Additional reason for wanting a girl instead of a boy in America (I have 2 girls, 1 boy.) Have you ever bought baby clothes? There must be 10 adorable little outfits for girls for every 1 little boys’ outfit with a stupid truck or sailboat on it.
So with a girl, you get to have it both ways. Tumble around in the dirt with her, play catch, teach her to spit, and then dress her up like a princess. And I haven’t even mentioned matching hair care accessories …
OTOH - having been a teenage boy myself, it doesn’t exactly thrill me to know that all those perverts want to get in my beautiful teenage daughter’s pants (and that soon, if not already, she’ll be glad to have them there!)
Additional bonus to having sons - dad gets an extra vote at the video store.
Because I’m really against sexual stereotyping and the stupid blue/pink thing, I’ve always planned that if I have a child, I will find out the gender before, but I’ll tell all my friends and family (those that stereotype) the opposite of what it really is.
Then if any princess frills arrive for what turns out to be a boy…
I would be happy to put a small baby in clothes intended for either gender. Baby boys (and small male toddlers) used to wear those long white dresses anyway.
And I’m sure putting a newborn girl in a sailor suit won’t make her any more or less inclined in the long term to become a full-time mother or a fighter pilot.
I also wouldn’t care what gender I got. I know there can often be massive behavioural differences between boys and girls even from an early age, but it’t not always so.
As for teenagers/sex/whatever - we live in a tolerant society these days. There are more and more people coming out as gay, as well as transexual. As parents or future parents, it’s all something we’ll have to live with (and love) if Billy becomes Lily.
So you can’t guarantee anything, whatever external organs it may be born with.
istara, Mrs. Clucky and I have a 1-yo beautiful baby girl. Pride of our lives.
We don’t like frilly stuff, so we’ve bought just as much “boys” clothes as “girls” clothes because we buy what we like, not what society dictates.
Anyway, she has some St. Louis Rams outfits (my favorite sports team). My wife was talking to another mother in a checkout lane of a local store. The other mother says her husband’s so happy he finally has his boy so he can buy sports outfits for him. They already had some girls.
Mrs. Clucky tells her how I bought our daughter Rams stuff to wear.
The other mother says, “Well, my husband wouldn’t do that to his girls.”
Huh? Whatever. I think maybe she was the one who wouldn’t let her husband do that, but I have no idea. It was just rude and close-minded, IMO.
Now, as for the OP, I have nothing to add.
End highjack.
Clucky - your daughter sounds really lucky to have such cool open-minded parents! I bet she looks wonderful in the Rams outfit.
Beadalin wrote:
Note that the thing I was saying “can’t be true” was not the fact that there exists one matriarchal society in China, but the notion that this one matriarchal society is the only place in China where there is no preference for boy babies. According to my mainland-Chinese acquaintance, Beijing (and other major cities) show a predilection for girl babies, and I seriously doubt that Beijing qualifies as a matriarchal society.
Clucky wrote:
From a Cathy comic strip several years ago:
CLERK IN TOY STORE: Are we shopping for a little boy, or a little girl?
CATHY: We are shopping for a little unisex person.
CLERK IN TOY STORE: Are we shopping for a little unisex person who’d like a killer attack robot, or a little unisex person who’d like a make-up kit?
I’ve heard people talk about “boys for business, girls for pleasure”. I think there’s a perception that boys are needed to carry on the family name but are more trouble than girls. I don’t think this is true - I’m a girl, and I was trouble 
- but it’s one of those myths that are out there.
I don’t have any children now, but I hope to have some in the future. While I don’t have a preference for a boy or a girl, I would like to have at least one of each because I would like the chance to experience both sides of the coin.
I have nothing of value to add to this debate.
That would be the Naxi minority group located primarily in Northern Yunnan province. Not a hushed up village. Their matriarcial society is reasonably well documented, although what is written in places like the Lonely Planet is pretty exaggerated. Here is a link: http://www.china.org.cn/e-groups/shaoshu/shao-2-naxi.htm
I’m sure there are other minority (non Han Chinese) groups in China with a matriachal society. It may be limited in small geographic areas and groups such as the Miao, Dong, Buyi, etc.
Here’s another wierd thing that my grandmother told me about that I haven’t ever heard from anybody else. When she was growing up in rural Nebraska around the turn of the century baby trading was a fairly common occurence. Basically farm and ranch families wanted a fairly even number of girls and boys. The girls did the girl chores (cooking, cleaning, milking, collecting the eggs) and the boys did the manly chores(plowing, harvesting, building fences). If one family had too many boys already, and another family had too many girls then they would trade babies so that things got done the way they were suppossed to. These families had like 16 kids(gotta find some way to pass the evening without TV), and it was expected that 3 or four would die in childhood, so I guess they got kind of hardened and callous about the whole thing. Gramma always spoke about it matter-of-factly like it wasn’t any big deal.
In the bad old days, there was a similar imbalance, which did less than nothing for women. But maybe industrialization/modernization will be a different kettle of fish.
I’ve got three teenage boys and one girl, and let me tell you, boys are bitchier by far than girls could ever hope to be. We ‘sheila’s’ are tame by comparison.
I was just thinking about this the other day!
One of my brothers has two girls and I know that deep down he wants a boy but they decided to have his wife’s tubes tied and not have anymore children so he’ll probably never have a son. He wants a son he can take fishing and hunting and get him a BB gun someday… a boy to do guy things with I guess. His daughters are typical little girls. They like playing dress up and barbies and makeup and stuff. They do go fishing but they’re scared of the worms and scared of the fish and it drives him nuts. My other brother has a son and doesn’t want to have anymore children because he’s afraid he’ll have a girl. He’s got a boy to carry on his name and they’re the best of pals but he doesn’t want to have a “whiny little girl” around. As he says, “One girl around here is enough.” (Talking about his wife) WTF! I just don’t understand their way of thinking. I have two children, a girl and a boy, and I’m just glad they’re healthy happy children. Maybe it’s easier for me to say this because I have one of each but I don’t think that’s the case. I would’ve been happy with two girls or two boys and I’ll be happy with my next one regardless of what sex it is.
Freaky! Imagine being married to someone who saw female offspring as “whiny little girls”?!!
Glad you have your head screwed on straight, Rachelle.
When Lola was pregnant with Alex (our daughter) more than a few people asked if we knew if it was (boy or a girl?). I usually answered that “it’s a baby” and that we didn’t know the gender. Some of those people asked if I was wishing for my firstborn to be a boy and I said I didn’t care, my only concern was that the baby and Lola were healthy. In truth, I wanted a daughter, now we have two as well as two sons from Lola’s first marriage.
I’ve talked to quite a few expecting fathers who wanted their firstborn to be a son. Whether this is a societal pressure or because of other reasoning I’m not sure.
Having daughters doesn’t mean that I won’t be able to take them out and do anything that I would do with boys. My nieces can survive in the bush as well as any man and out fish most people due to my brother’s teaching. They are also extremely attractive young ladies who turn more than a few eyes.
My family name is very close to dying out, out of all my cousins who have children there is only one boy. My sister has sons and my brother has daughters.
This is less important than having healthy happy children. Our daughtners are all sweetness when they aren’t demolishing things and getting into trouble, much like their older brothers.
Pretty soon I am going to have to start practice the “Bundy Manouver” as in… “Here son, let me show you the door…”
Nothing to stop your daughters keeping their “maiden” name, if and when they marry. And nothing to stop them giving it to their children as an extra surname: [Babyname] [Husbandname] [Feynnname], or vice versa.
You sound like a wonderful father by the way.
A branch of my family faced their surname “dying out” because the last male had three daughters. To overcome this, all the girls hyphenated their surnames when they married, and passed their surname on that way. As a general rule, I’m no fan of hyphenated names, but in this case it seemed a reasonable solution.
It’s so weird how some families have more boys and some have more girls. Between the families of both my mother and my father, I have 15 cousins - and 12 of them are male. Yet out of the 9 children my great grandparents had, only two of their sons had boys.
The whole surname thing seems silly to me.
Like you don’t have sixth cousins four times removed out there somewhere. Names almost never actually “die out” - the family just grows large enough and distant enough that you may not realize the other Doe’s in the phone book are distantly related.
Perhaps because I am carrying the surname of my father (kept my maiden name), who is carrying the surname of his adopted father. No blood ties there. I have a lone male cousin I have never met whose bears the “responsibility” of carrying on the Name. And my husband has passed his surname to our adopted son (who had, as his birthname, the ever popular and in no danger of dying out in Korea, Park). The side of the family I identify with is my mother’s mother’s side - gee, no one I know has ever had that last name. Likewise, my husbands closest family ties are with his mother’s family - and very few of them have his mothers maiden name - and the ones that do are more distant than the cousins we are close to - who are decended through the sisters.