Monday, January 24, 2011

It's A Boy

This past week we found out that our child due in June is in fact a boy.

Aaron and I are both happy with this, even though we didn't have a definite preference either way.  My husband is happy because he was worried about having two daughters and treating them differently...though why this makes a difference I'm really unsure.  I get his feeling...but I'm having a hard time understanding why I do.  I'm happy because I feel like having a boy means it will be easier to decide if we really don't want to do this again.  Then again, having another baby to "get a boy" is really an odd concept...but again, I feel this way without understanding the feeling.  I mean, they're children not collectors items so I'm a bit annoyed with this feeling, to be honest.

Why is this male?
This also has me puzzling over my ideas about gender neutral parenting.  With a girl, it's easy to say "she can wear anything she wants!" and ignore what gender it was intended for.  Before she was able to make her own choices I obviously chose clothing based off my own preferences and that included a mix of "boyish" and "girlish" clothes.  Now with a boy, I'm fine with my son choosing a pink play skirt or to have barrettes in his hair...but what about before he has a choice?  Is it hypocritical for me to purchase exclusively boyish clothing for my son before he is able to put in some input?  Of course, a lot of clothing was purchased for us by others so I didn't pick a lot of stuff out myself...but I feel weird ignoring the girl clothes in favor of boy clothes when I object to things being divided in such a way.  Then of course there is the fact that I tend to like boy clothes better.  Plain jeans, graphic tees, sneakers...those or typical boy fodder and can be worn by anyone despite gender.  I like that sort of thing and wear it myself.

And then you throw the color pink into the fray.  Pink kicks you in the teeth and screams "VAGINA VAGINA VAGINA" via your optic nerve.  It's just a color.  A lighter shade of red...but I dislike it for me, my daughter, or my son.  That's not to say I wouldn't allow either of my kids to wear it, but I'm certainly not picking it out for anybody.  I wish I didn't have these negative associations with something so stupid as a color, but I do...and I'm trying to figure out that means for me having a child with a penis.

I know boys and girls do end up being different in the end, we're wired differently.  However, I'm trying not to let my ideas about it cloud my means of raising my children.  So how far do I take neutrality here?  Do I put my son in my daughter's girly hand-me-downs?  Purchase a whole new wardrobe of boyish stuff?  Dress both my kids in totally plain basic pants and shirts with no gender messages at all?!  I'm trying to figure out where this line is...and it's really hard to define.

3 comments:

  1. I see nothing wrong with him wearing hand me downs from Dani to be honest. I'd only do it at home if it not 100% gender neutral...because people are annoying. "Oh what a pretty girl" "He's a boy" "Why is he in PINK!?"

    *eyeroll*

    I'm the same way, I find jeans and Ts...or just Ts to be perfect for kids (and myself). Logan owns nothing else. He owns Ts that range from Robots, to Space, to Plain Purple.

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  2. My work has gender specific bags. I believe I am the only person at my work that doesn't ask "boy or girl?". A color is a color, who cares. Normally people don't care, they're kids are too excited that they're getting a reusable bag in the first place to care if the color is specific to their gender. I've given boys pink bags and they're just as excited to even GET one as much as the girls are.

    The other day I gave a little girl a forest green bag. It was the first one I grabbed, I don't pay attention to what color it is. The grandma then continued to yell at me rudely "do you have any GIRLS bags?" I told her "We have COLORED bags, that's the color I grabbed. If she wants another color she can tell me which one she wants." She then began to bitch me out saying she wanted a pink bag while her granddaughter was trying to grab for the green one already on the counter. The grandma stopped her and said again she wanted a GIRLS bag. Of course a co-worker butted in "Just give her a girls bag what's the big deal" So I replied with "I didn't know we had girls bags. It's a color."

    Grandma got her way even though her granddaughter obviously couldn't care less which color she got as long as she had a bag.

    So let your son wear his big sisters hand-me-downs! Saves you money and until he says what clothes he wants himself, he won't care as long as he's warm.

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  3. Well it looks like that situation "handled" itself. I just got bag after bag of hand-me-downs from the last baby born in the family....which was a boy. I now have lots of blue and green things. :P I didn't keep a lot of the newborn stuff I had from before because it was all god-awful shades of pink. I rejected all the sports-themed junk in the hand-me-downs, but the rest is fine and I'd put it on either a boy or girl. I also got a bunch of white onesies I'm going to tie dye bright colors. I'm going to keep all my toddler clothes Dani has though and just let the boy wear whatever suits his fancy.

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