It's a Boy--Part I

Today and tomorrow, I'll be writing about boyhood as part of the It's a Boy virtual book tour. The anthology's editor, Andrea Buchanan, writes about her virtual book tour here, and you can read an interview with her here. Today, I'll be sharing my own thoughts about having a boy. Tomorrow, I'll be reviewing the book.

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"Are you going to find out if it's a boy or a girl?" someone asked me at the office Christmas party.

"No," I replied. "It'll be born, and we'll have no idea, and we'll send it off to college not knowing." Yes, I was being a smartass. I was only three months pregnant, and I didn't know how common that question would be for the rest of my pregnancy.

The critic Judith Butler writes of the process of "girling the girl and boying the boy." Society is very clear about assigning gender to babies who, for all intents and purposes, spend their days in identical ways: eating, sleeping, pooping, and crying. But somehow, "Do you know what you're having?" becomes a crucial question. The congratulations-on-your-new-baby cards are stridently pink or blue; the pink ones congratulate you on your angel, and the blue ones (often with rocking horses or teddy bears) congratulate you on your bouncing baby boy. Why would I want gender stereotypes foisted on my baby? Shouldn't it be free to be itself, without the ugly football shirts or hair bows held onto a bald head with elastic?

At first, we weren't going to find out. Then I thought the ultrasound technician could write it down on a piece of paper we'd put in a sealed envelope, and we could open it and make an announcement at the baby shower. Then I thought we'd find out, but we wouldn't tell anyone. But I'm a horrible secret-keeper, so within 24 hours of the ultrasound, everyone knew we were having a boy.

Both Tom and I had been secretly convinced we were having a girl. Tom had always had lots of female friends, and I had never been much of a tomboy. We thought we'd make very fine parents of a girl. But then the technician moved the transponder over my belly, looked at the murky images, and announced that it was a boy.

"No little dresses," I murmured. I had been looking at baby clothes, and most of the stuff for boys was tacky, covered with footballs or trucks.

"He could wear dresses if you want him to," Tom said, and I told him to shut up.

We went out to dinner that night to celebrate, but we were actually feeling a little down. We knew we should feel grateful for a healthy baby, but we wondered: What on earth would we do with a boy?

"At least you're off the hook with the birds-and-bees discussion," Tom told me.

"Yeah, and we won't have to pay for a wedding," I said.

I looked for gender-neutral clothes (more practical if we wanted to have a second baby anyway), but found only a few white and yellow and green outfits. Reluctantly, I started buying blue. Blue is my favorite color anyway, which is interesting if you think about it. Why am I able to wear blue to my heart's content, but if our toddler friend Antje ventures out in blue everyone assumes she's a boy?

If you fast-forward nearly two years from the ultrasound, you'll see that Ben still wears a lot of blue, and one of his sleepers has a football on it. I've relaxed about trying to be gender-netural as it's become clear to me that Ben is his own little person, who will develop according to his temperatment as much as his upbringing. He plays with balls and trucks and trains, and he loves his Matchbox cars. But he also takes care of Dollbaby, the most masculine-looking doll at ToysRUs. (And why can't a little boy play with a pink-dressed doll? I'm not sure, but my mom and I both agreed that a boy doll would be better.) I love to see Ben rock and kiss Dollbaby; it makes me think far into the future about the father he may someday become.

Although I do have pangs of girl envy around Easter and Christmas (such cute dresses and adorable pigtails!), I wouldn't trade my little boy for a daughter--I'm having too much fun with him. And if Hypothetical Secondbaby ever ceases to be hypothetical, which would I want? Either. I've learned that parenting is about unexpected joys, and that "finding out" before birth tells you very little about the child your baby will become.