Americans prefer boys to girls

110 thoughts on Americans prefer boys to girls

1. I can’t speak for the rest of America, but I’m almost 11 weeks pregnant and I find myself wishing for a boy simply because, statistically, there is a smaller chance that the awful things that happened to me growing up would happen to a boy.

   It is a purely visceral reaction, with not much reason behind it, but there it is. I hope for a boy because being a girl in America kind of sucks.

   For what it’s worth, my partner really wants a girl.

2. Woooooooooooooooooooooo! We’re #1!

   /opens jar
   //grabs something on the top shelf without step stool
   ///starts fire, cooks meat
   ////dies before females born in 1979

3. I’m in the UK so not particularly relevant but a few days a go I was asked by a woman I’d never met before about my impending birth. The usual question of do you know what you’re having? I told her it was a girl, her response: “oh…never mind.”

   I was at a total loss for words.

4. Funny. I always wanted a daughter, and I ended up with three sons. My husband used to tease me that I was destined to have a prissy daughter, one who would hide her Cosmo magazines under her mattress while I would ply her with copies of Ms. magazine. With each pregnancy, I thought it would be a girl and I was wrong again and again.

   Part of me feels a sense of loss that I will never have a daughter, but I do believe that I was meant to raise sons. My husband is the stay-at-home parent, and my sons are all multidimensional males who do not follow a strict vision of what it means to be a man. I think it’s my mission to raise sensitive males.

   I remember how my British husband’s highly sexist, Catholic aunty decided that I (his American, Lutheran, feminist wife) was okay after I produced a male heir. That was just weird. But I embraced the change in the wind with an inner sigh.

5. Eruvande, you make an excellent point. Two reasons I’m glad I have sons are (1) there tends to be less drama (but not always!), and (2) I don’t have to do the pink, American Girl, princess things. Blech.

   And Roisin, I think your comment is completely relevant. That is just sad. (I love your name…My Irish friend named her daughter Roisin and of course everyone in the US massacres its pronunciation.)

6. When I was pregnant (1960) I wanted a girl. I definitely didn’t want a boy. I didn’t want to be cleaning up those nasty little boy bits. And I knew parents who’s been peed on while changing boy diapers.
   I have a daughter and she’s sensational. She was a lovely baby and is a lovely adult. Still not crazy about little boys.

7. My girl is turning 2 tomorrow (OMG!) and for her pregnancy, as soon as I saw the positive I KNEW she was a girl. This was helpful because we had the girl name picked out and my husband refused to discuss boy names until he saw the bits on the screen.

   Now we’re trying for #2 and I’m indifferent as to which sex we get, but my husband sees himself as the father of daughters. He’s said repeatedly that he’d be perfectly happy never having a son. But from speaking with many of my friends, I know we’re unusual.

   As much as I think personality matters more than anything else, I’m far enough into this parenting gig to realize that the experience of raising a daughter is different from raising a son, if only in the societal aspect. I now understand why someone could want one or the other sex, because it is a different experience for the parents. I don’t get why people really really care about it though.

8. I’m hard-pressed to believe that roughly a third of the population has on preference whatsoever. Really? Not even a little?

9. I’d prefer a girl because of my own issues with men. I wish my fears and phobias would not stand in the way, but they do.

   But at least we’re not China in this regard.

10. I’ve never stressed about whether I’d have a boy or a girl, although I did inform my husband that our first was a girl, and was right. Then again, I was just joking around with him because in 50 years there had been only two boys born into my mother’s side of the family, not that there were many kids born anyhow. But I was right.

    The lack of boys did make people on my side quite excited when our second was a boy, but I considered that pretty reasonable. A boy isn’t necessary to a “complete” family or anything, but a few somewhere in the extended family are nice to see.

11. *raises hand*
    Nope, none at all. Healthy baby, yes. But then I think knowing you may have problems in that area puts things in perspective.

    Lance:
    I’m hard-pressed to believe that roughly a third of the population has on preference whatsoever.Really?Not even a little?

12. The day we found out I was pregnant, both my mother and husband said that it would be a boy. We were making a short movie about it, and I was going, “But what if it’s a girl? Her feelings would be hurt.”

    And then over the next weeks, I knew that they were right. We were going to have a boy. It was exciting. It still is.

    The idea that girls are somehow less desirable in this day and age just strikes me as depressing, however. Especially because I’ve always had such a strong bond with my father – and I can’t imagine how tough it would be, to have your dad disapppointed because you’re… you.

13. I’m 33 weeks pregnant and everyone asks if I know what I’m having. When I say “girl” it’s like they’re gauging my face to see whether I am sad about this or not. I’m not. I’m thrilled. We’ve got a lot of boys in this generation and haven’t had a baby girl in my family in almost two decades. On the husband’s side, this is their first grandbaby. They wouldn’t care if I gave birth to kittens, they’re so excited.

    I have a boy already and he’s a great kid, was an easy baby, and is now a good student. I love him dearly and he’s been a real blessing. For those who worry that girls are more “trouble” for all the social misogyny in our culture, believe me, there are plenty of negative things that have happened to my boy for being a boy so far — racism directed at him, being pushed out of the homosocial in-group for being non-normative about girls, violence, and sports, for example, or hell, the bullshit his father and I put him through with our stupid monthly custodial battles — things I anticipated poorly that he and I nonetheless must learn to manage as he grows up. He’s thoughtful and smart and a little bit geeky, and he suffered socially for this until he found other D&D nerds like himself. Yes, there is a lot more directed at girls and their parents, but don’t labor under the belief that raising a boy is a piece of cake, just because.

    And while I’m a feminist with a hard-ass, pragmatic view on gendered relationships, I’m actually okay with a lot of little girl culture, and think that when it’s monitored it’s pretty cool, not an inherently terrible thing. For example, I loved Barbies growing up and have no plans to inhibit Barbie or dolls in my house. (I can still sit on the floor with some kids and a pile of Barbies and do hair and clothes for hours.) I personally find these less offensive than pushing pink kitchens and purple vacuum toys on little girls, but also know that modeling and mimicry are important to kids’ development… which is why my son had his own doll and stroller as a little guy. Or, say, fairy tales. The German originals are like graphic horror stories, and kind of awesome for that very reason. When you get into the older versions of these, the illustrations are wonderful, dark, and creepy, and the little girls I know eat them up.

    Little boy culture is all trucks and trains and boys figuring out how to be heroes, and I’m okay with much of it that is thoughtful and age-appropriate, but little girl culture is vastly more appealing to me because I know so much more about it and have a ton to share. It won’t be a free-for-all of pink and glitter, but pink and glitter and lip gloss and all that other shit has its place, and that’s okay.

14. Lance: I’m hard-pressed to believe that roughly a third of the population has on preference whatsoever. Really? Not even a little?

    Can’t speak for anyone else, but I have no preference whatsoever. Personally, I can’t really fathom having a preference – there are so many unique combinations of characteristics that people can have above and beyond what sex they are assigned, and so many unpredictable and uncontrollable ways in which life and its experiences manifest, that I don’t get the feeling that throwing my lot in with one gender classification or another is going to make a substantial difference in what kind of child someone is.

    Babies is babies and I love babies (except when I hate them).

15. I’m hard-pressed to believe that roughly a third of the population has on preference whatsoever. Really? Not even a little?

    I don’t have a preference, really, beyond the child being healthy. Sometimes I think, “It’d be cool to have a daughter so I can raise a smart, conscientious, feminist daughter.” And then I stop and think, “Well, that works for boys too, so I suppose it doesn’t matter either way.”

16. I should say, I get that there are definitely some social context differences due to gender, I just think that the shit stinks pretty equally on both sides in terms of what kind of gendered crap you have to put up with. Again, completely personal.

17. Also, I think one of the NYT commenters is right that they sort of buried the lede–American men have a strong preference for boys, but American women have a slight preference for girls (possibly even a statistically insignificant preference, looking at the numbers).

18. I’d prefer a girl. If I don’t get male privilege, nobody that comes out of me does either. (Few boys run on either side of the family anyway.) I also am not terribly into man stuff.

    Though yeah, I do think boy babies would be better off. Sad but true.

19. Natalia:
    Especially because I’ve always had such a strong bond with my father – and I can’t imagine how tough it would be, to have your dad disapppointed because you’re… you.

    It’s not too bad. It gets better when your parents have more children and eventually get a real son.

20. Nimue: It’s not too bad. It gets better when your parents have more children and eventually get a real son.

    Sadface, for real. That’s painful. For me, as the last of a string of girls, I knew my dad was disappointed that he never had a boy. After ignoring my sisters as my mother’s projects, he occasionally interjected to enroll and monitor me in a lot of sports. If it weren’t for sports we wouldn’t have had a relationship at all. Silver lining? (Jury is out.)

21. I’m 34 weeks pregnant right now. I wanted a girl. I grew up with my mom and two sisters (and my dad for a while, but then my parents got divorced). I felt like I didn’t know anything about little boys, and would be clueless and incompetent.

    My boyfriend, however, was 100% sure it was a boy as soon as I got pregnant, and always referred to the baby as “he.” It was really annoying…especially when an ultrasound confirmed he was right!

    Now I’m just really excited about having a baby, I don’t feel disappointed at all. I just want to meet him!

22. Funny, my Dad really, really wanted a girl when my Mom was pregnant with me. His dad, my Grandpa, really wanted a granddaughter too. I know this is unusual though. However, what is interesting is that they expected more of my brother- he was the male, the one to carry on the family name- whereas I was the one to have fun with and to have a more personal relationship with. Gender roles constrained their relationship with my brother, as he needed to be the good student so he could go to a good college and get married and support his family, but I was not expected to have to do that. They supported my education of course, but they didn’t think it was as critical as that of my brother. When I dropped out of college for a few years, it was OK. When my brother did it, it was the end of the world. When I went back to college and did well, it made everyone happy for me on a personal level. But when my brother did it, the attitude was ‘it is about time.’ I feel a bit sorry for my brother because of this.

23. Out of all my friends I’m the only one who might want to raise some munchkins (I’m not sold on the incubating thing at all), so I don’t have anyone to poll! I’m on the fence. I’d like to raise some badass non-conforming feminist daughters, but some badass non-conforming feminist sons would be just as satisfying. (Is it horrible to admit that I will feel like I have completely as a parent if my hypothetical children end up buying into patriarchal gender roles? Because I totally would.)

24. …that should read “completely failed as a parent”–apparently I can’t type today.

25. I always find it depressing when I hear a group of moms talk about how girls are “more drama.” It really depends on each individual kid. In my family, my brother was the dramatic one — constantly getting into trouble, fights, tantrums, etc. My nephew is just as dramatic, and had meltdowns until he was 12.
    My best friend has two boys, and it’s not uncommon for the youngest to be in floods of tears for half an hour because he has to put socks on. He’s four. Four-year-olds of BOTH genders are all about the drama!
    It’s a great reminder of how much we’ve absorbed the patriarchy’s bullshit when women treat girls like a nuisance and boys like treasures. Must we be so self-hating?

26. Haven’t we all known those families that have 3 or 4 daughters, because they just had to have a boy, a real child? And of course conservatives feel more this way. They’re misogynists.

    I wanted a daughter because I grew up with a bunch of brothers. So it was good I found out early I was having a son, so I could get over my shit.

    Eventually I suppose the technology to sex select embryos will be widely available and we’ll have a 70% male world. Lovely.

27. JetGirl:
    I always find it depressing when I hear a group of moms talk about how girls are “more drama.” It really depends on each individual kid. In my family, my brother was the dramatic one — constantly getting into trouble, fights, tantrums, etc. My nephew is just as dramatic, and had meltdowns until he was 12.
    My best friend has two boys, and it’s not uncommon for the youngest to be in floods of tears for half an hour because he has to put socks on. He’s four. Four-year-olds of BOTH genders are all about the drama!
    It’s a great reminder of how much we’ve absorbed the patriarchy’s bullshit when women treat girls like a nuisance and boys like treasures. Must we be so self-hating?

    YES! When I got pregnant we elected to find out what the sex of the fetus was. We found out I was carrying a boy, and so we told a few people. And I immediately stopped telling people because I got SO SICK of hearing how proud my husband much be, how lucky I was because girls are “evil,” “dramatic,” bratty,” and any number of other things. It filled me with rage, because I felt like I was being slapped every.single.time. Here I was, A WOMAN, being told that women are bad. What the hell? Even now, when people ask about the sex of my child, I brace myself for whatever devaluing comments I expect to come.

    And my husband? He got clapped on the back, and told how lucky he was that he wouldn’t have to “deal with” two women in the house, and boyfriends (Hi, heteronormativity).

    So studies like this piss me off. They make me so very sad that we live in a culture that values boys over girls. Patriarchy for the win.

28. Did you read this? http://on.wsj.com/jZgOht

    Not sure how solid the science is in that article, but it scared the crap out of me. I am solidly pro-choice, but I have to admit, I have a problem with this and other types of eugenics (downs, autism, etc.)

    I think any mother has the right to choose whether or not to stay pregnant. I think there are very few circumstances where I would consider it OK to use abortion to pick one kind of baby over another.

29. America sure isn’t alone with this preference. In China, India, southern and eastern Europe, the Middle East, there are millions who view a son as a blessing and a daughter as a curse. Not only will a daughter cost a dowry, but there’s the potential she could shame the family with shameful sexual behavior (defined as God knows what).

    I saw this firsthand with some cousins. Their mother, my aunt by marriage, came from Greece (she was there for the war–what hell that must have been), and she totally bought into that whole mentality. She worshipped her son while treating her daughter as a nuisance.

    Well, she didn’t do either of them any favors. The daughter went completely out of control as a teenager–drinking, staying out all night, screaming at and cursing her mother (and everyone else). The son grew up very spoiled and manipulative, especially when it came to women. He specialized in breaking off his relationships in the cruelest manner possible. (The good news is they both straightened out somewhat as adults.)

    Rule of thumb, for me: The more a society buys into that yay-son-ugh-daughter mentality, the more primitive it is.

30. This is not surprising! Who wouldn’t want their child to enjoy the benefits of male privilege?

31. I always find it depressing when I hear a group of moms talk about how girls are “more drama.”

    I always wonder if this is partly a self-fulfilling prophecy. I’ve found that lots of kids live up to the expectations you set for them and if you’re always looking for your daughter to be “dramatic”…

32. Tony: This is not surprising! Who wouldn’t want their child to enjoy the benefits of male privilege?

    I wouldn’t.

    I wanted girls because boys are harder to raise. Full stop. I don’t understand the concept of “girls are harder because drama!!!” Girls are only hard at *all* during the time period when they are teens.

    Boys are more likely to break your stuff. They are more likely to get into trouble at school. They will probably be more rambunctious. Odds are, you will have a harder time getting them to clean their room. The likelihood is that boys will help you less with your chores than girls will. When they are teens, they are more likely to get into trouble with the law. Every teen boy I have ever known, and every adult man who felt safe in talking to me about his teen years, stole road signs. I’ve only known one or two girls or women who did. Boys are more likely to have learning disorders. They are more likely to die young. If you’re black, you have to be seriously afraid of your boy being killed before he’s 25, but even white boys die young more than white girls do.

    Your teen girl may rebel against you because she wants to be more social than you want her to be. Her grades may drop because she feels she needs to suppress her intelligence to get acceptance and approval. She may dress in ways that you feel are inappropriate. But if your teen boy is raping people, you’re never going to know about it. Your teen boy won’t tell you what’s going on in his life, and he may appear less openly rebellious because boys aren’t policed for their appearance the way girls are and because boys who got good grades all along generally don’t start getting bad grades for social reasons (they might because they hate their teachers, but then parents have someone else to blame.) But boys engage in much more outright bad behavior, from stealing to murder, than girls do, statistically.

    When they’re adults, girls will likely be closer to you, if you’re a mom, than your boys were. Girls will also remain close to you if you were a good dad, although if you were an asshole dad, odds are kids of any sex will reject you as soon as they leave the house. The fact that they are more likely to keep custody decreases the odds that you can lose your grandchildren to a bad divorce. They remain less likely to die by violence and also by disease during your lifetime, because women live longer than men and most of the diseases that kill women start killing them at older ages than the diseases that kill men.

    When you’re old, if you have multiple children and any of them are going to take care of you, it’s going to be your girls. Statistically, the major way men contribute to the care of elderly parents is providing wives to do the work, but if I had the choice of being cared for by my own girls who I raised, versus a strange woman who my son married and who’s going to prioritize her own mother’s needs over mine, I’m going to go with my girls… because being cared for by my boys apparently isn’t an option, not in our society.

    Any American woman who prefers boys because they’re “easier” is either a complete dumbass who lets the patriarchy think for her, or just hasn’t thought things through. In almost every respect, girls are easier for American women to raise than boys are. Yes, life will likely be hard for a girl, but it’s not like life is a bed of roses for men either, and in particular, most aspects of male privilege don’t kick in until a boy is a man, and the ones that start earlier actually make the parents’ lives harder. And a lot of the problems that girls suffer in our society can be solved by *you*, their parent, by just not being a patriarchal asshat to them. Simply raising your girls to believe they are as good as boys, that they should feel happy and fulfilled in themselves before they worry about what other people think, that they deserve a good career that makes them happy and that they deserve to have a life partner who treats them with love and respect, and that having sex won’t make them disgusting worthless people, will solve a *lot* of the problems that American women suffer from — so many girls and women are in terrible straits or have miserable lives or are recovering from trauma in part because their parents treated them like shit or treated them unequally or destroyed their self-esteem. Women who have self-esteem aren’t immune to the violence patriarchy does to women’s psyches, but they have a lot more resistance to a lot of bullshit that society throws at women.

    It’s certainly within the realm of possibility for a mother to raise a boy who’s polite, kind and loving, who does his chores, treats you and other women with respect, gets good grades, and then cares for you when you’re old. But good luck with that. Society puts such enormous pressure on boys to learn to hate women, and the first woman they’re taught to hate is you.

    Sometimes I cry because my seven year old boy hugs me and says “I love you, Mommy”, and I know the odds that I can keep him willing to feel that emotion, and admit to it, and extend it to the women he loves in his teen and adult life, are so badly stacked against me. I’ve never known a woman who rejected her mother without the mother actually being an asshat, but men are taught that they are *supposed* to reject their mothers, that loving their mother too much makes them weak in the eyes of other men, and the only important thing is what men think of them because no one thinks women are important. I work my ass off to teach my sons that women are as valuable as men, that it’s okay to admit to their emotions, that treating women as objects is wrong… and I think, I hope, I pray it might be working, because my oldest liked Starbuck the best in new Battlestar Galactica because she was the best pilot and he rants about the absence of female Legos and posts on gaming boards that asking whether women or men are better fighters is a stupid question because it depends on the fighter in particular, and my younger son still feels secure in bringing a pink plushie Peep to school even in first grade, because I told him that people who say he’s not allowed to love a toy just because she’s pink and he’s a boy are mean and they’re being unfair because boys should be able to play with the same toys as girls, and he arbitrarily decides that about half his stuffed animals are female, including his favorite, a totally unfeminine looking pillbug named Funky. But god, who the hell is spreading this idea that boys are easier than girls? Boys are so, so hard, because you have to fight uphill against society’s desire to turn them against you.

    I love my sons. I wouldn’t want them to be different people than they are, and having had them, I don’t want to imagine a world where I don’t have them. But I wanted my baby boy to be a girl before I knew what he was going to be, and I was thrilled to find out that my baby girl would be a girl, because boys are hard. And now, as the mother of 4, a 15 year old boy and a 13 year old girl and a 7 year old boy and a 5 year old girl, I can say that 80% of the problems I’ve had with raising my kids so far come from the two boys. The 13 year old girl is just entering her drama llama stage, so I’m sure those proportions will change, but seriously, she would have to work really really hard to be half as much trouble to me as her older brother has been so far.

33. In 1976, when my daughter was born, my mother-in-law told me I had to try for a boy in a year. Seriously! By the way, I was also teenage mother back then. I’ve long since divorced the teenage boy I “had” to marry. I’ve had no other biological children, but continue to cherish the wonderful step-sons and step-daughter I acquired by marriage along with my daughter.

34. On top of not really having a preference, I also know that sex selecting doesn’t actually guarantee me a boy/girl child anyway, since, you know, trans* kids exist and all.

35. We did not answer the boy/girl question either for ourselves or for anyone else during my pregnancy. Part of the reason I refused to find out is that I find the kinds of expectations people foist on you in response to “Oh, we’re having a…” painful. While I was pregnant, we referred to the kiddo as Schrödinger (as in Schrödinger’s cat) because we weren’t going to know the gender until the box was opened. (Yes, we are that geeky and that fond of terrible puns.)

    I don’t think either of us cared, and as it turns out, our daughter is an awesome child who is smart, strong, clever, and charming, although I definitely have known people who cared A LOT. A family friend of ours wasn’t really accepted by her husband’s extended family until their first child was a son. And then there was an heir and they all apparently felt better…

    On an unrelated note, has anyone else who has decided not to answer the boy/girl question during pregnancy had random people get mad at you over it? I was blown away by the number of people who were personally aggrieved over lack of advance notice on the kiddo’s gender.

36. Alara, normally I agree with you, but that whole comment at 34 is making me so, so angry.

    I do not believe for one lousy second that as a parent, you can fix things for daughters “by just not being a patriarchal asshat to them”, but you cannot do the same thing for sons because society is teaching them to hate you. There are all kinds of cultural pressures which are incredibly toxic (and how they’re toxic is complex and intersectional), but the idea that you can fix a bunch of them for girls but not boys is staggering to me.

    But if your teen boy is raping people, you’re never going to know about it.

    I don’t even know how to respond to this.

37. I relate poorly enough to most other men that I’m glad I have a daughter. I’m a little concerned by the gender-normative stuff that’s being pushed on her by the rest of the family and to a lesser extent by her ABA service providers (more the previous one), though.

38. Good to know that, “statistically speaking”, I’ve stolen roadsigns and will probably die in a blaze of roadwarrior-esque gunfire.

    Seriously, this thread is too much.

39. Plenty of babies are born not healthy who are still cherished and loved by their parents.

    Nothing to do with whether or not I would cherish or love the kid–it has to do with the fact that I definitely would. I have friends whose child was in serious life-and-death danger for over a year after birth. It was heart-rending for them–to say nothing of the suffering of the kiddo. Their child is wonderful, and I’m so grateful she’s here, but if they could have had her without the health issues? Even better. And, honestly, if I could make somehow make it that my kid wouldn’t have even the usually manageable chronic conditions that I have, I would do that, too, because I don’t want someone I love to suffer.

    As far as I’m concerned, it’s about pain, not disability. I had a friend who gave birth to a lovely, happy, healthy baby girl who had only one hand. No real reason, shit just happens sometimes. That’s not what I mean when I say “healthy”–my friend’s baby never suffered because of it, and her mom never suffered the consuming worry and fear that my other friends did.

40. EG: Nothing to do with whether or not I would cherish or love the kid–it has to do with the fact that I definitely would.I have friends whose child was in serious life-and-death danger for over a year after birth.It was heart-rending for them–to say nothing of the suffering of the kiddo.Their child is wonderful, and I’m so grateful she’s here, but if they could have had her without the health issues?Even better.And, honestly, if I could make somehow make it that my kid wouldn’t have even the usually manageable chronic conditions that I have, I would do that, too, because I don’t want someone I love to suffer.

    As far as I’m concerned, it’s about pain, not disability.I had a friend who gave birth to a lovely, happy, healthy baby girl who had only one hand.No real reason, shit just happens sometimes.That’s not what I mean when I say “healthy”–my friend’s baby never suffered because of it, and her mom never suffered the consuming worry and fear that my other friends did.

    Exactly this. My daughter wasn’t breathing at birth, and this is the sort of thing a parent means when they say they simply want a child to be healthy. It is scary as fuck when you think your newborn might die, or is suffering a great deal of traumatic pain in their first hours on the outside.

    It’s been nearly thirteen years since she was born, and it still wrenches my heart, remembering her in the NICU intubated and not in my arms. Would I have been able to adjust if it was a chronic condition? Yes. But she suffered a serious health crisis at birth that I really, really didn’t want her to have, and I don’t think it is the same as ableism.

41. So I had a boy and a girl, less than 2 years apart. I didn’t care about the first (didn’t even think about it) but with the second I was reluctant to go with the girl thing because of the possibility of sexual abuse (which happened anyway from an unexpected quarter).

    They were as hard as each other to raise but in completely different ways that had a lot more to do with their personalities than their genders. He is not inclined to rape people (identifies as a pacifist, thank you). She is not out getting pregnant, but is a passionate and driven student.

    One day, I have a dream, that the character of my children will not be decided by their gender, but by their actions. One day, all girl children will be as warmly welcomed into their families as boy children.

42. This.

    shfree: Exactly this.My daughter wasn’t breathing at birth, and this is the sort of thing a parent means when they say they simply want a child to be healthy.It is scary as fuck when you think your newborn might die, or is suffering a great deal of traumatic pain in their first hours on the outside.

    It’s been nearly thirteen years since she was born, and it still wrenches my heart, remembering her in the NICU intubated and not in my arms.Would I have been able to adjust if it was a chronic condition?Yes.But she suffered a serious health crisis at birth that I really, really didn’t want her to have, and I don’t think it is the same as ableism.

43. Funnily enough, when I tell people I’m having a boy, they usually go – “Poor you! Girls are so much better! Good luck! You’ll need it! You’ll be wishing you had a girl!” etc. And this is in Russia, which is more outwardly patriarchal than the States, I would argue.

    It’s not too bad. It gets better when your parents have more children and eventually get a real son.

    My brother was born after me – but my dad and I still have a strong bond. My brother is much closer to my mother. And hey, my father is a big, burly Russian-Ukrainian ex-army officer. We watch a lot of football together, he and I. He was the one to teach me to shoot a gun – he hasn’t done that with my bro. I guess it just goes to show.

44. I wanted a daughter. The only time I questioned that was late in the pregnancy when I was all “pregnancy sucks;maybe I should want a boy so my child never has to go through this.”. It was seriously the only time in my life I felt like being a girl sucked. I think our preferences have a lot to do with our own relationship and feelings about our own gender.

    When I was pregnant we did not find out the sex. And there were people who were mad about us choosing not to know. My MIL, who had 2 sons drove me a little crazy with saying how she “wouldn’t know what to do with a girl” but I just kept responding ” the same things you’d do with a boy.”. And of course she loves our daughter. I think it had more to do with her self-image as a tomboy than anything.

45. It’s certainly within the realm of possibility for a mother to raise a boy who’s polite, kind and loving, who does his chores, treats you and other women with respect, gets good grades, and then cares for you when you’re old. But good luck with that. Society puts such enormous pressure on boys to learn to hate women, and the first woman they’re taught to hate is you.

    I, um, WHAT?? Alara, the idea that your son is going to grow up to hate you and become a rapist is about the grimmest perspective on parenting I have EVER heard.

46. I don’t want kids, but if I did, I’d want a girl for the exact reasons Alara lists.

47. My husband, not to mention my brother, grandfather, and father, are all decent and good human beings who love their mothers and respect women. My stepfather and father both took care of their mother’s in their old age. As far as the feminist thing–yeah, they screw it up sometimes. Everyone who has privilege DOES. But I think individual variation here outweighs the idea that “all men are raised to hate women,” and that somehow it is harder to raise a decent man than a confident woman.

    FashionablyEvil: I, um, WHAT??Alara, the idea that your son is going to grow up to hate you and become a rapist is about the grimmest perspective on parenting I have EVER heard.

48. I will say this in support of Alara’s post: those detracting her have likely not ever had the experience of a son or brother who is suddenly big, and who despite being raised and loved and churched etc., decides that because he is a foot taller than his mother she has no authority over him, and begins by ignoring her, to disrespecting her to being openly hostile and physically threatening. My best guess is that this devolution stemmed from my brothers athletic pursuits, for which most of his life our mother was his biggest fan. It probably became uncool at about the time that girls started coming to watch, girls not their sisters… So yes Alara is right that all these things are possible, so long as we attribute some amount of human development to nature, not nuture alone, or perhaps it is the nature of society which counters a parents nurturing. But at some point a child is their own person and begins to make their own decisions, which might flout the choices they were raised to prefer, and can be as early as preschool aged boy deciding that girls are yucky, Mom is a girl ergo Mom is yucky!

49. Just to comment on the boy-possibly-becoming-a-rapist thing – it’s something I actually considered when pondering this question myself. Yeah, the chances are pretty small, right? What’s the figure we throw around? 1 in 31? So it happens. I honestly think it’s the only thing my kid could do that would make me stop loving them.

    That said, I’m probs never gonna make babies, so I have no comment on boys more likely to do this or that. Other than rape, of course, because yeah. The idea is terrifying to me.

50. And I’ll say another thing in support of Alara. We live in a misogynist society. What would make anybody so sure that they can counteract that culture through the sheer power of their own love and feminism? There are plenty of loving, feminist men out there, it’s true, but if they were not in a significant minority, we wouldn’t have the problems we do. Parents are not all-powerful. The effect of peer groups, of larger cultural forces shape boys and young men too. If our little girls start worrying about dieting and being fat when they’re in kindergarten, why would we think that our little boys are going to learn our lessons of respect for women rather than the larger culture’s lessons?

    There are all too many rapists out there, and they have mothers too. It is one of my recurrent fears about having a boy, when I have kids.

51. PrettyAmiable: I honestly think it’s the only thing my kid could do that would make me stop loving them.

    With a handful of exceptions: like, pulled an Idi Amin or a Hitler or whatever.

52. Lance: I’m hard-pressed to believe that roughly a third of the population has on preference whatsoever. Really? Not even a little?

    Some of those people may have preferred not to have a child at all. Considering that wasn’t an option jsut not giving an opinion either way was suitable.

53. Really, rape is the bright line? Over murder or pedophilia? (I’m being a bit toungue in cheek here, obv)

    In any event, I think it’s probably normal to worry that your child, regardless of gender, will grow up to be a rapist, serial killer, drug dealer, etc. News flash: women can be awful people too.

    @ Irene. I’ve had that experience. And he realized how much of a douche he was being in fairly short order.

    PrettyAmiable:
    Just to comment on the boy-possibly-becoming-a-rapist thing – it’s something I actually considered when pondering this question myself. Yeah, the chances are pretty small, right? What’s the figure we throw around? 1 in 31? So it happens. I honestly think it’s the only thing my kid could do that would make me stop loving them.

    That said, I’m probs never gonna make babies, so I have no comment on boys more likely to do this or that. Other than rape, of course, because yeah. The idea is terrifying to me.

54. I wanted two boys and a girl. I have two boys (here’s hoping that in 3 years we are able to have a girl if not we’ll adopt!). If I could only HAVE on child (as in give birth) I would want to have a boy. My husband is his father’s firstborn, his father is HIS father’s firstborn and this goes back about 3 or four generations that all of them had fristborn sons. I thought that was a pretty cool legacy of luck ( if it were the moms who all had firstborn daughters I would think the same thing, but my father was my grandparent’s firstborn ). Every parent has the right to their preference but it doesn’t mean that they will get it or even if they do it will turn out the way they thought it would. I want a “prissy” little girl liek me but chances are my daughter with her brothers will be just as rambunctious as her siblings. I’d love her all the same.

55. Yes, women can be awful people. But in my understanding, the vast majority of rapists and serial killers are men. Especially with regard to rapists, isn’t that what we point out to MRA trolls who pop up on rape threads with a “what about teh menz” whine? When we talk about a rape culture, we’re talking about a culture that promotes the victimization of women by men. So it’s not a fear I’m willing to dismiss so easily.

56. Alara Rogers: I wouldn’t.I wanted girls because boys are harder to raise. Full stop. I don’t understand the concept of “girls are harder because drama!!!” Girls are only hard at *all* during the time period when they are teens.But god, who the hell is spreading this idea that boys are easier than girls? Boys are so, so hard, because you have to fight uphill against society’s desire to turn them against you.I love my sons. I wouldn’t want them to be different people than they are, and having had them, I don’t want to imagine a world where I don’t have them. But I wanted my baby boy to be a girl before I knew what he was going to be, and I was thrilled to find out that my baby girl would be a girl, because boys are hard. And now, as the mother of 4, a 15 year old boy and a 13 year old girl and a 7 year old boy and a 5 year old girl, I can say that 80% of the problems I’ve had with raising my kids so far come from the two boys. The 13 year old girl is just entering her drama llama stage, so I’m sure those proportions will change, but seriously, she would have to work really really hard to be half as much trouble to me as her older brother has been so far.

    Someone I am very close to has a son and a daughter. One of her children grew up to pimp other teens, sold drugs, attempt to kill three people and tried to burn her house down. Her daughter did those things. Her son is the one who takes care of her, her adores her, her spoils her and has never been any trouble since he left his terrible twos. The worst she ever had out of her AP honors athletic son was that he played video games and was habitually late. Her daughter has said publicly and relentlessly that she hates her and “lovingly” calls her, “my b*tch.” This change came when her darling daughter who she showed blatant favortism to, was entering her teens.

    I have two sons and they are both young little “angelic” hellions. Who annoy me to no end and fight each other but will come running if mommy’s sad or if I am cleaning something up “I help” is the rallying cry of my rambunctious little boys. They are not perfect they are a LOT of trouble, in fact the youngest just spilled coffee on sky blue carpet (intentionally turned the coffee thermos upside down and laughing at the coffee hitting the floor- so sinister).

    Likewise I know the “coveted” sons who turned out to hate their fathers and ZOMG be gay. Or the “prodigal” son who grew up in wealthand prosperity but choose a life of crime and hurting others. It could go either way and you can’t control who your children are at their core, you can only provide a good example, love, money and guidance and hope for the best. Having a girl doesn’t mean you wont have a murdering rapist who hates your guts or women in general.

57. EG, I don’t see this as a “What about the menz” issue. Rather, it’s the issue of using stereotypes and probabilities about what boys and girls are/are not like, rather than considering people as individuals.

58. I’m not sure I get the concern about having sons that turn into rapists. For one thing, no one “turns into” a rapist. With the exception of actual, born-that-way (and not in the good Lady Gaga way) psychopaths, rapists are a product of society. But for the first chunk of a boys life, parents really help control/filter society for their kids. And there are SO MANY things that parents can do to help their kids learn that kind of stuff. There are programs, there are schools, there are just a wealth of resources. Sure, it’s an uphill battle, but it’s by no means unwinnable.

    And also there is something so delightful about little boys, about their incredible physicality. (with the disclaimer that girls can have this too and that not all boys do, etc).

59. What would make anybody so sure that they can counteract that culture through the sheer power of their own love and feminism?

    I don’t see why you’d have confidence that it’d work for girls and not boys, which is my read on Alara’s post.

60. I do not believe for one lousy second that as a parent, you can fix things for daughters “by just not being a patriarchal asshat to them”, but you cannot do the same thing for sons because society is teaching them to hate you. There are all kinds of cultural pressures which are incredibly toxic (and how they’re toxic is complex and intersectional), but the idea that you can fix a bunch of them for girls but not boys is staggering to me.

    But if your teen boy is raping people, you’re never going to know about it.

    I don’t even know how to respond to this.

    Jesus, yes, thank you. And what of self-fulfilling prophecies, people?

61. and this is wrong why? It had to go one way or the other..very rare polls come out 50/50..had it been reversed..I’m sure MRA websites would be upset..

62. Yeah, my biggest fear about having children would be that they end up happy and well adjusted. Obviously “not raping people” is part of that, but I believe we’re setting our bar a tad too low, and perhaps, we have a view of men that is a tad too cynical if we believe that is the #1 concern that we should have about our male children.

    I think a kid of any gender is something to be welcomed into the family wholeheartedly.

63. Oh, I see gender essentialism is the new black this summer, hm?

64. I don’t see why you’d have confidence that it’d work for girls and not boys, which is my read on Alara’s post.

    I can’t speak for Alara, but in my case, it’s because I was a girl, all my childhood friends were girls, I remember it well, I am a woman, and most of my adults friends are women. I’m intimately familiar with girls’ and women’s positions in our society, the likely challenges, and strategies for counteracting them. I’m assuming statistically and because I want to that I’m the one who will end up doing most of the childcare. I am close to a lot of feminist women who used to be girls, and I have an idea of what it takes to get there. I’m not that close to that many feminist men, so I have only the haziest knowledge of how that works.

65. Women don’t make up the majority of the serial killer situation, and they rarely turn to be rapists – but they *can* grow to hate their mothers and do awful things to them. An elderly family friend became homeless after her darling daughter sold her house right from underneath her. My grandmother’s disabled neighbour was routinely beaten and abused by her equally darling daughter and the daughter’s lovely, drug-dealing husband.

    By contrast, my brother is big, athletic, popular with the ladies, plays guitar, parties a lot, and generally conforms to a lot of the stereotypes you encounter about young, good-looking guys like him – and he loves our mother and has a great relationship with her. In fact, his relationship with her is much more stable than *my* relationship with her.

    All of this makes me think that nobody is “easier” really – you’re just dealt what you’re dealt.

66. *the serial killer population, not situation. Though “the serial killer situation” could probably make for an interesting prime-time show.

67. Yes, I’ve known good sons and awful daughters too, some of them in my own family, but our anecdotes don’t contradict the statistical trends that show that women do the majority of the carework in our society, be it for children or for elders. That is my understanding of what Alara was referring to.

68. I’m not that close to that many feminist men, so I have only the haziest knowledge of how that works.

    I think the basics are the same for all kids: treat other people kindly and with respect (including yourself) and do the best you can with what you have. If you’re privileged, try to use your privilege for good. Watch out for people trying to sell you stuff. Believe that there is such a thing as good enough.

    I don’t know that I would know specifically about how to teach a son to navigate over the top displays of machismo and homosociality (for example), but I do know that I can teach a kid the importance of not being a jackass or hurting others just because you can.

69. I believe you mean “North Americans prefer boys to girls,” Jill. Unpack that invisible knapsack! Own Your Privilege(TM)!

70. It’s not that surprising. Men are statistically more likely to end up doing great things in life. Plus, boys allow you to have the chance of passing on your family name.

71. chava: Really, rape is the bright line? Over murder or pedophilia? (I’m being a bit toungue in cheek here, obv)

    For me, it is, because I’ve been assaulted. I’d be able to give a kid the benefit of the doubt if the little shit told me they had no choice but to kill someone in self-defense or were mentally impaired such that they believed they had to. If I found out my kid raped someone, I would hang up the phone and never speak to them again, regardless of what impairments may have been contributing factors because of my personal history. (This goes for pedophilia too – which, if acted on sexually, is rape). If the little shit murdered someone for funsies, they’d at least get the sentence out on why before I cut them out of my life. Like I said, though, I’m not planning on having children. It’s all just hypothetical for me.

    David: and perhaps, we have a view of men that is a tad too cynical if we believe that is the #1 concern that we should have about our male children.

    Hey, why don’t you relive your life as a woman who’s been raped before calling anyone cynical, mmk? Also, love the strawman as absolutely no one has said that’s their top concern, or that it should be anyone else’s top concern.

    vanessa: Sure, it’s an uphill battle, but it’s by no means unwinnable.

    This entire comment makes me feel like a person who has mothered/fathered a rapist has somehow failed in their job. Like, they didn’t “win the battle” for lack of personal effort. I don’t really think that’s what you meant to get across, but wanted to let you know I read it that way.

72. Alara kinda said a lot of things in her post. And about raping people in particular – um, lots of parents do find out if their son turns rapist. Not most, but using the word “never” is an exaggeration, imho. Likewise, I don’t know what the statistics are on girls who grow up to have great relationships with their mothers – are they out there?

    Every teen boy I have ever known, and every adult man who felt safe in talking to me about his teen years, stole road signs.

    About those anecdotes…

    … I mean, I stole a road sign once. I did it with another chick.

73. It’s depressingly reactionary when a post on a feminist blog on how people prefer their hypotethically only child to be a boy spurs so many comments from people only wanting girls because boys are difficult and will very possibly grow up to be rapist or at least hate you. It is also depressing when the solution offered to the problem of boys struggling in schools, dying younger than girls, more likely to loose custody in divorce is to simply have girls instead – problem solved.

    The subject of the post is statistics. The assertion that there is always another study which contradict one particular study doesn’t fail here either. People adopting in the US prefers girls at 70-90% vs. 30-10%, people trying to select the gender of their coming child are trying more often for girls: Microsort gender separation: 80% vs. 20%, Ericsson Method for gender selection: 66.7% vs. 33.3%, The Gen select kit: 53% vs 47%. (source: http://www.in-gender.com/XYU/Gender-Preference/ )

    Which only shows that although there is a stronger preference for a boy it’s the people wanting girls wants girls stronger and and are the ones more likely to actively make sure they get one.

74. Nobody says it’s their top concern yet that seems to be what we’re hung up on. There’s probably something in here to be said about how these expectations betray much about society’s depressingly low standards and expectations of men. Here we aren’t concerned about the hypothetical boy’s own welfare, we are instead just concerned that he doesn’t hurt other people. Isn’t that a little fucked up?

75. Natalia:
    Alara kinda said a lot of things in her post. And about raping people in particular – um, lots of parents do find out if their son turns rapist. Not most, but using the word “never” is an exaggeration, imho. Likewise, I don’t know what the statistics are on girls who grow up to have great relationships with their mothers – are they out there?

    About those anecdotes…

    … I mean, I stole a road sign once. I did it with another chick.

    I never stole a road sign but I was a horrible teenager. Just, horrible. I still feel guilty about it.

    Alara’s comment made me really angry. Setting aside all the “your child will hate you and turn out to be a murdering rapist” stuff, what is so fundamentally terrible about a rambunctious child? (And, by the way, children of both sexes can and should be rambunctious from to time.) Perhaps chores and possessions and clean rooms are a little too important if it makes a person say such crap. I don’t expect or want my child to take care of me when I’m old. Preferring a girl so she’ll do that is kind of sexist, in my opinion.

76. Tamen: It is also depressing when the solution offered to the problem of boys struggling in schools, dying younger than girls, more likely to loose custody in divorce is to simply have girls instead – problem solved.

    Who said this? Did anyone say, “Get an ultrasound, determine sex, abort accordingly, wipe out males and therefore the human race”? I hope that lifts your depression some, because it definitely didn’t happen.

77. @PrettyAmiable eh yea I could see where you’d get that reading. I DO think there are things that parents can do to “encourage” rape (I hope I’m putting this right…) like teaching a system of values that actively encourages rape culture. But I don’t for a second think that that means everyone raised in homes that actively encourage rape culture turns into a rapist. All I meant to say is that there are a lot of things that parents can do to help keep their kids from turning into rapists (or murderers, or whatever) and I have to believe that in the absence of actual psychopathy those things will work a great deal of the time.

    The question of when you stop loving your kid is an interesting one. I know kids (not even my own kids!) that I really cannot imagine NOT loving. I do not, however, know how I would react if they raped someone. Not well, obviously, but I’m not sure I feel like *for me* loving them is something I could just turn off.

78. what is so fundamentally terrible about a rambunctious child?

    Did anybody say “fundamentally terrible”? No. But if you’re an older parent, or a person who’s always been quiet yourself, or working two jobs, a rambunctious child is going to be more difficult for you to handle than one who likes to sit on the floor and read or play with dolls. What’s so wrong with knowing your own temperament and hoping to get a child that matches with it? It’s not like Alara is advocating abandoning male infants to die by the side of the road.

    I don’t expect or want my child to take care of me when I’m old.

    Yeah, well, my mother works in geriatrics, and my best friend’s grandmother had nobody to take care of her when she developed Alzheimer’s. I’ve seen exactly what can happen to you in the US when you get old if you don’t have a loved one advocating for you, especially if part of your aging involves, as it does for many people, a deterioration of your mental faculties. I definitely want any children I have to take care of me when I’m old, if/when I need their help. I’m just not self-sacrificing enough to want to run the risk of them not doing so.

    Anyway.

    evilfizz, I dunno. I think I’m just less optimistic than you are about those precepts–treating others with respect and kindness, etc. They’re pretty vague, and I’m someone who works well with specifics. I just think it’s far easier to teach people to recognize power dynamics in play when they’re on the subordinate end rather than the dominant end. For that reason, I think it’s probably easier to raise an anti-racist black child than an anti-racist white child; that said, my parents made a huge effort to do that with me, as well as to raise me with some degree of class consciousness. I suspect that it takes a bigger and different kind of effort to raise a feminist boy than it does a feminist girl, and I don’t relish the thought, is all. And yeah, those “over the top displays of machismo and homosociality” are specific situations that I would have no idea how to handle. Sure, I can say “don’t be an asshole, kid,” but if my son is seeing every day what happens to the effeminate boy who likes to wear pink in his school? He may well weigh my advice against what his daily grind is likely to be like if he takes it, and if I don’t have specific ways to address those concerns? He’s just going to dismiss what I have to say. Which, of course, any child might do anyway, but I feel more confident about my ability to address specificities with a girl.

79. Nothing wrong with wild little boys. You just have to run them, like puppies. And you don’t always, or even often, get the child you wish you had.

80. PrettyAmiable: Did anyone say, “Get an ultrasound, determine sex, abort accordingly, wipe out males and therefore the human race”? I hope that lifts your depression some, because it definitely didn’t happen.

    No, no-one said those words and neither did I claim anyone did. But several did say that they’d rather want girls for those reasons I quoted as well as the fear of a boy growing up to be a rapist. How could one read Alara’s comment #34 as anything else than an argument for having girls over boys for exactly the long list of reasons she provided? She loves her two boys now that she has them, but she expect them to fail to grow into decent human beings in a way that she doesn’t expect of her daughters. That was depressing to read.

    When people can and do select gender of their children – either by adoption or by some gender selection technologies they tend to a quite large degree select girls. If they make that choice for the same reasons Alara cited then, yes, they think the solution to the problem boys are having is to not have boys – or at the very least think: “Not my problem!”.

    Thank you for your concern about my well being though.

81. I have no desire to have children male or female and have felt this way consistently throughout my life. On the subject of gender preference, one of my friends who is just a young adult like myself is expecting a baby girl in October and before he knew told me wanted a girl because he felt men were too difficult to raise. Turns out his wish came true and i remember when I asked him he said “its a girl! Hell Yeah!” I smiled.

82. How could one read Alara’s comment #34 as anything else than an argument for having girls over boys for exactly the long list of reasons she provided?

    One could read it as I did, as a list of reasons she would prefer to have girls, which is just how I read the comment she was responding to, in which more than one poster expressed a preference for boys based on male privilege. One can have preferences without thinking it’s appropriate to act on them.

83. Yet, those who act on their preferences are more likely to choose girls. Why is that? Could it be because some of them have preferences which is based on the same reasons Alara listed – reasons which she stated as objective, not subjective reasons?

    And some of the reasons for prefering girls which have come up in this thread I find bordering on misandrist: “I didn’t want to be cleaning up those nasty little boy bits.”

84. Yet, those who act on their preferences are more likely to choose girls.

    Could you provide a citation for this? I’d be interested. The only stories I’ve heard have come out of places where sex-selective abortions heavily favor boys.

    Could it be because some of them have preferences which is based on the same reasons Alara listed – reasons which she stated as objective, not subjective reasons?

    Almost every reason stated by Alara is qualified with the phrases “odds are” or “more likely to.” You’re making a statement of fact about statistics and likelihoods yourself. Why is it wrong for her to do so, and to present those statements as facts, like you do?

85. EG: Did anybody say “fundamentally terrible”?No.But if you’re an older parent, or a person who’s always been quiet yourself, or working two jobs, a rambunctious child is going to be more difficult for you to handle than one who likes to sit on the floor and read or play with dolls.What’s so wrong with knowing your own temperament and hoping to get a child that matches with it? It’s not like Alara is advocating abandoning male infants to die by the side of the road.

    Gender essentialism much? What’s wrong with expecting a child to fit in with one’s unreasonable expectations? A hell of a lot. And can we please not play the feministe commenter game of “did anybody say exactly ?” the thing they actually said. ALARA actually did say that rambunctiousness was a bad thing.

86. When pregnant with my first baby I really didn’t care what sex I had – I just hoped that the baby would be healthy. As it turned out I had a girl.

    Babies number 2 and 3 also turned out to be girls.

    And by the time I was pregnant with baby number 4 and 5 I was starting to hope that they were also girls for several reasons – not only was it simpler (I had all girls stuff), but I also didn’t know how to change a boys diaper!. and then there was the little matter of worrying that a poor little boy would end up being bullied by his sisters….

    But the main reason was purely practical – I could hand clothes and toys “down the line” from one girl to the other….

    As it happened, I ended up having 5 girls and could not be happier. I do feel for my husband once they all reach puberty though – he is going to be in oestrogen hell!

87. What’s unreasonable in hoping for a non-rambunctious child? I actually don’t like it when my stuff gets broken, or a kid I love gets into trouble, or accidentally injures him/herself, or crashes the car. Alara is not saying to punish rambunctious children for their rambunctiousness or that they’re evil; she’s saying that it’s often a pain in the ass, and I find that hard to argue with. A kid who sits in the corner and reads all the time, as I did, is often easier to deal with.

    I’ve loved rambunctious and non-rambunctious kids, and they do require different things of you. What’s wrong with knowing you’re better suited to one than the other?

88. EG: Absolutely nothing

89. EG: I have provided a cite for that. If you read my comment at #73 you will find the statistics showing bias for chosing girls when it comes to adoption and sex selection in the US. I also included a link to a page displaying the different statistics (including the Gallup on this post mentions) and that page even provides links or references to the original sources of those different statistics, mostly governmental, but also an article from Slate.

    And I must point out that I didn’t say that it wasn’t OK for Alara to state those reasons as facts. Most of the statistics are probably true – men do have a lower life expectancy than women for instance (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy#Sex_differences). Others I’m not so sure about and she didn’t provide any sources for any.

    What I did was to point out that she presented all her reasons as objective truths, or objective likelihoods. Which together with the fact that she called any woman who thinks that boys are easier to rise for a complete dumbass or at best as someone who hasn’t thought this through. This reads to me as she’s saying that her preference is based on objective reasons and should be universal and anyone who think otherwise is either stupid or …well… slightly stupid. So when you said this in #81: “One could read it as I did, as a list of reasons she would prefer to have girls” (my emphasis) I disagreed and pointed out that all her reasons were stated obejctively and not subjectively to show why I disagreed.

90. What I’ve noticed from the people who say that girls are “more drama” or “more whiny” or “have worse attitudes” simply have less tolerance for bad behaviour when it happens to come from a female child. If their son throws a temper tantrum and screams his lungs out, well, “boys will be boys!”. If their daughter does the same thing, it’s completely intolerable and they can’t fathom how they got stuck with such a dramatic, disrespectful, spoiled little brat. I see this in my own family; My brother cries a few tears and all is forgotten. When I was little and I cried while my Mum was yelling at me, she’d get angrier and immediately tell me to buck up. Different reactions to the same behaviour.

    @Natalia: According to recent statistics, Russian women live a full 13 years longer than Russian men. With those odds, I’d be hoping for a girl too.

91. evil fizz:
    What would make anybody so sure that they can counteract that culture through the sheer power of their own love and feminism?

    I don’t see why you’d have confidence that it’d work for girls and not boys, which is my read on Alara’s post.

    Partially that would have to do with the dynamics of male privilege. Say the whole world is telling you you’re inherently superior to another class of people, but your family is attempting to disabuse you of those notions. Compare that to a scenario in which the whole world is telling you you’re inherently inferior to another class of people, while your family is attempting to disabuse you of THOSE notions. It seems to me that the latter scenario would have a greater chance of success than the former, simply because individuals would rather think of themselves as more worthy [than society tells them they are] than as less worthy [than society tells them they are]. To recognize one’s male privilege necessitates giving up an easy resource for thinking of oneself as having (more) value (than others, i.e. women). Not to say how well it will or wouldn’t work in any individual case, but in the aggregate, I can see how it might be easier to raise a feminist daughter than a feminist son.

92. Perhaps Alara means it is easier for her to raise feminist girls than feminist boys because she’s a woman and she can model behavior for girls in a way she can’t for boys. She can teach girls to be confident women by *being* a confident woman. She can model kindness for her boys but she can’t model being a kind man. Whether they will listen to her or follow her example depends partially on the men and boys in her children’s lives – if all they’re learning elsewhere that Alara shouldn’t be listened to because she’s their mom, her ability to model for them will be weakened. Essentially, homosocial parenting is easier than heterosocial parenting when there is a sharp social delineation between genders.

93. If someone showed up on this thread and said something like, “Well, personally, I don’t want a girl. I’m a high-energy person, I like rambunctious children – they’re fun! And girls are just too quiet and shy and don’t do nearly enough of the exciting stuff that the boys in our household get up to!” – We’d probably tell this person about the stereotypes and self-fulfilling prophecies involved. If you expect a girl to be quiet and obedient, for example – there’s a good chance she will turn out that way.

    Saying that “boys are more rambunctious, hence I wouldn’t want one” is pretty much the same thing, no?

    According to recent statistics, Russian women live a full 13 years longer than Russian men. With those odds, I’d be hoping for a girl too.

    Urban Russians tend to think that girls are better because boys are “less loving” (what happens elsewhere is a whole other story, surely worth of a dissertation). How the older generation is dying off doesn’t figure much into a couple’s desires for a girl – or none that I have noticed.

    I definitely want any children I have to take care of me when I’m old, if/when I need their help. I’m just not self-sacrificing enough to want to run the risk of them not doing so.

    But when you have a child – you run that risk either way. In fact, having a child, any child, is always a risk. There are no guarantees that they will turn out how you’d dreamed. Hell, there are no guarantees that they will have a decent relationship with you – especially when they’re older.

    Expecting a girl to take care of you later on simply because she is a girl also scares me a little – because, well, what if the person saying that is a shitty parent to begin with? One encounters plenty of nasty people who treat their girl-children as indentured servants – and certainly don’t expect the boy-children to do any of the heavy-lifting.

    In general, favouritism can have scary consequences for families, regardless of gender.

94. Every time I hear someone express a really strong desire to have a child of one gender over another, I’m torn between thinking “I hope that kid turns out to be trans just to spite you” and “I hope that kid doesn’t turn out to be trans; it’s hard enough as it is without your parents getting super-disappointed over you not being the gender they wanted”.

    Even without that particular outcome, it’s still an expression of a preference for a child that adheres to a particular gender role, and that doesn’t always work out. My football-loving grandpa hoped his boys would be good sportsmen – as it was, his sons took after my granny and turned out all quiet and bookish. He just had to deal with it.

95. Saying that “boys are more rambunctious, hence I wouldn’t want one” is pretty much the same thing, no?

    Except that’s a caricature of what’s been said. What’s been said is “boys are more likely to be rambunctious, and that is one of the reasons I would prefer to have a girl.” That’s a pretty far cry from “I don’t want a boy because he’ll be rambunctious.”

    Expecting a girl to take care of you later on simply because she is a girl also scares me a little

    But that’s not what’s happening. The odds are that if you are taken care of at all in your old age, it will be by a woman. So, what Alara is saying is, given those odds, she’d rather it be a daughter of hers than a wife of her son’s, unless, presumably, she had the misfortune of having a horrible person for a daughter. So would I, personally. And what I was saying is that
    if you’re in the US, saying that you wouldn’t want your kids–of any gender–to take care of you when you get old is, in my opinion and experience, foolhardy.

    Thanks for the redirect, Tamen. Now, when it comes to the adoption stats, I’d like to know what factors are being controlled for. The stat says that people adopting prefer girls–does that mean they’ve filled out a questionnaire saying so, or that more girls are actually being adopted? If more girls are being adopted, is that a numerical difference or a percentage difference? In other words, are more girls up for adoption to begin with, which would suggest that more girls are being given up, which would negate the preference supposedly being demonstrated? Is something else influencing these stats–are girls less likely to have behavioral problems, for instance?

    The sex selection stuff is very interesting. I wonder how effective those methods are.

96. Alara Rogers:

    but men are taught that they are *supposed* to reject their mothers, that loving their mother too much makes them weak in the eyes of other men, and the only important thing is what men think of them because no one thinks women are important.

    Really? Guess I must be from Mars then because from MY ANECDOTAL EXPERIENCE, as a man, insulting someone’s mother is a very good way to get a punch in the face and a beating. Insult the man himself, fine. Insult the man’s mother? You are asking for a beating.

    And if Society was indeed teaching men to reject their mothers, why is the trope of a man beating up another man for insulting his mother out there?

    I guess you could counter the argument by saying that calling a man a “mama’s boy” is an insult. But if you look at that insult closely, it’s not so much an insult against the man’s mother, but rather an insult on the man’s DEPENDENCE on his mother. The first rule of the MAN CLUB is to always be independent, and that means being able to do everything on your own, without needing to depend on anyone else.

    Loving one’s mother and not being dependent on one’s mother are not the same thing.

    Alara Rogers:

    Society puts such enormous pressure on boys to learn to hate women, and the first woman they’re taught to hate is you.

    Really? I was taught to be nice, polite and courteous to everyone and to be respectful of my parents and elders and well, everyone. Are you saying I should be applying for a spot in the Guiness book of Records for being an endangered species?

    Anyway, I just find it amusing that some of the comments here coming from women seem to know everything there is to know about growing up as a man, about how we go stealing signs and causing trouble, and hating our mothers.

    I don’t around presuming I know what it’s like to grow up as a woman. I don’t – because I didn’t. But yet, other people seem to know what my childhood experience was.

97. The reasons girls often *aren’t* “rambunctious” and are often quiet or “less trouble” is part of the problem, not something we should hope for, for heaven’s sakes. We expect them to be quiet, obediant, and less physical, SO THEY ARE. We should be encouraging our daughters to be rambunctious, out there with their opinions and bodies, and generally raising hell.

    And I agree with the comment upthread that noted that homosocial parenting is in some ways just easier. That’s one of the reasons fathers or other, alternative strong male role models for boys are so important.

98. vanessa: I DO think there are things that parents can do to “encourage” rape (I hope I’m putting this right…) like teaching a system of values that actively encourages rape culture.

    Yeah, and I pretty much figured that’s what you meant. It hit me wrong initially, but I agree with this statement completely. If you teach your kids life is a power struggle and that women are inferior, rape is a tool they might come to. In a horrendous worst case scenario, it could even be something modeled by the parents.

    Tamen: It is also depressing when the solution offered to the problem of boys struggling in schools, dying younger than girls, more likely to loose custody in divorce is to simply have girls instead – problem solved.

    I’m gonna try one more time. No one suggested not having male infants. People talked about their preference. That’s it. Not having male infants necessarily entails getting rid of them in utero. There’s no other way to NOT have male infants. If someone makes a personal choice on sex preference for their child (since you can’t know gender at birth – and I apologize to everyone for probably conflating them above) – which is the ONLY thing expressed thus far – it is not the same as providing the solution of only having girls. My concern with your statement in that paragraph – and the one I quoted from David above – is that there are a handful of things that are getting refuted that haven’t actually happened. If you disagree that boys are fundamentally more rambunctious or whatever else was in Alara’s comment, cool! Talk about it. Talk about how you think it’s ridiculous or it’s true and it needs to change or girls need to be wilder or whatever. But I don’t understand arguing with points that weren’t made, especially when they make “my side” look like a big bunch of assholes.

    Tamen: No, no-one said those words and neither did I claim anyone did.

    So to be clear, your comment sounded as if someone (Alara, probably) provided a global solution of not having male children. She didn’t. She expressed her personal preference for sex, and didn’t say she would only have females. She even has male children.

99. Bitter Scribe:
    America sure isn’t alone with this preference. In China, India, southern and eastern Europe, the Middle East, there are millions who view a son as a blessing and a daughter as a curse.

    my dad was the first born son (but not the first born) to first generation off the boat Poles. the stories ive heard – oy! my youngest aunt was in charge of getting his dinner plate for him. he would get iced tea after school, the girls got water. “dont drink that! it’s for the boys!” ive dubbed it Polish Prince syndrome and am doing my damnedest to not let my two boys get it. and right now, they have just as much drama between the two of them as my friend with three girls.

100. Pretty Amiable, I think the issue is not that people have preferences per se, but the manifestation of those preferences, the beliefs that go along with them, and the reinforcement cycle. I think the fear that your son will grow up to hate you because you’re a woman and men hate women is an alarming example of that.

     There’s some interesting research that I’m really looking forward to reading about how social constructs reinforce our beliefs about who we are. Key quote: “Whatever cognitive or personality differences there are between men and women cannot be attributed, except in a few isolated cases, to intrinsic biological or psychological differences between men and women, at least not in the current state of knowledge.”

101. I actually have no preference for boys or girls. If I had children, I would want to have at least one of each just to have the complete experience with both a boy and a girl.

     My knee jerk thought was that the overall preference for boys is rooted in patriarchal factors, such that men have an easier time achieving success in our society still, although that does not quite square well with the lack of change in boys’ preference since the first survey.

     It is definitely true though that there are lots of other factors that go into this decision, so my comment that everyone would think this way was not complete.

     For example, the idea that fathers can have better relationships with sons or that mothers can have better relationships with daughters was the top cited reason in the Gallup poll for preference of one gender or another. In the Gallup 2007 survey, they went deeper to ask people why they preferred a boy or a girl, and 23 percent of those favoring a boy and 20 percent of those favoring a girl felt that men/women can relate to boys/girls better. So it is not unnatural for a mother to feel that there is some gender barrier to overcome with her sons, and anxiety that she may fail because it’s harder to see through the lens of boys, and get boys to see through her lens. It is much easier for a father to talk to a son about subjects relating to sex (including rape) than it is for a father to talk to a daughter about these subjects, and vice versa for mothers and sons. This is very common. This is probably why, in the Gallup survey, the preference for sons is expressed by men, but no such preference is expressed by women.

     Similarly, about an equal number of people feel that boys are easier to raise vs. girls are easier to raise. There seems to be no right answer to this question.

     Thirdly, about an equal number of people cited factors such as girls are stronger or weaker, or the world is kinder to boys vs. girls. There does not seem to be a consensus on this one way or another.

     The only area that Gallup found which was a reason why people prefer boys but was not mentioned on the girls’ side was that boys carry on the family name, and girls do not. 20 percent of the respondents who preferred boys said this. If you took this out, the numbers in 2007 would be 30-28 instead of 37-28. If carrying on the name was the reason for (aggregate) preference for boys, that would also explain why there has been no change in this since 1941.

     And yes, I stole yard signs :/

102. Being a parent is not likely to happen at this point, but if I were to be a parent (biologically or through adoption), I’d prefer a daughter, because I know how to navigate the patriarchy as a girl and as a woman, and I know what issues come up. I feel like I wouldn’t know how to teach a son how to be an emotionally-healthy boy and man in the patriarchy, I wouldn’t know what challenges he’d face specific to his gender. (For some reason, I’m not so worried about having to help an LGBT kid face LGBT-specific challenges, even though I’m straight and cisgender.)

     That I have a preference at all is part of why becoming a biological parent is not a likely to happen for me.

103. PA: I wasn’t suggesting that anyone suggested getting rid of male infants in utero.

     What I do care about are the expectations and stereotypes that reinforce notions of bad masculinity. I felt as if Alara’s post crossed the line from “describing the problem” to “reinforcing the problem”. There was a clear expectation of all of these bad behaviors, X, Y and Z that would come simply from having a male child. No amount of “But statistics back me up” makes me feel better about someone trading in that stereotype.

     Regarding your “side” looking bad: I’m not your PR person, and I don’t care if you look good or bad on this site. I do care if people start saying shit that I strongly disagree with. If I do, expect me to voice my opinion.

104. EG:

     Thanks for the redirect, Tamen.Now, when it comes to the adoption stats, I’d like to know what factors are being controlled for.The stat says that people adopting prefer girls–does that mean they’ve filled out a questionnaire saying so, or that more girls are actually being adopted?If more girls are being adopted, is that a numerical difference or a percentage difference?In other words, are more girls up for adoption to begin with, which would suggest that more girls are being given up, which would negate the preference supposedly being demonstrated?Is something else influencing these stats–are girls less likely to have behavioral problems, for instance?

     I obviously needn’t have bothered to supply the link since you’d rather ask me than read the source I linked to. It’s not as if the answers to your questions are answered on the front page on that link (http://www.in-gender.com/XYU/Gender-Preference/) I gave you… Oh wait, it does….

     But I have a few minutes until the pizza boy is coming with dinner so I’ll answer your questions and spare you the effort of reading the source I cited.

     1. The stats say that the ratio between gender requested by the parents seeking adoption are 70-90% girls and 10-30% boys. This trend is not a new trend and it evidently have been noted as far back as 1916 (http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~adoption/archive/SpenceRPT.htm).

     2. When it comes to actual adoptions (from US foster care) the ratio is 64% girls and 36% boys. The gender rate of children awaiting adoption is US foster care is 48% girls and 52% boys.

     So, it’s both: people wanting to adopt often can and often do state their gender preference when they apply for an adoption and the statistics show that they more often prefer girls and they follow through on this when they actually adopt – even when the adoption market have more boys than girls. So the demand is not driven by supply. Se this Slate article (http://www.slate.com/?id=2093899&amp😉 for an example on how this demand when not being met by the supply lead to corruption and child-trafficking which again lead to a shut-down of US adoption from Cambodia in 2002.

     I hope this answered your questions.

105. Except that’s a caricature of what’s been said. What’s been said is “boys are more likely to be rambunctious, and that is one of the reasons I would prefer to have a girl.” That’s a pretty far cry from “I don’t want a boy because he’ll be rambunctious.”

     I think gender preferences are fine either way – and some gender essentialism, whether soft (like your example) or otherwise, figures into them. And I’m not one of those people who’ll necessarily wring her hands over that. At the same time, though, it does help to deconstruct said gender essentialism – or at least look at it differently. The socialization that starts in the home to make sure that girls are quieter than boys (though in my life experience, that has not actually been the case with friends and relatives – and I’m talking about people who are Eastern European, Middle Eastern, etc.) is worth taking a look at. Because what are we really saying, when we’re discussing such energy levels and behaviours?

     But that’s not what’s happening. The odds are that if you are taken care of at all in your old age, it will be by a woman. So, what Alara is saying is, given those odds, she’d rather it be a daughter of hers than a wife of her son’s, unless, presumably, she had the misfortune of having a horrible person for a daughter. So would I, personally. And what I was saying is that if you’re in the US, saying that you wouldn’t want your kids–of any gender–to take care of you when you get old is, in my opinion and experience, foolhardy.

     I think it’s great to have anyone take care of you at all. I certainly hope my kid(s) take care of me. I know I won’t be able to force them – so it will all be down to luck and providence. But from my experience, it’s these kind of expectations that can lead us to bad places – by building resentment over time.

     If you think your daughter is going to take care of you just because she’s your daughter, as opposed to your son – you might run into trouble, and it may not make your daughter very happy either (though if she’s a “good daughter,” she may hide it, of course). Even though, obviously, statistics are on your side.

106. PrettyAmiable:

     So to be clear, your comment sounded as if someone (Alara, probably) provided a global solution of not having male children. She didn’t. She expressed her personal preference for sex, and didn’t say she would only have females. She even has male children.

     I never intended to say that Alyara or any other comment here (so far) have argued for killing males in utero. I hoped one clarification would be enough, but alas… Moving on. Contrary to your statement that is not the only way to not have your own male children. There are technologies commercially available which allows one to greatly influence which gender one’s child will be, the Gen-Select kit (http://www.genselect.com/) claims a 96% successrate and offers a “no cure no pay” deal, Microsort (http://www.microsort.net/) claims 90% accuracy for girls and 75% accuracy for boys. The majority of people buying and using these technologies tries more often for girls than for boys.

     And so does people who adopt, they have a stronger preference for girls and they chose whom to adopt accordingly.

     I brought this up as a contrast to the Gallup study (which poses a hyptethical question about which gender one would prefer if one could only have one child. And I am surprised that no-one have suggested that the matter of surname might be the main motivator behind the result of the Gallup survey.

     As I’ve also pointed out to EG in another comment: Alara didn’t just state a personal preference – she listed a number of objectively stated reasons for why she preferred girls and then she went on to say that women who thinks it is easier to raise boys are complete dumbasses or haven’t thought it through. That doesn’t sound like a presonal preference to me, that sounds like she thinks her preference should be universal – and that I object to.

     So, I can repeat it again if you’d like: I haven’t said that Alara have argued for Die Endlösung für den Jungenfrage. She has on the other hand clearly said that she would rather not deal with the problem young boys have (most of them through no fault of their own) and because of that she wanted girls and she thinks everyone else should want girls for those reasons or else they simple aren’t rational.

     I am sorry if this make “your side” look bad. Exactly what or who is “your side”? I didn’t intend to be adversial when I noted that it was depressing that someone wanted not only to not deal with the problem boys face in society, but also didn’t understand why any rational being would want to have to deal with them by having boys.

     Your snark regarding my “depression” in your first reply to my comment did come across as adversial and if my tone has been affected by that I regret it.

107. I understand one really has to be careful with language and wording here. So please, when you read the second to last paragraph in my comment above replace

     but also didn’t understand why any rational being would want to have to deal with them by having boys.

     with

     but also didn’t understand why any rational being would want to have to deal with them by wanting boys.

108. I’m pregnant. Nearly halfway there. God, I hate being pregnant so much. No one warns you about the sheer level of pain you are constantly in all the time…but onto the topic. My partner is convinced we’re having a boy – has said he would prefer one. He somewhat identifies with being a feminist – his uncertainties over that are more to do with lack of formalised academic knowledge rather than activism.

     At the same time, he’s recently started to say things like: ‘I never really had a purpose in life. Now I have a goal. My goal is being a parent’. Not a father, parent. He knows my goal in life is not to be a parent – or rather that being a parent is part of many goals I have. The only reason I’m the pregnant one is biology. Did I mention I hate being pregnant?

     I would prefer a girl because I have a kickass name for a girl ready. It is a really awesome name.

     Everyone around us only ever says ‘boy’, and all the pronouns are masculine. Everyone already says ‘Boys are so much easier’ all the time to us – I wonder how much of that influences my partner? And yet when I say things like ‘We don’t care what colour gifts are, gifts are great’ and I am told over and over that I will feel differently when it is a boy and understand how I must not use The Cursed Colour on a boy and how unfair it would be to do that to a boy. I get weird looks when I explain that said partner wears pink and has earrings. I hear how my partner would be devastated if it’s a girl as we’re only having one – I get told we could try for two if it’s a girl, and when I explain how physically painful this pregnancy is, how I cannot do it again, I am told how selfish I am. I have to think of my partner in this. My health is not important.

     It’s odd because everyone has warned me how he will feel sad when he ‘cannot’ go to sports events due to having a small daughter to look after if it is a girl (he will be the stay at home parent after the first while), and yet a) he never goes to sports events now, and b) no one ever asks me if my life will be constrained and c) I am the sporty one of the two of us and d) a tiny immobile infant is tiny and immobile regardless of sex.

     My partner doesn’t care that much. He has a preference, not a requirement. He tells people this, and they react with disbelief. It constantly seems like he is supposed to want a boy and I am supposed to go through symphysis pubis dysfunction until he gets one, and I am supposed to raise them all, while he sits back as happy patriarch and plays with the male ones when he feels like it.

     Some of his uncertainty is almost certainly due to living in this weird microclimate where he keeps being told that what he wants is not actually what he wants, but something different entirely. I have seen him told how much I already constrain his life (he does not spend all Sunday watching football, the only permitted recreation in our parts for a male), and that two girls would be intollerable.

     He doesn’t like football. He says it every time. No one ever listens. And ‘football’ keeps being used as some strange barometer.

     It’s all so bizarre.

109. Azkyroth: I have the opposite problem. I have a lot of trouble relating to women. If I ever have kids, I’d prefer boys. Though I’d encourage them to dress up and play with dolls. (Hey, my brother did both, and he’s just fine. I still harbor a sneaking suspicion that he’s my mom’s favorite.)

110. I am a man and I break that mold. I prefer girls. My mother was shocked when I first said that.

     I also have no sisters in my immediate family. And growing up without a sister really took a toll on me.

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