Children will test your strength and principles. A daughter may also help you learn a lot about yourself.
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When my wife got pregnant for the second time, we both agreed that we wanted a daughter. We loved our son but we wanted balance and the opportunity to parent a child of each gender. At least that’s what we jointly stated as our motivation. Secretly, I had my own reason.
I wanted to have a daughter to test the degree of my own sexism.
Children are great mirrors. Maybe it’s the innate knowledge that we’re consciously and unconsciously transmitting information to our kids, wide open receptacles that they are, that makes us reflect on our thoughts, feelings and beliefs. Or perhaps it’s just having another person around all the time, like the first time you lived with someone you were in a relationship with.
I consider myself a pretty good ally to women. I do my best to observe my thinking around gender and how I allow it to impact my choices. When a woman was running for mayor of the city I live in, for example, I realized that part of my resistance to voting for her was based on a mistaken belief that she wouldn’t be able to navigate the male-dominated political system as well as her male opponent would. There were other factors, but gender affected my thinking.
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So a large part of my motivation for wanting a girl was to uncover any gender bias I might be carrying. Not that having a son doesn’t provide its own opportunity to work with gender roles. More people than I expected told me how lucky I was to have a son after my son was born. I wondered what would they have said if he’d been a girl: there’s always next time?
Discovering my own gender bias wasn’t the only motivation for my desire for a daughter. When we were in traveling during our first pregnancy, my wife bought the cutest little baby dress. I fantasized about summer months when our future daughter could wear it to the park and be the envy of all the other parents. When a friend of mine told me how he loved to braid his daughter’s hair, I nodded knowingly. Visions of pig-tails and patent leather Mary Janes danced in my head.
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The thought of having a daughter triggered questions about how I would treat a female child. Would I show affection for her in the same way as I did to my son? Would I discipline her differently? Would I have the same expectations of her? Would I become the stereotypical dad who greets his daughter’s boyfriends at the door with a shotgun? As she got older, would I stifle her sexuality out of my own inability to accept her sexual development? Could I be a model of positive masculinity that would foster trust in men while at the same time instilling confidence that her worth was not dependent on male approval?
One question that kept recurring was how I would parent a girl in the context of society’s gender biases, particularly with regard to children. When my daughter started watching TV, I noticed the imbalance between male and female characters on kids shows. Even my beloved Sesame Street is dominated by male characters. Zoe, the most prominent female character on Sesame Street, didn’t make her appearance until 1993, nearly 25 years after the show first aired. It wasn’t until 2006 that Sesame Street introduced a leading female character, Abby Cadabby. Would I be more concerned about the impact of gender imbalance on children’s television if we had a daughter? At what age would it be appropriate to talk to her about gender identity? Should I attempt to transcend identification based on gender, as this preschool in Sweden is doing?
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Like we did with our daughter, we declined to learn the gender of our second child until the birth. When our son was born, disappointment that he wasn’t a girl was the farthest thing from our minds. Though his entrance into the world was extremely gentle, we’ve decided that he will be the last baby that my wife births. The dress, folded lovingly, remains in a storage container in our garage.
There’s always adoption.
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Originally appeared at New Dad for Life.
—Photo us national archives/Flickr
For me, men can’t be sexist because the term implies institutional/structural discrimination against men.
Would any feminist take that statement seriously?
Protectiveness can be a funny thing. My mother was extremely trusting of me during my teenage years. She pretty much let me do whatever I wanted to do. Since I’m an only child, I don’t know whether she would have been the same with a daughter. Personally, I would do almost anything to ensure that my kids are safe, but would I go too far if one of them were a daughter? If I had a son and a daughter, would I try to balance out being over-protective of my daughter by restricting my son in the name of equality?… Read more »
I thank you for this article. I find this all very interesting, and wonder what my own father must have thought when his first born was a girl ,me, having grown up with only three brothers. Part of him seems to have taken to be my knight in shining armor shotgun parading protector who will always save me, and the other part instilling an assertive “You don’t need a man by your side to succeed!” sort of ideology. I guess I’d say I had the best of both worlds, leaving me a bit of a confused feminist, looking for a… Read more »
Thanks for your comment. I wonder how your dad developed the awareness to parent daughters in such a healthy way.
My dad had three daughters (I’m the middle one). I have often wondered why all three of us ended up so well-adjusted and confident, when I noticed that so many of my female friends around me battled with self-esteem and a crippling need to be pretty always. I didn’t realize until later in my life that a lot of it had to do with my dad. My dad never made the fact that we were girls important. He didn’t treat us distantly, wishing he had a boy to play ball with (we all played basketball into high school and he… Read more »
Thank you Merany for this comment.
I’m a dad of 5 girls and 1 boy. I didn’t grow up with a father at home, but knew him and talk to him from time to time. I am learning everyday how to treat my girls so that they may be prepared for the world of men out there, because someday they will be grown up and have their own lives.
Thank for the comment for it has shown me that I am on the right track, so far.
It sounds like your parents had the best of intentions. I commend you for recognizing the fallacy of misplaced chivalry.
My parents’ intentions were literally to have a son who would have a family and grandchildren for them, and pass on their own cultural values, and later be able to provide some support during their retirement. I know this because they still tell me this today. When they found out years ago that I’m gay, they essentially disowned me. Things will never be the same. Hopefully, if you knew the whole story, you wouldn’t say that it sounds like they had the best intentions. They raised me because they wanted something out of me that made their lives richer in… Read more »
I’m sorry. I severely misread your previous comment and clearly did not know the whole story. My deepest apologies.
My own parents raised me with a strange combination of gender awareness and sexism, in which I was expected to treat the female members of my family (and society whenever the opportunity came up) as people with an equal place in the world, as well as with self-effacing courtesy because they were the “fairer sex.” They challenged part of tradition while leaving the other in place. Boys hold the door and mow the lawn because they have to–they’re boys; a girl can mow the lawn if she wants, but she doesn’t have to.
I think it’ll be interesting to raise your sons to become gender sensitive. There should be quite a few lessons in tackling sexism there. That might even be where the real solution lies.
Definitely. I just won’t know how the lessons would be different with a daughter. At least not until we have one.
Yeah, the real test would be the teenage years. Would you police her for wearing the fashions of the day that you might consider too ‘skimpy’ (who knows what’ll be in fashion 15 years from now)? If so, would it be out of a genuine concern (not wanting her to mindlessly follow a pack) or an irrational one (ingrained need to control female sexuality)? Would you be comfortable letting her know (even if it’s not directly from you) about birth control, safe sex, and communication in relationships? Would you know what to do if she came home crying because she… Read more »
Thanks for the kind words, Aya. It sounds like you were in my head when I was thinking about parenting a daughter. I’m going to keep those questions just in case we do end up adopting a daughter. For the record, I think it’s totally fine to use the word beautiful as much as possible in describing children. The more we recognize beauty, the better.
And here I thought most muppets didn’t have a gender. I also viewed them as, you know, puppet creatures. Some maybe more masculine than others — and some clearly male like the count — but most of them are animals or made-up creatures. Is the cookie monster male? What about elmo? Big bird? Some of them don’t even talk and they’ve got a gender?
Muppet gender wasn’t something I thought about much until I had kids and started to realize that most of the main characters–Oscar, Count Von Count, Grover, Kermit, Bert and Ernie–have male names and sound like they’re voiced by men. Here’s an excellent piece on sexism and Sesame Street characters: http://open.salon.com/blog/beverly_akerman/2010/06/18/the_sexism_of_sesame_street.
So, how did Janine’s sexism fare in dealing with your son? Inquiring minds want to know.
For me, women can’t be sexist because the term implies institutional/structural discrimination against women. Gender-biased, yes. Here’s one thing Janine is doing:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/j9macbeth/oh-oh-baby-boy-the-makings-of-engaged-fatherhood?ref=live
Sexism is concerned with an individual’s treatment of a gender based on stereotypes; as such women can certainly be sexist. Is isn’t limited to a different sex either, as an example men can act in a sexist manner towards other men.
Interesting how you just removed women’s agency there.
‘Women can’t be…’
Thanks for your comments. My definition of sexism encompasses the historical and institutional oppression of women, who are legally and de facto treated as male property in many parts of the world today. If there’s a place where men are systematically disenfranchised and discriminated against in favor of women, I haven’t heard about it. That doesn’t mean that women are incapable of exerting power over men in absolutely every situation, just that, in general, gender inequality favors men over women (and has for a long time). If there’s a more appropriate term for the historical and institutional oppression of women,… Read more »
I get what you’re saying, but I prefer to use sexism as a term that can apply to men and women. I appreciate your references to historical systematic oppression. The reason I think sexism should apply both ways is the same reason I think the term racism works, regardless of the race of the oppressed. For example, a black person who carries great animosity toward white people. That’s not “reverse racism” as people like to say, it’s just racism. (Please don’t take from this that I think one way or the other about black/white relations and the power dynamic. I… Read more »
As a feminism-aware man, I am guessing (perhaps wrongly) that you understand the remenants of sexism in the idea of a daughter to test your sexism. Maybe it’s a bad choice of words; surely you understand that your hypothetical daughter would be a person with her own personality, likes and dislikes, not a bland representative of some monolithic ‘female’. Surely you don’t *mean* the implication here of utility, of using a daughter, a *person* as a means to an end – testing a part of yourself. And hopefully, as a father of boys, you understand that it’s as important –… Read more »
Thanks so much for your comment. Certainly my hypothetical daughter (Laya was the name my older son gave her when my wife was pregnant and we asked him whether the baby was a boy or girl) would have been a person with a gender, not solely a gender wrapped in a person. Although children aren’t tools, I’ve found that being a dad has presented unexpectedly wonderful opportunities for personal growth in many areas, gender-bias among them. I guess I shouldn’t be that surprised, since relationship is where own personal biases make themselves most apparent. And raising sons definitely has its… Read more »