Why I didnt' want a baby girl

Actually, I take that back. Piglets are cute.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

I'm hungry now. I think I'll go into the kitchen and make me some sausage biscuits.

 

What are sausage biscuits? Biscuits with sausage slices? Cooked slices of sausage with the consistency of biscuits?

I just had a bowl of strawberry/raspberry crumble. Really nice stuff. I put a shit ton of sugar in the actual crumble mixture, too.

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

 

So my response is late in this thread. Rape me. :shake: But in a comfortable bed.

Maybe she would be happy raising a tomboy? A future dyke of America?
This lady sounds just a little silly, and perhaps creepy. Only creepy because of her preconceptions about having a baby of an undesirable gender.

It's like a tamed down version of a movie I remember seeing parts of on t.v.(probably Lifetime, no doubt). I remember a woman getting pregnant somewhat later in life accidentally, and she didn't want an abortion. She really didn't want the baby either, but for some reason was keeping it. I almost want to say it was based on a true story. Kind of awkward, eh? Raising a baby you don't want or have very little emotion for? It was like she felt obligated to care for her own offspring, but felt emotionally detached and cold toward it. I don't remember how it ended.
That would not be an optimal environment for a child to be raised in, no doubt. I would assume many such situations end up in adoption or something, but it could also lead to a loveless or abusive home life as well.
Even if it's just a tad bit of animosity because of something like gender, that could strain relationships with either parents, or maybe siblings as well... resentment due to favoritism.

I liked playing with Barbies when I was young (toddler to kindergarten age) if I could get my hands on them, and continued to play house for several years beyond that. I don't know if that's more gender-neutral activity to play house?
The daughter of our babysitter liked playing boyish games with us, too, with toy guns and the like.
One thing though that seems to be true, is that girls enjoying stereotypically boyish games and behavior seem to be treated with alot more leniency and approval than in the opposite case, where a boy enjoys typically effeminate, girly activities. Hmmm...

The woman in the article seems to have some preconceptions about what it takes to not only raise a girl, but perhaps what a girl should be, though she admits there are exceptions.

How hardwired are such gender-specific interests? I'm positive in some people they're probably immutable for the most part, but other people will be shaped much more by their environment and role models, like birth order, parental roles etc. N vs. N, the debate continues.

However, and women can shoot me down, but evolution (whatever it truly is, whole other subject) didn't see fit to give the human female built-in lipstick, mascara, or painted nails.
I also don't think evolution has dictated that girls automatically want or identify with the color pink, just to use that stereotype of boy/girl colors.

In the old, old days, attire for men and women was very often indistinguishable, or nearly so. Important men could wear make up, and actually get away with it (pharoahs, etc).
Certainly physical appearance and desire to wear certain "female" things can't be totally hardwired. If it were, then customs of dress wouldn't vary so widely from era to era and culture to culture.
So obviously some of this has to be explained as simply a child wanting to emulate what they see being done by their own kind (gender).

What are the ethics, if any, of raising children in gender neutrality? How much to encourage or discourage something?
It confuses me.
:scratchin:

Whoa! According to some people, that's a recipe for raising queer kids!

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

(ala NARTH)

 

Awesome! I would have loved to have had a fleet of Trek models for my imagined space battles as a kid. I had to rely on Construx to build ships instead.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Construx

By the way, most toys don't have penises or vaginas. It's hard to see a young girl being a lesbo with male-oriented toys, anyhow.

 

Does anyone know what it is called when a woman exhibits extreme anxiety, distaste, or lack of emotion and attraction to their offspring?
Anyone ever seen this happen with their own eyes?

 

i have two boys and one girl who i love so much, she is funny, smart, and clever, i wanted a girl because i think they are harder to raise yes, but, they are more rewarding aswell, being a mum is at times a thankless job, but i wouldnt be without her, yes i worry about her getting pregnant especially with her pikey ass BF, but i dont have much else to worry over with her, the boys are more high maintenance

 

Agreed. When you talk about male or female brains, you're actually talking about 2 extreme ends of a continuum. Some youngsters are hardwired into being male typical or female typical, and will only play with guns or dolls, respectively. Others are in the mid range and don't stick to one gender-typical mode of play. I was one of those, though more towards the male-typical end.

 

I know it sometimes occurs in post-partum/post-natal depression.

 

Postpartum depression. At least it is supposed to happen right after or a bit after the baby is born. Is that what you are thinking of?

EDIT: I guess I should read all of the thread before I answer a question eh, tak?

You beat me to it.

 

It took me at least a month to bond with both of my kids. Some Mom's want to hold them as soon as they are born. I pointed to their father and said "He/She goes over there"

 

I agree with you there. That the baby is healthy is the only really important thing. I've seen families devasted by unhealthy children, financially, emotionally, and physically. There was a family I knew, for instance, that had a baby born with some rare disease that caused it to waste away and die before age two. It seemed healthy, af first. But then.... Even worse, it was thought that the chances of them having another child like that that were low, so they had another baby and it had the same condition! Horrible. There aren't many things sadder than seeing one of those little coffins. It just doesn't seem right.

Didn't you just say you don't have any girls? I have 3 boys and 1 girl and I can assure you, girls are more high maintainance from the start. It's almost like having another wife. I'll come home and my daughter will say, "Daddy, do you notice anything????" I'll be like, "Um, no?" So then my daughter will exclaim, "I can't believe you didn't notice my new haircut" I couldn't believe it! 10 years old and already she sounds like my wife!

Don't get me wrong, I love my daughter just as much as my sons. As has been mentioned, fathers and daughters tend to have a closer bond than fathers and sons. For instance, I went to a father/children breakfast at their school one day and as soon as it was over my son took off with his friends shouting "See ya later!" My daughter, on the other hand, gave me a hug, introduced my to her friends, showed me her classroom, and then gave me another hug goodbye. Boys are more independent, even from a young age.

On the other hand, of course boys can be difficult in their own ways. But the two sexes are definitely different from birth.

I've not found that to be the case. Now that I have a daughter, we have boy and girl toys available. There's not much overlap in what they play with. Give a boy a doll, he'll turn it into a gun or a ball (or a toy for the dog!) Give a girl a "shoot 'em up" video game and she'll leave it lying on the table, whereas the boys will play it for hours.

I agree. A child is a gift from God. To make a big deal about the sex is like looking a gift horse in the mouth. If the child is healthy, count your blessings and don't get too worked up over whether you need to paint the room pink or blue.

 

Oh my lord, its like our daughters were separated at birth. My daughter will stand there with hands on hips reading her dad the riot act, especially when he didn't take her fishing with him.

 

Why do people think this?
People/children/the ability to reproduce is NOT rare by any means. There are six billion fuckin people on this planet.
Is life spectacular? Most definitely.
Is it rare and precious? Not in the absolute least...especially not for humanity.
IMO, having the intelligence to know when NOT to have children is a divine gift.

Not to sound harsh towards the couple you talked about mad, but maybe after they had their second child that died of a bad disease at a young age just like the first, maybe that is telling them something...maybe natural selection is telling them something. It's common knowledge that when a woman miscarriages, her body terminates the unborn child for a reason (sometimes reasons the mom is unaware of). Sounds a bit like what happened with your couple friends, cept the babies were born.
It sounds mean, but I'd much rather not have children at all than to know that I was brining a child into this world that was going to be sick and suffering for two years then die. Sure, you get to know the joy of having a child, but then that gets cancelled real quick by having to bury it two years later; no parent should ever have to bury their child.

 

I do that all the damn time. I think it's called "post-natal" when it rears its head at other times.

 

Do you have any idea how many things can go wrong with a child? Down's syndrome, blood disorders, spina bifida, cerebral palsy, congenital heart problems, hair lips, club feet, mitochondrial defects, deafness, blindness, on and on. If you are so lucky as to have a perfectly normal healthy baby (male or female) and don't consider that fact a gift from God, well, I don't know what to say. Except to ask if you've ever heard of the sin of hubris.

 

1. You have to believe there is a God up there in order to think it's a gift from god. Since I don't, that statement is a moot point.
2. I'm well aware of how many things can go wrong with a child. One of my dad's brothers died of diptheria when he was 3, and two of my mom's brothers (frat twins) died when they were 11 months old of pneumonia; their immune systems didn't fully develop. Why do you even feel the need to ask that?

 

Those are just you're kids. Every kid is different. Some are clingy some aren't, not all girls love pink from birth. Some boys (in fact I bet most) play with dolls like they are dolls that just create different stories with them. As a child I loved a good chase game, be it tag or cops and robbers. I remember boys coming over and playing jump rope with us girls.