In an article by blogger Courtney Reynolds she writes about her experience of being pregnant with her 2nd child and the expectations of family, friends, even strangers assuming that she and her husband automatically wanting to have a boy.
Here are some of the excerpts of her experience:
- “our neighbor, Chris, saw us and called out encouragingly “Bring home a boy!”
- “Throughout our pregnancy, people just assumed we wanted a boy because we already had a girl.”
- “we experienced a miscarriage of a baby boy. For the very few people who knew, you could feel their hearts break more when they found out the sex. “Oh, no — and it was a boy!” they would say, as if the loss wouldn’t have been as great if it had been a girl.”
- “Even last month when I was on a business trip to Chicago, my taxi driver asked me and my two female colleagues how many kids we have. We told him we each have two, and then he asked the sex. The other two women have a boy and girl each, and when I said “two girls,” he said: “You need a boy.”
Reynolds is very clear that she and her husband would be thrilled with either a boy or a girl, and that the comments made were not malicious, just what most people assume. She admits that she’s made similar comments to friends herself, but now she understands that family doesn’t have to be a make up of “perfect ratio — one boy, one girl — I was able to see how silly it was and eagerly anticipate a new life, regardless of the sex.”
Reynolds writes, “As for my family, after nine months of having two girls, would my husband still choose a girl? So far, he has two little ones who adore him.”
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