes you when you become a parent - for many even as soon as you become pregnant - is protectiveness. The urge to protect this little life that you are going to pour your physical, emotional and financial resources into. To make sure that it grows up to survive at the very least.
Of course no one wants their kid to be Jeffrey Dahmer, but I would not be not surprised to find a preference for a child of the gender that is less likely to be injured or killed (even if it means an increased risk that the child will kill or injure someone else).
In other words, parents tend to be a lot more concerned about their own kids than other people's.
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as much as parents do the whole 'mini-me' thing with their kids, here's a thought! your children are not you at that age...they are their own unique individual person that you helped to create. they are a part of you but they are not a reincarnation of you.
i see this all the time with friends of mine who become parents. they have grandiose plans; "they'll be in ice skates by the time they are 3 and they'll be in soccer at 6...". i said to them "but what if they are good in music? what if they prefer to paint instead of ride bikes?". they didn't have an answer for that.
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But I've come around to little boys. They can be adorbs. And it would be fun to raise a feminist man.
And I suppose I could always just pretend my son was a little girl--like when my little brother Noam was 2 and my sister and I would call him "Na'ama" and dress him up in girl clothes.
Yeah, just kidding about that last part. Not the sister-and-I part, but the future-mom-me part.
05/14/09
Am I the only person who cringes a little when guys go apeshit after finding out 'It's a boy!' even if it's just on TV or something? Because there are thousands of years of precedent for being happier about that than having a girl. You have someone who'll carry on 'the family name,' someone who doesn't need a dowry, someone who'll get an education. Sure a lot has changed (at least in some countries - I have Indian friends whose brothers got huge parties for their births while they were lucky to be born).
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I loathe they way some women don't want girl children because they think that teen girls are "complicated" or "mean" or "trouble" and boys are "honest" and "fun". It's serious male privileging, and it fucking sucks that it begins in the womb.
I feel the same way when women write about preferring/only having male friends, becuase adult women are just grown-up mean girls, or bullies.
05/14/09
I would add to this that those mothers and fathers who want a boy and not a girl so badly shouldn't be parents period. What can they be teaching their sons about the value of women?
05/14/09