I have two small sons. When I was pregnant with my third child, every day people would approach me in the grocery store, park, Target, etc. and say “I bet you’re hoping it’s a girl!” or “I hope you get your girl!”
My pregnant friend with 3 girls gets oven more of the opposite ignorant comments about “the hope” of having a boy.
Now that my third child is a baby (yes, I had a girl) I still hear nearly every day, “You had a girl, how wonderful!” “You finally got your girl!”
Don’t presume you know what sex I want. For all you know, maybe I want all boys.
I’m not so desperate for a girl that I got pregnant on the 50% chance that I might have a girl.
How do you think it makes my boys feel (they are listening to these comments of course) to hear that every one assumes that having another boy would have been a bad thing. They assume (they’ve told me) that this means having boys is a bad thing.
I don’t love my third child any more (or less) because she is female. I would not have been disappointed if I’d had a boy. Would have been less 'wonderful" if I’d had another boy?
This just really annoys me because I hear it all the time and I dislike the implications. I never know if I should speak up and say something (polite but firm) to these folks.
I was at a wedding shower in which on a toast someone made this comment to the bride’s sister who was pregnant with her 4th child (the first 3 were girls), “And here’s a toast to Millie. May God bless your beautiful growing family, and may He bless you even more by finally giving you a BOY!” (hearty chuckles from the audience). Millie (my hero) stands up and loudly proclaims, “I will be thrilled if God blesses up with another girl. I love girls and think they are so special!”
It seems people just don’t think before they speak.
My mom had four boys, a girl, a boy, and two girls. She was appalled at the comments people said when my brother Jim (#6) was born. “Aw, it too bad you didn’t have another girl”, or the classic, “It’s a shame that you had another boy”.
Screw 'em. People who comment on the preferred sex of the child are right up there with people who touch a pregnant mother’s belly…rude.
I do not think rudeness should be replied to in kind, however, an icy “We just want a healthy baby, we don’t care about the sex”. is always appropriate.
I agree with DDG. I think you’re reading too much into their comments.
Once you’ve done “oh, she’s so cute!” and “how much did she weigh?” there’s not a whole lot to say about somebody else’s baby, especially somebody you don’t know that well. People are going to feel they need to say something to fill the silence, and most of the time it’s going to either sound trite and foolish, or far more personal that anything you’d want to discuss.
I think it stops being idle chit chat when it makes the other children feel bad for being whatever sex they are. It is hard enough for them dealing with a new sibling without feeling like they were disappointments.
Many people don’t think before they speak. People know my motto and still they ask questions that no sane person wants the answer to.
BTW: Congratulations on being pregnant. I hope you have a boy or girl.
We have a similar problem in that our bio daughter arrived shortly after our adopted son.
“Figures you got pregnant right after adopting, doesn’t it always work that way!”
Uh, No…it doesn’t. And don’t say that where my son can hear. He wasn’t a fertility treatment - he is my kid. We are damn lucky we didn’t get pregnant until after we adopted - or we wouldn’t have our beautiful son.
We also get the “you are so lucky to have one of each!” Huh? I guess so I can buy nearly twice as many clothes because you can’t hand down the aggressively little boy stuff (and even the daughter of a feminist like me needs a dress or two). I can’t believe how many adoption conversations I’ve had with people who have several kids of one sex and are only looking to adopt so they finally get a girl (or a boy)…imagine how this is making your last bio kid feel.
The term is intersexed, not hermaphrodite. I am very aware of that possibility, but it is a difficult path that I do not wish on someone. First as a mother, you need to guard your intersexed child from unnecessary surgery. Surgeons are eager to cut whatever they think doesn’t look right regardless of whether it functions and make the infant look like a boy or girl before you can tell what the child will identify. Often in the process they cut nerves and insure that whatever the genitals look like they will not function to give pleasure. They have also have been known to remove perfectly healthy testicles or ovaries because they did not match some other aspect of how the child looks. It is very difficult for a mother to defend her child from all that and yet allow necessary surgery. No, I don’t wish that on anyone.
Or worse, the couple of ding-dongs who knew about my previous child and who assumed that the problems were sex-linked (they weren’t; my first child died of an infection). When I found out Aaron was a boy, I was thrilled. When these ding-dongs found out, they became very concerned that “this one might not make it, either” and told me so. :rolleyes:
Suffice it to say, they got a very cold look and we haven’t spoken since.
There was a girl in my high school who had four older sisters. It was well known that she was a “trying for a boy” child, because when she arrived and turned out to be another girl, her parents gave up and called her Amy Michael Lastname anyway. And I think Anne Rice’s birth name is traditionally male because her parents had really wanted a boy instead and went on with the name they would have given a son. Way to instill a healthy sense of inadequacy and parental disappointment right out of the gates there, folks! :rolleyes:
The “making the other kid feel bad” is not limited to sex, either. One of my co-workers has two adorable little girls. The older one has lovely straight blond hair, and the younger one has Shirley Temple curls. Innumerable strangers on the street have told her how sweet her little girl’s curls are when she is out with both of them. One well-meaning but idiotic little old lady asked the older girl, “Where are your curls?” She’s starting to ask her mom why her sister gets to have curls and she doesn’t, and generally feeling less attractive because of it. It’s horrid.
My mother had the same problems when we were children. She had three little girls. When she because pregnant for the fourth time she couldn’t leave the house with us without some stranger asking her if she was trying for a boy this time.
Her answer was always “Yes, I never really liked girls and my life won’t be complete until I have a boy.” This reply left strangers speechless. And made us feel good because we knew that she really did love us and did not care about boy/girl. Because the question was so stupid she would not even dignify it with a serious answer.
The other thing that bothers me is that my step-sister really wanted a girl. When she found out that she was pregnant with a boy, she spent three days locked in her house, sobbing uncontrollably.
What is the deal with these strong gender preferances?
I think that if you care THAT strongly about the sex, you probably shouldn’t have a baby.
In my step-sister’s case, she had a screwed up childhood, and wants to re-live it through a daughter. In this case, she is wanting a dream, a fantasy, not a real daughter. What if her daughter is totally different than she was? What if her daughter doesn’t want to be the conduit for all her mom’s hopes and dreams?
I for one am glad she’s having a boy. It think it’s more psychologically healthy. One of my favorite saying, from a ancient wise man, “You can’t always get what you want, but you get what you need.”
I can understand, to some extent, initial gender preferences. For instance, my mom was glad that both my sister and I were girls. Why? Simply because she knew that my dad wasn’t going to be able to play a very large part in our upbringing (he was always at work when I was younger) and wasn’t sure she knew how to raise a boy.
Now, if I’d been born “James Alexander (AngeloftheLord)” instead of “Rachel Elizabeth (AngeloftheLord)”, my mother would not have loved me one iota less or more. She was just to some extent relieved that she didn’t have to raise a child of a different gender than her on her own.
I’d just like to step in here and point out that just because someone has an inner desire for a child of one sex or another does not mean that they won’t love and accept whatever they get.
When I was in eighth grade my mom found out she was pregnant. She was forty years old and had four daughters already. Of course she was hoping that she might finally get her son. And no way did knowing that make me feel in any way diminished for being female. As it turned out, she had twin girls and so never did get her boy–but those twins were absolutely adored by everyone and in retrospect we wouldn’t have changed a thing.
A year and a half ago I had my son who Mom now spoils absolutely rotten, and the fact that he’s the first male in a family of women was quite the to-do. Now that I’m pregnant again I’ll admit that I’m hoping for a girl–but when I have my second son (which I’m sure I will, because life just works like that) I’ll cherish him unconditionally regardless of what secret hopes I had once held about his gender.
Having known some intersexed indivuals, I don’t find this funny. I’m manic depressive. There have been a few times when I’ve found that another patient was there because they wanted to live as one gender and their family preferred the other.
I once held a girl an tried to comfort her while she cried and told me that she had male genitals, and an opening behind them that bled once a month. She asked God "Why did you make me a freak?". She cried because her family had visited that day and kept calling her he, him, and son.
When my sister was pregnant, I honestly didn't care if the baby was a boy or a girl. I did pray that it would be a clear case of one or the other.
It’s the “of course” that causes the problem here. Maybe your mom was hoping for a son; that does not mean that every pregnant woman with four daughters must be presumed to be hoping for a son. Another woman might be in a position similar to Angel of the Lord’s mother and want only daughters, no matter how many she had.
I do not agree that these kind of rude personal comments and assumptions are just “idle chitchat”. They are idle rudeness, and fit right in with saying, “How’s the weather up there?” to tall people, or commenting on what other people choose to eat. Ann Landers and Dear Abby spent a lot of time telling people that personal comments (and the gender, or hoped-for gender, of one’s children is extremely personal) are inappropriate. One of them once got a letter asking, “But what am I supposed to say when I meet a pair of redheaded twins?” The answer? “How do you do? How do you do?” I’ve always tried to live by that approach. While it’s tempting to ask people about their personal idiosyncrasies, there are plenty of other topics for chitchat that are less likely to harm or offend.
autz - The people who make these kinds of comments are rude jerks. The trick is figuring out a way to respond to them without being jerkish yourself. Maybe something like “all of my children are blessings” would at least let your boys know where you stand.