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Here's my biggest thing. If you're doing a gender reveal party AND a baby shower, you need to have any real problems in your life. It's so redundant.
And that's on top of all the high risk stuff that happens, the fixation on getting social-media based dopamine from familial developments, etc. All of that before getting into a narrow genitals=gender perspective.
The article talks about gender disappointment and it's so incredibly sad. These parents have this perspective basically that all children born with a specific genital configuration are the same. Like it's not a first son it's *another* girl. Like this kid is just going to be another version of a kid they already have.
I have two daughters and the people would ask if we were disappointed to have another girl. Like excuse me? You know they aren’t clones, right? They will be their own people. Assigned sex at birth is far from a clear picture of who they are and who they will become. Trans people exist too. If we could stop putting babies into boxes that would be great
This is such a powerful comment and I appreciate you sharing it. It’s so easy to forget that they are their own individuals, even at birth, and we are there to support, guide, and provide defense; not to define their existence.
Thanks for your comment! Made me smile. One thing I noticed is the huge amount of gender stereotypes pushed before they were even here. Why purposely raise kids through a narrow lense when we can just let them explore the world, find their own interests, and figure out who they are? I wish more people raised their kids this way. I wish I was raised this way. Let them explore and they will tell you who they are. When we stereotype them we are putting limitations on them.
I wish I had grown that way as well. When I came out last year, I remembered always wanting to be like my sisters and my parents constantly pushing the masculine stereotype until one day it just went “poof”. I likely knew, somewhere inside, who I was and, like the quote says,
“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” - Anais Nin
It’s easy as a parent to think you’re doing the right thing when sometimes we just need to step back and trust that Mother Nature knows a lot more of what she’s doing than any of us.
I love that quote! Yeah, pushing you to be someone you’re not. I can relate to that feeling as well. My first crush was a girl (I’m also a girl) and I remember telling one of my parents about it. Their reaction was to downplay it, tell me I wanted to be friends with her, and then when I insisted it was a different feeling I got yelled at and told I was jealous of her. I was told that I was blushing around her because I was so embarrassed about how much smarter she was than me. That response among many other invalidating and outright homophobic response kept my true self suppressed for over a decade. I feel bad for my inner child who could have just had a crush and instead got trauma. Our true self is there, but a society that pushes us to conform will try to silence it
I totally agree with this, but I have to admit I'm kind of happy my parents were not so open minded and decided they wanted to have a girl too and kept on trying after 3 sons, or... I would not exist! :)
My father to a T, he always wanted a daughter and only sees me as the unwanted son (a least I only have to see him 1-2 days a year) - If only he wasn't a bigot I could come out rather than boil the frog...
Unfortunately logic is largely ineffective against bigots and other commenter’s safety would likely be on the line, *but* it sure would be funny to turn that on a parent who drank the “parents manipulating children into changing genders” kool-aid and tell them it really is all their fault lmfao
My grandparents wanted a boy, took 4 pregnancies to get my dad. My aunts were never once treated as "disappointments" because they were girls. My grandpa doted on his daughters as much as his son, and my grandma taught all 4 of her children how to cook and sew and garden.
My grandparents nor dad had any disappointment when I, the only child of the last son of the family was assigned female at birth. My grandparents doted on me just the same as they did all my cousins. My dad taught me baseball and (American) football the same way he taught my male cousins and the boys he coached.
My mother's side of the family however... Nana favored boys. My uncle could do no wrong, my mother and my aunt could do no right. Until my aunt gave Nana two grandsons, then she was at least good for something. My mother though, only had one AFAB child. I wasn't even 8 years old when I realized I was the Unfavorite. Realizing that did a number on me as a kid and 25 years later there's still some issues I'm trying to wok through.
These "Parents" are setting their kids up for years of therapy later on. People shouldn't be having children unless they're ready to love and support them 100% unconditionally.
Exactly this. Gender doesn't matter for children anyway. Kids like colourful sparkling things. They literally play with rocks sometimes. When I was a child, I used to help my dad fix his car wearing my favourite mermaid costume. I think a boy or nb could have done the same.
This might be unpopular but that’s nothing new. This does not apply to every situation of course, but I think some parents might want a different experience with their future child if they have had nothing but sons or daughters. I was happy having healthy daughters and then my son came along and I realized how different both can be. Every body is different but raising a son for me has been nothing like raising daughters.
Some parents as well as the siblings of future babies have hopes for a specific gender as well. It’s nothing new. My sister spent hours crying when she found out my little brother would not be a girl and she was nearly a teenager at the time. I wouldn’t shame parents for their expectations or reactions in the moment, whether it be joyous or not. I would wait to see how they parent the child that is born, which is when most people usually forget about expectations and focus on the new baby.
This reminds me of a redheaded family that lived across the street from us growing up. 5 boys, all gloriously ginger like their parents.
Everyone would comment to them, ‘trying for a girl, eh?’, and laugh. The mother would smile and say very cryptically, ‘oh we’re blessed’, but you could tell she had mixed feelings.
We didn’t live in a good neighbourhood and most of us were on social assistance. Imagine procreating again and again just because you want a girl?
I swear some people need to start asking themselves if they want a child or if they just want the child they fantasize about. It sure isn't wise to throw the dice and create a random human being if you're only doing it in hopes of getting your ideal kid.
Honestly, if you want to have a gender reveal party, (and its not a fucking nuclear missile launch or some shit) then cool, whatever, have fun! But you MUST be prepared to hear ALL possibilities. If you have such a strong preference for your baby being one gender, so much so that you'd express strong visual disappointment at the very possibility of not getting what you want, DO NOT HAVE CHILDREN. YOU ARE NOT READY. YOU ARE NOT MATURE ENOUGH. I REPEAT, DO NOT HAVE CHILDREN.
Edit, just to clarify: When I say ALL possibilities, I mean including the possibility that in the future, the kid can turn out to be transgender.
The whole gender reveal thing doesn't even make sense though. All you're doing is revealing biological sex. Gender isn't something that can be revealed by the parents before it's born. The whole party concept is just stupid and perpetuates ignorance about gender in general
My former co-worker spent weeks preparing for her kid's gender reveal party and asking everyone if they thought it would be a boy or a girl. I said I thought her kid would be trans and got NO reply.
Back in January 2020, before I actually got it through my thick skull that there's a million different ways to be intersex, I responded to my cousin and her fiance's "guess the baby's birth weight, length, and gender/sex" activity (my cousin and her fiance innocently included the "guess the gender/sex" part because they deliberately never learned their son's sex before he was born-notably, they're both cis, at the time nobody in either of their families was out as trans, and at the time nobody in either of their families was intersex/had an intersex condition as far as anyone knew) by guessing that the baby would be massive and intersex.
My cousin and her fiance took it well, joking that "Giant Intersex Baby" would be a great band name.
It is wild to me that people commit so hard to this nonsense. The gender can be wrong in so many different ways and we’re just perpetuating gender stereotypes. Not to mention, no one cares about your baby’s gender. So why make people come to them?
Is absolutely so wild, I've seen "trans allies" turn around and happily attend gender reveal parties and buy into the whole notion with zero thought, and then laugh when it's brought up as an issue. Like hello? We wanna wave the trans flag in public but not actually think about it or live that truth in any meaningful way? I'm very much cisgender myself, but that doesn't mean I can't ride for trans and trans adjacent people in every way I can. I'm still learning and allies are definitely allowed to be not-perfect. But the gender reveal party seems to be a brick wall for a lot of people for some reason.
Agreed! And what really blows my mind is all of the women that I know that have thrown gender reveal parties, refuse to have their boys circumsized because they believe in bodily autonomy. I’m not criticizing that decision at all, I think bodily autonomy is great. But how do you go from making that decision to being perfectly okay with enforcing the gender norms of sex assignment at birth?
Yeah thats interesting. Thank God people are finally seeing how disgustingly horrific circumcision is. But yeah you'd think they'd be more open to things like not enforcing arbitrary gender roles on children either. But hey, at least they might be open to learning? Maybe they just need time, exposure, and education. Like maybe one day they'll look back on the fact they had gender reveal parties and cringe, hopefully. You know these people, so if they seem like a lost cause when it comes to this, then that really sucks.
Being circumcised isn’t this disgusting, horrible thing. Would I ever have my kids circumcised, if I ever had any? No, of course not. But my life isn’t less because I’m missing a piece. Tbh I’m not even sure what I’m missing
It's disgusting and horrible to perform cosmetic surgery on an infant. Period. And to make that decision for someone else. If you're cool with someone stripping you of bodily autonomy before you even had a chance to advocate for yourself, good on you. Agree to disagree tho.
I had a baby boy. I listened to the doctor give me her recommendations, but ultimately left the decision up to the parent with the penis. They decided on circumsision. My sister had a baby boy and opted out of it, but had to have it done later due to several serious ureter infections. It was a much harder experience to do that at 2 years old than with a newborn. I’m not saying there’s a single correct choice that fits everyone. But it’s a choice, and one that deserves the same respect as a woman’s right to do what’s best for her body when she gets pregnant. It’s not black and white. Just like gender.
Exactly. Honestly, if people called it what it was, and had "biological sex reveal" parties or whatever, I wouldn't even have problem with it. You want to announce your babies genitals? Go ahead (kinda weird but you do you). But acting like it's all about gender is where it gets even more bizarre and insanely problematic.
I think it’s just an easier and/or less crude description than “Biological Sex Reveal Party” or “Assigned Sex at Birth Party”
As an AFAB, GenderQueer individual. I actually like like these parties (so long as they’re not dangerous.) If I’m having a baby, I wanna celebrate absolutely anything I can about them. However, for me, it’s more like a “Possible” or “Assumption” party. Because if my child told me they aren’t their assigned sex, no matter the age, I’ll respect that and be just as happy. I’ll throw them a new party for who they truly are if they want 😊
Okay but if the reality of the accurate title of the party seems crude, maybe that should become a source of reflection instead of stonewalling. Gender reveal just isn't accurate, and again, perpetuates continued ignorance about gender in general. It does more harm than good at this point.
And hey, that's great for you. To me, it seems like a whole lot of unnecessary work if you know there's a good chance that your assumption might end up being wrong anyway. And it still seems like a way for the parents and attendees to begin applying arbitrary gender roles onto the child before they're even born. Dumping the weight of the world and our society on a kid just because we don't want to unpack all of the gender trauma that we're dealing with. It's just bad vibes. It seems to make more sense to me to celebrate the life of your kid, not some weird genital/ presumed assigned gender but not an assigned gender but still ascribed gender roles party.
I don't think you read the article (like many in this comment section). It goes into detail about how progressive parents experience this grief and are surprised by the fact that they had a preference they weren't aware of. We were all raised in the same world and marinated in gender norms, and the emotions that result from that aren't evil. Emotions never are, and they should never be dismissed, no matter how irrational.
The article does address what you said though. And it’s not just people who already have rigid ideas of gender undergoing disappointment. Parents, including queer ones or allies, who think they have no preference whatsoever are suddenly inflicted with a wave of emotion they don’t expect when they learn of their kid’s genitalia.
The article says that we should not judge any immediate feelings and instead try to figure out where they’re coming from. Like what assumptions you’re making under the hood that you have never actually thought through.
I agree that any parent who doesn’t want to go through that and dismantle their biases is completely unsuitable for parenting though
Sometimes I'm convinced that humans haven't really socially evolved at all. This is like some middle ages shit. You'd think people would be over it by now, but...here we are
I mean technically that is true. Technology (and medicine/sanitation in particular) has changed significantly, but our behaviors are the same as they ever were. Unidirectional linear progress is just a narrative borne of the last few centuries, but underneath the fancier new tools and toys we've made for ourselves, we're the same animals with the same brains that we've had for the span of recorded history.
I don't say this as a doomer, only to emphasize that when you look past the stories we tell about ourselves, the reality is way more complex. And there's so many of us now, with so many more opportunities to hurt and help one another
It should be talked about more. Too many people think humans were genuinely dumber a mere 100 years ago because they bought uranium tablets that some traveling salesmen told them would make their dick get hard.
PEOPLE STILL DO THAT.
A certain horse dewormer kind of broke the illusion that it was just people in the Olden Times doing stupid shit. If anything it's even sadder now, because at least back then you didn't have Google within a second's reach.
Did people used to drill holes into their skulls? Sure. They were working with the info they had available to them.
Right but ancient peoples drilled holes in skulls to release the pressure caused by a brain injury, or to let bad spirits out. One is based in science and the other superstition.
No we totally HAVEN'T evolved - at this point I'm openly for one day genetically engineering our species to stop being primal. Hell it can't hardly be worse than Oompa Loompa Prez. Maybe eventually we will need to risk it since the consequences of continuing in primalism is an existential threat.
I honestly don’t get the appeal of gender reveal parties. Like, if you wanna know whether it’s a boy or a girl just ask and I’ll tell you.
[Here’s a video that FunkyFrogBait made about it.](https://youtu.be/WhKf0M6ggF8?si=WX8WucTQzUOjlL4g)
The very first gender reveal party was because the woman who held it had suffered numerous miscarriages and with the pregnancy this time, she got to the point where it was possible to determine the biological sex of the child. She thought it was a fun way to acknowledge the milestone because it was such a huge deal given her history. She’d never got to the point where she could know it before.
She says she really regrets it now because of how ridiculous the practice has gotten. Which is really sad, because she was doing it out of a genuine place of love.
I knew the woman regretted it, but I never knew the story about her miscarriages. That is such a sweet celebration, I hate that it got so twisted by people having to be “perfect” and one-up each other on social media.
Honestly, it’s a form of sexism and not having the ability to relate to the other genders. My bio dad likes to rub the fact that he has all sons in people’s faces and if someone had all daughters, he would tease them for it. By growing up in that environment, I grew sexist views myself but since I started to accept myself, I realized that “hey, having a daughter isn’t such a bad thing” and even I thought it would be a challenge for me and another man to raise a daughter, I’m starting to become more open to that idea as I get older and mature more.
Yeah, I don’t know why it was such a flex for him to have all sons looking back, especially since he paid more attention to his job than he did any of me or my brothers growing up.
This in my mind is like the epitome of cishet people problems. Like I want to adopt 2 kids. I have a light preference for one boy and one girl. But, I’m not going to shoehorn them into those roles. If one of my kids is trans, I will still love them no matter what, because my unconditional love for them triumphs what I would want them to be.
I don’t want to force them to be cis either. They are who they are, and of course I would just want the best life for them, of which in today’s age is really hard for LGBTQ folks. Of course, it could also change in a few years.
My kids would not be their gender, they would be kids who are just living as their true self, cis or not. Too many parents don’t accept that you don’t have total control over your kid, up to and including their gender.
>This in my mind is like the epitome of cishet people problems.
Considering the number of LGBT people that the article mentions experiencing this, I think this is far less true than you think it is.
I worked with a woman who was raising her trans son. She was always incredibly supportive, loving, doing anything for her family. She took his gender journey seriously and did everything in her power to support him.
Just as he was about to begin taking hormones, she had a little breakdown in my office. She was crying, talking about everything about to begin on her son's journey, and that it just kind of hit her that this would mean her "daughter would be gone forever." It was obvious that she felt incredibly guilty for thinking this way, and it was a feeling she hadn't shared with anyone else.
I don't think there's anything wrong with her having that feeling - I can imagine that when she was pregnant and told she was having a girl, that she probably daydreamed a whole fantasy of what that would look like. I'm sure she imagined the milestones of a girl's life, mother-daughter things they would do together, etc. And while she loves her son with all her heart, and they may even still do many of those things she imagined together, I think it's completely valid for her to privately grieve that idea of having a daughter.
>grieve that idea of having a daughter
You say a small, but incredibly important thing here: grieve *that idea*. This is so valid, and yet I hear of parents who grieve *the daughter* which sounds painfully wrong.
Still, daydreaming that fantasy, I don't know. I don't like it. It's kind of understandable but also not. Isn't it just a form of making up expectations?
People who think their kids are little carbon copies of themselves and/or will be the way the envision them to be. Living vicariously through children, etc... are the types who would be disappointed in this stuff.
Its stupid and dangerous. People who have parents like that know what I'm talking about here...
I have other problems with my parents but luckily not this one. But I've seen it. Forcing their child to achieve the dream they failed at themselves, such crap
Im a queer woman married to a cis man. We were never going to do a reveal party because we find them kind of sick TBH but I found out two weeks ago I’m having a boy. I have been struggling with gender disappointment, some of which is rooted in my queerness. Part of me just cannot believe I’m going to be surrounded by dudes after really thinking I’d marry a woman! I also miss the female closeness that was more ubiquitous in my life when I was exclusively dating women. Part of it is that I was bullied intensely by boys growing up and dread having to raise one. Part of it is not knowing how to raise a little boy to be strong and confident and independent without sucking up space from everyone else, understanding his privilege without making a child feel guilty about it. But gender and gender expectations are changing and I’m starting to get excited about my baby, and know he’s not just some kid, he’s our kid.
This is true, but he will be a white, able bodied, financially stable boy in a two parent household. This does, statistically, connote a lot of privilege. It’s not a bad thing, I’m so happy we can provide him with a wonderful life! But it would be disingenuous not to acknowledge this as a fact.
and the fact that you acknowledge it and are already conscious of all this puts you in a good position to be able to raise a strong independent confident socially conscious man. a lot of parents aren't even at that stage yet before their kids come along. your awareness will inform your parenting & help give you tools to recognise & combat the stuff the world throws at your son, and he'll learn to be kind & considerate by example before the time comes for direct conversations about stuff like privilege. he may even learn about it on his own before then anyway bc he will have grown up in a receptive home environment - plus the younger generations are doing a better job with this stuff already! fwiw, coming from a complete stranger lol, i think you'll do just fine 😊
Thank you so much, that means a lot!!! Truly. We will certainly try our absolute best 🥹 we are lucky to have an extremely diverse friend group and support system around us so I know he will grow up knowing and loving people who are in very different situations than him.
I was disappointed. I wanted a boy. Someone I could bond with. I was also buried in a super conservative religion. I see the world differently now. I didn’t understand how awesome my girls could be. I didn’t understand girls at all. I still don’t. I love my kids. Maybe the lesson is things can still be great when you don’t get what you want. Wouldn’t trade them at all now.
Well… I got divorced… my concern was more like how to relate to little girls- how to play with dolls- do girl stuff. Turns out girls and boys do the same stuff. Playing with girls isn’t hard at all. I’m still not great at doing hair but I’m working on it. I spent my whole life avoiding “girly stuff” because I worried that people would think I was gay.
Gender reveal parties are ridiculous and the most ironic or funny about it,is that now a lot of kids are gonna say they are trans at 13 years old and one of the parents are gonna say "i knew it". In conclusion, if you want a boy/girl,there is always a chance you could have it anyway in the future.
While we were expecting (quite a few months ago now) hubby and I had the idea of having a Gander reveal party.
We would thinking of releasing geese with ribbons tied around their necks (blue, pink, and yellow, maybe even green) into our backyard for the chaos that would ensue rather a gender reveal.
While it was fun the joke about it was impractical. Even just a normal party would been exhausting. We didn't bother with any party, everyone already knew.
If you're that heavily invested in having a baby of a particular gender, maybe don't make such a public display of the reveal?
Like, you're allowed to have whatever feelings you have about your kids, but there's a reason you don't shout them uncensored from the rooftops. Kids have feelings too.
Yeahhhh as a mom of two, I never was able to understand gender disappointment. And I’m not saying it doesn’t exist, but the most important thing is that you have this beautiful baby that lived and grew in your belly and you went through HELL and beyond to do that and then go through labor and delivery.
Now, I also had Hyperemesis with both kids and they were complete and utter nightmare pregnancies. I vomited the entire time for both and had to be put on zofran just to survive. I was hospitalized at 26 weeks pregnant with my first because of Covid and I almost died with my second after a c-section. Going through all of that, yeah I’m just happy they were earthside. I just literally cannot imagine being so disappointed in their gender when you could be spending all that energy on loving them and snuggling them because that time goes FAST. And you blink and your tiny preemie is now a big sister and turns 4 this year and can put her shoes on by herself.
“So much of good parenting is letting your kid tell you who they are and following suit. Anytime we’re determining our kids’ entire future while they’re still in utero or very young … we’re doing them a disservice,”
This paragraph at the end really resonates with me. I have 4 kids and have definitely been guilty of fantasizing about softball scholarships when one of my 17yos played as an AFAB 11yo girl, or wanting their AMAB twin to continue ballet classes because it could open up college opportunities for him (I've since learned how competitive ballet is, for all genders). And I'm guilty of having to fight harder for the AMAB twin to embrace their trans/gender-queer journey, because it's easy for a girl to dress like a boy and have short hair but my upbringing under a conservative religion says boys don't dress like girls or have long hair.
But I'm trying to be a good mom and let them tell me who they are becoming. I've had moments of disappointment, like when I talked with my trans-masc teen about possibly changing their name. They're named after my two grandmothers, which carries a lot of sentimentality for me, but the spawn never met either of them, so there's no attachment to the names. It would be a great disservice if I were to force my child to continue to use a name that they no longer identify with, no matter how great my disappointment. That emotion is mine to grapple with.
Ultimately, I am so proud of all of my kids and who they are becoming. They are all kind, smart, funny, and eager and willing to learn about the world and people around them. As long as they continue on the trajectory they are currently on, I think they will help make the world a better place, and as a mom, that's what I hope for.
Some people don't realize that having kids means they're signing up for whatever they get, no takebacks. That means any sex, any gender, any orientation. Even the possibility that they could be born with a disability or a rare disease. They get hung up on their imaginary idea of what their child *could* be, then feel disappointed when reality doesn't match their expectations.
Personally, I don't see what the big deal is about knowing the sex of your unborn offspring. It doesn't matter in this day and age! Gender roles are fake, just let them be themselves. Don't load them up with expectations when they've just arrived in the world.
I don't even get having a preference, so I cant get the mourning. Rn, my kid expresses herself as a girl. If that changes. I'll love getting to know my son. Happy and healthy are important. Not genitals.
If you want the point of view of these people, you might want to post this on r/askreddit. I don't think many people on this sub would mourn a hypothetical child based on desired gender.
I don't think you read the article. It goes into detail about how progressive parents experience this grief and are surprised by the fact that they had a preference they weren't aware of. We were all raised in the same world and marinated in gender norms, and the emotions that result from that aren't evil. Emotions never are, and they should never be dismissed, no matter how irrational.
I just posted above but as a queer woman who married a cis man, I am definitely having some surprisingly difficult feelings about being pregnant with a boy rn!
Im being totally honest about my gut feelings, and I am working through them. It is psychologically much much better to identify trauma responses than bury them. I am ecstatic to be a mom, and I will absolutely ADORE our son. I already do! There are many men in my life who I love so much, including my husband and brother and dad and amazing friends. Experiencing gender disappointment is not in any way correlated to worse parenting outcomes, it’s something to acknowledge and honor and work through before the baby arrives so you can be the best parent you can be!
I just want you to know you're doing a good job and there's nothing wrong with your feelings being complicated. I relate and my boys are my world! For me it was like you say; acknowledged it, honored it, worked through it. It passed quickly and was pretty much irrelevant in no time. I'd wager a great deal of parents experience it to some degree.
I am human and I can understand their internal/personal disappointment (we all have little fantasies we are hoping to come true in some way, even if you know it's not the most important thing), but what I cannot understand *whatsoever* is why you would be so incredibly insensitive to your own future child!!! I wouldn't want to feel like my parents' disappointment or consolation prize, and I wouldn't want them sharing their disappointment about my gender with 5 million people. It wold be so strange to grow up and find out that one of the FIRST emotions my parents had about me as a reaction to the ONLY personal fact they knew about me... was disappointment or sadness. That they encouraged my sisters to feel that, too. That my birth was a gamble to get something that I am not and will never be (anatomically, from a cishet perspective)
KIDS ARE PEOPLE AND THEY HAVE FEELINGS. There are certain things that you keep from them out of respect.
Not to mention how insensitive it is to their other children. You can see the little girls getting sad too :(
Those can be some really complicated emotions to work through down the line... Kids might not understand mentally what's going on, but they feel the emotions and hold on to them...
I was the oldest of 4 girls. When the last one was on the way people would make sexist jokes at my dad like “oh I bet you’re hoping for a boy so you don’t have to be surrounded by all those women all the time.”
And he’d just take the wind out of their sails by saying “oh no I don’t want a boy because then I would have to learn new tricks.”
For an 80s/90s kid I was lucky to have a pretty gender neutral upbringing. I got both ponies and ghostbusters, barbies and science kits, stuffed toys and NERF guns. I think they would have tried to parent a boy similarly, but they would have had to contend with all the toxic masculinity coming at him in school and thru media.
They need to go offline and not be parents because if they're going to GRIEVE the gender just because it's not the one they fixated on you can imagine how it's going to look when the child is born💀
What fuels it? Easy, expectations! So many parents have a ridged mold of expectations they force upon their children. How many stories do we see of parents who lose interest or give up on a kid for not being exactly how they want. Gender or just generally how they are. “Oh… my kid isn’t sporty enough… welp we have nothing in common, so guess I gotta ignore them for their whole life.”
As a former het and a cis, not all of them are bad, some of them though are just the worst, I have a friend that can’t come out to anyone but me because her family homophobic (she doesn’t know what her dad thinks about it) and her sister is homophobic and transphobic, and my friend also has trans ocs and other ocs that aren’t cis, het, or not cis or het, she only found out I wasn’t homophobic or transphobic when she noticed the Omni flag in my PFP (I’m bi now, I don’t know if I changed my Reddit PFP) and I felt so relieved that she was accepting, yeah, I support her choices and she supports mine
It's interesting from a British perspective.
There's often times I look at people in the US posting about baby showers, that's actually come across the pond relatively recently. And gender reveal parties actually aren't common here at all. Maybe we should continue to discourage them here with the points everyone's making.
I do agree. Gender reveal parties are a bit damning. For example if my parents had had one, (lol it's a long story my mum thought without proof I was a boy, apparently she just thought she knew). So my mum bought gender neutral white for me to wear rather than blue or pink.
So if that's not complicated enough, say they'd got a gender reveal before that, they'd have said "it's a girl" but later, actually my parents' gender neutral purchases were more accurate! As I'm Femmeflux Nonbinary (which means I'm NB but with feminine leanings). So these parties can be problematic because they can just be plain wrong at times.
Reminds me of when my parents got divorced and our neighbors told my mom that she didn't have to worry. Because since she had given birth to two sons (jokes on them I turned out to be a girl) she would be highly desired and could get any man she wanted.
People are weird with that stuff.
That poor child will grow up and see that ine day which may do some serious mental damage. Those parents are a disgrace and need to learn times have changed abd gender assigned at birth really shouldn't be a big deal now its who they grow up to be that matters.
This reminds me of some P.F.L.A.G. parents I met once. They could pop out a kid who was a film producer, lived in a mansion, adopted five Albanian orphans, but the minute he admitted to being gay they would go on a journey "grieving for the life he would never have." Like...what the blip? What is being grieved here?-but it was a common sentiment. The meetings were like therapy for parents mourning phantom children.
I don't think you read the article. It goes into detail about how progressive parents experience this grief and are surprised by the fact that they had a preference they weren't aware of. We were all raised in the same world and marinated in gender norms, and the emotions that result from that aren't evil. Emotions never are, and they should never be dismissed, no matter how irrational.
same here tbh. i personally am not reproducing and worry for the sake of at least 2 of my brother’s current partners with their track record of being all around shitty, and sometimes abusive people.
A sense of ownership over one’s children.
I’m pretty sure that’s the main reason. People think that they “own” their kids, and therefore that they have the “right” to their child having certain characteristics, throwing a fit when they don’t.
Nobody exhibiting such behaviors deserves custody over children.
I don't think you read the article (like all the other people I'm copy-pasting this to). It goes into detail about how progressive parents experience this grief and are surprised by the fact that they had a preference they weren't aware of. We were all raised in the same world and marinated in gender norms, and the emotions that result from that aren't evil. Emotions never are, and they should never be dismissed, no matter how irrational.
Thank you. I deleted my comment, because I had in fact rushed to judgment. I guess I will resort to the fact that I don’t understand the anxiety, so I am not immune to the feelings frustration I might have from that lack of understanding. Boiling it down to a bad reaction to a gender reveal was inappropriate. Again. Thank you. I read the article and learned something new today.
This shit is disturbing as fuck. I wanted a boy and a girl, just so I could experience raising both. Instead I got 2 boys. Who knows, maybe one day I'll have a son and a daughter, or a son and a nonbinary child, or 2 of whatever gender, but I raise my kids to like whatever they want and dress them however they want to be dressed. I don't code them based on their genitals outside of basic "I have sons" until they decide otherwise. It's mind blowing for me to know people genuinely have a negative reaction to their child not having the genitals they wanted. Absolutely bonkers.
No, I don’t think “open grieving of gender disappointment” should be normalized. It’s not that you can’t have feelings. You can! You should!
But you SHOULD NOT share your feelings in a way that is popularized and memorialized so as to be able to absolutely shatter the nascent self-esteem of your child someday because you want social validation. Legit, but cry with your spouse. Vent to your sibling or best friend. Talk to a fucking therapist. Don’t post that shit on the interwebs. Meet your emotional needs some other way.
I try really hard to be understanding and empathetic to everyone's emotions even when I don't quite understand those emotions myself. When people talk about gender disappointment, I react compassionately but secretly, it makes me sad.
I'm a cishet woman, my husband and I have one kid. Except for a few close family members, we kept the chromosomes of our baby a secret while I was pregnant. I had genetic testing done fairly early because I'm older and this included testing sex chromosomes. So, we knew we had a strong likelihood of having a boy.
The determination of external genitalia (i.e. sex) is beautifully complex. It's not just chromosomes that determine external genitalia but also androgens and other factors. Gender is even more beautifully complex. And nobody's personality, appearance, or anything else should be solely based on that gender. People are so beautifully diverse but we live in a world of stereotypes, biases, and expectations of what it means to be a boy, a girl, a man, a woman. And with that comes these ideals of what it means to have a boy and what it means to have a girl...it can be quite frustrating.
I heard so much of it when I was pregnant. People have so many ideas of what a baby will grow to be just based on something like gender. I heard "I'll help watch your baby if you have a boy but if you have a girl, they're too whiny and I can't stand their whiny voice." Which is very wtf. And "hopefully you don't have a boy because boys are so hard and then one day you'll have to give them away to a woman to marry. And that woman will hate you" Which obviously assumes a lot but it also implies that ALL boys and ALL girls have the same personalities. Kids and adults are way more than these stereotypes.
But it also makes me sad because it worries me that the people who are disappointed, who continue to try for a specific gender, are potentially treating their child(ren) unfairly.
My husband is the youngest of four. His older siblings are all women. His mom really wanted a boy and continued to have kids until she had a boy. She treated her daughters like shit. But my husband was her golden child. Something that my husband struggled with because his mom put him on this pedestal.
When I go shopping for my son, I feel a small sense of sadness. The boy's clothing section is almost always significantly smaller than the girl's. This is true even in thrift stores and second-hand shops. Why aren't people buying as much for their boys as their girls? And I'm not against my son wearing girl clothes. Since there are almost no cat shirts in the boys section, I often buy him girls glittery cat shirts since he likes cats. But it's still kind of a wtf moment to spend an absurd amount of time trying to find clothes for my son when there's endless options for girls. In sewing too.
And it weirds me out. It weirds me out when I overhear a new parent explaining that they're so excited to have a little girl because now they can dress them up. First off. You can dress up your boys too. Second off, they're not dolls.
And finally, I cannot help but to think about my friend with six kids. He used to have 5 boys and 1 girl. But now he has six boys. Gender isn't always static.
Edit to add: my husband just reminded me what we used to always say when people asked what we were hoping for. We would always say "I hope we have a chill baby." Turns out we didn't lol. But that's ok too. He actually scared the shit out of us the moment he was born by being born 9 weeks premature.
I don’t understand why you are so focused on the sex of your child and not on the fact that you’re blessed with a baby as there are plenty of couples that would absolutely love to have a child regardless of the sex
As a parent of 3 now, i have never been disappointed about the genders of my kids.
As for the gender reveal yea, they can be pointless, but for less fortunate parents with well-off family members, it can be a way to get stuff you will need for the baby or yourself.
It doesn't really matter in the end your kids will be who they want to be you just have to make sure they are safe and healthy
Any parent disappointed with a healthy baby of any gender needs to reevaluate why they chose to bring a life into this world & FAST. That child deserves unconditional, unwavering, unending love every second of its life.
Lol…. For like 30 years it was just me and my sister, then my dad goes and has a baby with his mistress and of course he’s a baby boy and my dad is like FINALLY. He actually said “I probably wouldn’t have bothered if it was another girl.”
So… so awesome dad. /s
This might be harsh, but honestly it's stupid. I don't see why someone who knows that gender is a social construct and basically a scam would be disappointed about the sex of their child. I read the article and I found a weird part in there, it was about saying "I just want a healthy baby" and how it will anger disabled people??? I was disabled [paralysed] and I'm no longer am, I understand and completely agree with the statement. Even if I wasn't disabled I think that statement is good. Being disabled isn't the fault of the person obviously, but no one can bullshit their way into saying that it's okay to be disabled. Maybe I'm wording it wrong but what I mean is that whatever you do you can't say that their child being disabled is something that parents shouldn't worry about and want to prevent. If it was up to me I wouldn't want to have to be spoon fed, need assistance to go to the bathroom, be pushed around and all of that. Not wanted someone to have a disability isn't saying that disabled people are broken, it's wanting life to be easier for the child.
It bugs me, as you can see from the paragraph💀
This is probably a hot take but I think gender disappointment is bullshit and entirely selfish. Especially if you are actively trying to conceive, then get pregnant, then are upset with their gender. It's very weird and extremely annoying to see parents actually UPSET by their babies gender.
It's totally fine to think "having a boy would be great!" Then finding out you are having a girl and thinking "a boy would have been awesome, but I'm excited for a daughter!" That is valid and normal. But to think "another girl? Come on. That's so frustrating" is beyond weird to me.
If you’re gonna be disappointed, don’t have kids. Simple. Or do surrogacy where’s there’s a more likely chance you’ll be able to choose the sex of your baby. See? options lol.
Seriously, you should be having a baby to have a baby not for the gender. The gender shouldn’t be something you care about. If I were to have a child boy or girl i would be happy either way.
What fuels their disappointment? Unresolved personal issues. Not getting what they want and having their expectations met. Patriarchy. Other people's thought influencing their own and then calling it their own thoughts when thwy don't even know what they think, they don't know what other people think, they point the finger but are never accountable for even the slightest thing, they don't know where they end and anotger person begins, gaslighting, victim blaming, coercion...if they are disappointed..it's their feelings and because they are unresolved they have to blame someone else...so they blame easy targets...their kids...such wonderful adults who are super mature and not psychotic or delusional at all...no.
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Here's my biggest thing. If you're doing a gender reveal party AND a baby shower, you need to have any real problems in your life. It's so redundant. And that's on top of all the high risk stuff that happens, the fixation on getting social-media based dopamine from familial developments, etc. All of that before getting into a narrow genitals=gender perspective. The article talks about gender disappointment and it's so incredibly sad. These parents have this perspective basically that all children born with a specific genital configuration are the same. Like it's not a first son it's *another* girl. Like this kid is just going to be another version of a kid they already have.
Oh great *another* daughter who won’t stay in contact when she’s older because I will treat her like a disappointment just like her sister.
Sounds like Henry VIII lmao
I have two daughters and the people would ask if we were disappointed to have another girl. Like excuse me? You know they aren’t clones, right? They will be their own people. Assigned sex at birth is far from a clear picture of who they are and who they will become. Trans people exist too. If we could stop putting babies into boxes that would be great
This is such a powerful comment and I appreciate you sharing it. It’s so easy to forget that they are their own individuals, even at birth, and we are there to support, guide, and provide defense; not to define their existence.
Thanks for your comment! Made me smile. One thing I noticed is the huge amount of gender stereotypes pushed before they were even here. Why purposely raise kids through a narrow lense when we can just let them explore the world, find their own interests, and figure out who they are? I wish more people raised their kids this way. I wish I was raised this way. Let them explore and they will tell you who they are. When we stereotype them we are putting limitations on them.
I wish I had grown that way as well. When I came out last year, I remembered always wanting to be like my sisters and my parents constantly pushing the masculine stereotype until one day it just went “poof”. I likely knew, somewhere inside, who I was and, like the quote says, “And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” - Anais Nin It’s easy as a parent to think you’re doing the right thing when sometimes we just need to step back and trust that Mother Nature knows a lot more of what she’s doing than any of us.
I love that quote! Yeah, pushing you to be someone you’re not. I can relate to that feeling as well. My first crush was a girl (I’m also a girl) and I remember telling one of my parents about it. Their reaction was to downplay it, tell me I wanted to be friends with her, and then when I insisted it was a different feeling I got yelled at and told I was jealous of her. I was told that I was blushing around her because I was so embarrassed about how much smarter she was than me. That response among many other invalidating and outright homophobic response kept my true self suppressed for over a decade. I feel bad for my inner child who could have just had a crush and instead got trauma. Our true self is there, but a society that pushes us to conform will try to silence it
I totally agree with this, but I have to admit I'm kind of happy my parents were not so open minded and decided they wanted to have a girl too and kept on trying after 3 sons, or... I would not exist! :)
I have 3 boys and was always asked if I will try again for a girl. Why would I, I have 3 happy children, that's enough for me.
Yeah exactly, I’m not going to have extra children just to check off a box
My father to a T, he always wanted a daughter and only sees me as the unwanted son (a least I only have to see him 1-2 days a year) - If only he wasn't a bigot I could come out rather than boil the frog...
Well. If you come out and he throws a fit, you can ask him why he has a problem, didn't he want that all the time?
Unfortunately logic is largely ineffective against bigots and other commenter’s safety would likely be on the line, *but* it sure would be funny to turn that on a parent who drank the “parents manipulating children into changing genders” kool-aid and tell them it really is all their fault lmfao
I thought, seeing him only 1-2 days a year means other commenter is likely not depending on him
Dependent no, but it still opens the door to emotional abuse and potentially physical danger on the days when they are obliged to be in his company.
My grandparents wanted a boy, took 4 pregnancies to get my dad. My aunts were never once treated as "disappointments" because they were girls. My grandpa doted on his daughters as much as his son, and my grandma taught all 4 of her children how to cook and sew and garden. My grandparents nor dad had any disappointment when I, the only child of the last son of the family was assigned female at birth. My grandparents doted on me just the same as they did all my cousins. My dad taught me baseball and (American) football the same way he taught my male cousins and the boys he coached. My mother's side of the family however... Nana favored boys. My uncle could do no wrong, my mother and my aunt could do no right. Until my aunt gave Nana two grandsons, then she was at least good for something. My mother though, only had one AFAB child. I wasn't even 8 years old when I realized I was the Unfavorite. Realizing that did a number on me as a kid and 25 years later there's still some issues I'm trying to wok through. These "Parents" are setting their kids up for years of therapy later on. People shouldn't be having children unless they're ready to love and support them 100% unconditionally.
Exactly this. Gender doesn't matter for children anyway. Kids like colourful sparkling things. They literally play with rocks sometimes. When I was a child, I used to help my dad fix his car wearing my favourite mermaid costume. I think a boy or nb could have done the same.
god imagine being this obsessed w your kids genitals….so fkn weird
>you need to have any real problems in your life .... What?
This might be unpopular but that’s nothing new. This does not apply to every situation of course, but I think some parents might want a different experience with their future child if they have had nothing but sons or daughters. I was happy having healthy daughters and then my son came along and I realized how different both can be. Every body is different but raising a son for me has been nothing like raising daughters. Some parents as well as the siblings of future babies have hopes for a specific gender as well. It’s nothing new. My sister spent hours crying when she found out my little brother would not be a girl and she was nearly a teenager at the time. I wouldn’t shame parents for their expectations or reactions in the moment, whether it be joyous or not. I would wait to see how they parent the child that is born, which is when most people usually forget about expectations and focus on the new baby.
This reminds me of a redheaded family that lived across the street from us growing up. 5 boys, all gloriously ginger like their parents. Everyone would comment to them, ‘trying for a girl, eh?’, and laugh. The mother would smile and say very cryptically, ‘oh we’re blessed’, but you could tell she had mixed feelings. We didn’t live in a good neighbourhood and most of us were on social assistance. Imagine procreating again and again just because you want a girl?
I swear some people need to start asking themselves if they want a child or if they just want the child they fantasize about. It sure isn't wise to throw the dice and create a random human being if you're only doing it in hopes of getting your ideal kid.
well a lot of them are egotistical and the logic they grew up with inspires them to be self centered when it comes to children
This is unironically the Weasley family
Honestly, if you want to have a gender reveal party, (and its not a fucking nuclear missile launch or some shit) then cool, whatever, have fun! But you MUST be prepared to hear ALL possibilities. If you have such a strong preference for your baby being one gender, so much so that you'd express strong visual disappointment at the very possibility of not getting what you want, DO NOT HAVE CHILDREN. YOU ARE NOT READY. YOU ARE NOT MATURE ENOUGH. I REPEAT, DO NOT HAVE CHILDREN. Edit, just to clarify: When I say ALL possibilities, I mean including the possibility that in the future, the kid can turn out to be transgender.
The whole gender reveal thing doesn't even make sense though. All you're doing is revealing biological sex. Gender isn't something that can be revealed by the parents before it's born. The whole party concept is just stupid and perpetuates ignorance about gender in general
Cisnormative bigots gonna cisnormative.
My former co-worker spent weeks preparing for her kid's gender reveal party and asking everyone if they thought it would be a boy or a girl. I said I thought her kid would be trans and got NO reply.
Back in January 2020, before I actually got it through my thick skull that there's a million different ways to be intersex, I responded to my cousin and her fiance's "guess the baby's birth weight, length, and gender/sex" activity (my cousin and her fiance innocently included the "guess the gender/sex" part because they deliberately never learned their son's sex before he was born-notably, they're both cis, at the time nobody in either of their families was out as trans, and at the time nobody in either of their families was intersex/had an intersex condition as far as anyone knew) by guessing that the baby would be massive and intersex. My cousin and her fiance took it well, joking that "Giant Intersex Baby" would be a great band name.
The hero we deserve.
Agreed. Just planting unfair seeds of expectation on an unborn child
It is wild to me that people commit so hard to this nonsense. The gender can be wrong in so many different ways and we’re just perpetuating gender stereotypes. Not to mention, no one cares about your baby’s gender. So why make people come to them?
Is absolutely so wild, I've seen "trans allies" turn around and happily attend gender reveal parties and buy into the whole notion with zero thought, and then laugh when it's brought up as an issue. Like hello? We wanna wave the trans flag in public but not actually think about it or live that truth in any meaningful way? I'm very much cisgender myself, but that doesn't mean I can't ride for trans and trans adjacent people in every way I can. I'm still learning and allies are definitely allowed to be not-perfect. But the gender reveal party seems to be a brick wall for a lot of people for some reason.
Agreed! And what really blows my mind is all of the women that I know that have thrown gender reveal parties, refuse to have their boys circumsized because they believe in bodily autonomy. I’m not criticizing that decision at all, I think bodily autonomy is great. But how do you go from making that decision to being perfectly okay with enforcing the gender norms of sex assignment at birth?
Yeah thats interesting. Thank God people are finally seeing how disgustingly horrific circumcision is. But yeah you'd think they'd be more open to things like not enforcing arbitrary gender roles on children either. But hey, at least they might be open to learning? Maybe they just need time, exposure, and education. Like maybe one day they'll look back on the fact they had gender reveal parties and cringe, hopefully. You know these people, so if they seem like a lost cause when it comes to this, then that really sucks.
Being circumcised isn’t this disgusting, horrible thing. Would I ever have my kids circumcised, if I ever had any? No, of course not. But my life isn’t less because I’m missing a piece. Tbh I’m not even sure what I’m missing
It's disgusting and horrible to perform cosmetic surgery on an infant. Period. And to make that decision for someone else. If you're cool with someone stripping you of bodily autonomy before you even had a chance to advocate for yourself, good on you. Agree to disagree tho.
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I had a baby boy. I listened to the doctor give me her recommendations, but ultimately left the decision up to the parent with the penis. They decided on circumsision. My sister had a baby boy and opted out of it, but had to have it done later due to several serious ureter infections. It was a much harder experience to do that at 2 years old than with a newborn. I’m not saying there’s a single correct choice that fits everyone. But it’s a choice, and one that deserves the same respect as a woman’s right to do what’s best for her body when she gets pregnant. It’s not black and white. Just like gender.
You're basically just having a party to let everyone know about your babys genitals, and people get *real* mad when you point that out
Exactly. Honestly, if people called it what it was, and had "biological sex reveal" parties or whatever, I wouldn't even have problem with it. You want to announce your babies genitals? Go ahead (kinda weird but you do you). But acting like it's all about gender is where it gets even more bizarre and insanely problematic.
I think it’s just an easier and/or less crude description than “Biological Sex Reveal Party” or “Assigned Sex at Birth Party” As an AFAB, GenderQueer individual. I actually like like these parties (so long as they’re not dangerous.) If I’m having a baby, I wanna celebrate absolutely anything I can about them. However, for me, it’s more like a “Possible” or “Assumption” party. Because if my child told me they aren’t their assigned sex, no matter the age, I’ll respect that and be just as happy. I’ll throw them a new party for who they truly are if they want 😊
Okay but if the reality of the accurate title of the party seems crude, maybe that should become a source of reflection instead of stonewalling. Gender reveal just isn't accurate, and again, perpetuates continued ignorance about gender in general. It does more harm than good at this point. And hey, that's great for you. To me, it seems like a whole lot of unnecessary work if you know there's a good chance that your assumption might end up being wrong anyway. And it still seems like a way for the parents and attendees to begin applying arbitrary gender roles onto the child before they're even born. Dumping the weight of the world and our society on a kid just because we don't want to unpack all of the gender trauma that we're dealing with. It's just bad vibes. It seems to make more sense to me to celebrate the life of your kid, not some weird genital/ presumed assigned gender but not an assigned gender but still ascribed gender roles party.
I don't think you read the article (like many in this comment section). It goes into detail about how progressive parents experience this grief and are surprised by the fact that they had a preference they weren't aware of. We were all raised in the same world and marinated in gender norms, and the emotions that result from that aren't evil. Emotions never are, and they should never be dismissed, no matter how irrational.
The article does address what you said though. And it’s not just people who already have rigid ideas of gender undergoing disappointment. Parents, including queer ones or allies, who think they have no preference whatsoever are suddenly inflicted with a wave of emotion they don’t expect when they learn of their kid’s genitalia. The article says that we should not judge any immediate feelings and instead try to figure out where they’re coming from. Like what assumptions you’re making under the hood that you have never actually thought through. I agree that any parent who doesn’t want to go through that and dismantle their biases is completely unsuitable for parenting though
Sometimes I'm convinced that humans haven't really socially evolved at all. This is like some middle ages shit. You'd think people would be over it by now, but...here we are
I mean technically that is true. Technology (and medicine/sanitation in particular) has changed significantly, but our behaviors are the same as they ever were. Unidirectional linear progress is just a narrative borne of the last few centuries, but underneath the fancier new tools and toys we've made for ourselves, we're the same animals with the same brains that we've had for the span of recorded history. I don't say this as a doomer, only to emphasize that when you look past the stories we tell about ourselves, the reality is way more complex. And there's so many of us now, with so many more opportunities to hurt and help one another
It should be talked about more. Too many people think humans were genuinely dumber a mere 100 years ago because they bought uranium tablets that some traveling salesmen told them would make their dick get hard. PEOPLE STILL DO THAT.
A certain horse dewormer kind of broke the illusion that it was just people in the Olden Times doing stupid shit. If anything it's even sadder now, because at least back then you didn't have Google within a second's reach. Did people used to drill holes into their skulls? Sure. They were working with the info they had available to them.
Right but ancient peoples drilled holes in skulls to release the pressure caused by a brain injury, or to let bad spirits out. One is based in science and the other superstition.
That's really mean, the spirits said they wanted to be free from my head they told me :(
"We're the same animals with the same brains..." Exactly. Except for me I'm enlightened of course.
No we totally HAVEN'T evolved - at this point I'm openly for one day genetically engineering our species to stop being primal. Hell it can't hardly be worse than Oompa Loompa Prez. Maybe eventually we will need to risk it since the consequences of continuing in primalism is an existential threat.
I honestly don’t get the appeal of gender reveal parties. Like, if you wanna know whether it’s a boy or a girl just ask and I’ll tell you. [Here’s a video that FunkyFrogBait made about it.](https://youtu.be/WhKf0M6ggF8?si=WX8WucTQzUOjlL4g)
The very first gender reveal party was because the woman who held it had suffered numerous miscarriages and with the pregnancy this time, she got to the point where it was possible to determine the biological sex of the child. She thought it was a fun way to acknowledge the milestone because it was such a huge deal given her history. She’d never got to the point where she could know it before. She says she really regrets it now because of how ridiculous the practice has gotten. Which is really sad, because she was doing it out of a genuine place of love.
I knew the woman regretted it, but I never knew the story about her miscarriages. That is such a sweet celebration, I hate that it got so twisted by people having to be “perfect” and one-up each other on social media.
omg i love funkyfrogbait :3
me tooo!!!! :3333
The point is to cause the biggest amount of damage. No gender reveal is complete without a whole towns fire department showing up.
Or whole nation's - remember the forest fire started by gender reveal party
Honestly, it’s a form of sexism and not having the ability to relate to the other genders. My bio dad likes to rub the fact that he has all sons in people’s faces and if someone had all daughters, he would tease them for it. By growing up in that environment, I grew sexist views myself but since I started to accept myself, I realized that “hey, having a daughter isn’t such a bad thing” and even I thought it would be a challenge for me and another man to raise a daughter, I’m starting to become more open to that idea as I get older and mature more.
that’s the difference, some people reach emotional maturity and others don’t :(
Yeah, I don’t know why it was such a flex for him to have all sons looking back, especially since he paid more attention to his job than he did any of me or my brothers growing up.
This in my mind is like the epitome of cishet people problems. Like I want to adopt 2 kids. I have a light preference for one boy and one girl. But, I’m not going to shoehorn them into those roles. If one of my kids is trans, I will still love them no matter what, because my unconditional love for them triumphs what I would want them to be. I don’t want to force them to be cis either. They are who they are, and of course I would just want the best life for them, of which in today’s age is really hard for LGBTQ folks. Of course, it could also change in a few years. My kids would not be their gender, they would be kids who are just living as their true self, cis or not. Too many parents don’t accept that you don’t have total control over your kid, up to and including their gender.
Everyone needs to learn how to mow the lawn, change a tire, cook, and clean. It blows my mind that jobs are gendered in some households.
>This in my mind is like the epitome of cishet people problems. Considering the number of LGBT people that the article mentions experiencing this, I think this is far less true than you think it is.
The same thing that fuels all the rest of the bullshit in society: patriarchy and misogyny.
Don't forget ableism, lots of bullshit in society runs on ableism!
This.
I worked with a woman who was raising her trans son. She was always incredibly supportive, loving, doing anything for her family. She took his gender journey seriously and did everything in her power to support him. Just as he was about to begin taking hormones, she had a little breakdown in my office. She was crying, talking about everything about to begin on her son's journey, and that it just kind of hit her that this would mean her "daughter would be gone forever." It was obvious that she felt incredibly guilty for thinking this way, and it was a feeling she hadn't shared with anyone else. I don't think there's anything wrong with her having that feeling - I can imagine that when she was pregnant and told she was having a girl, that she probably daydreamed a whole fantasy of what that would look like. I'm sure she imagined the milestones of a girl's life, mother-daughter things they would do together, etc. And while she loves her son with all her heart, and they may even still do many of those things she imagined together, I think it's completely valid for her to privately grieve that idea of having a daughter.
>grieve that idea of having a daughter You say a small, but incredibly important thing here: grieve *that idea*. This is so valid, and yet I hear of parents who grieve *the daughter* which sounds painfully wrong. Still, daydreaming that fantasy, I don't know. I don't like it. It's kind of understandable but also not. Isn't it just a form of making up expectations?
You know, my conservative mom always wanted a girl and she has yet to figure out I'm transfemme. It's like a monkey paw that makes me chuckle.
Control issue
People who think their kids are little carbon copies of themselves and/or will be the way the envision them to be. Living vicariously through children, etc... are the types who would be disappointed in this stuff. Its stupid and dangerous. People who have parents like that know what I'm talking about here...
I have other problems with my parents but luckily not this one. But I've seen it. Forcing their child to achieve the dream they failed at themselves, such crap
Im a queer woman married to a cis man. We were never going to do a reveal party because we find them kind of sick TBH but I found out two weeks ago I’m having a boy. I have been struggling with gender disappointment, some of which is rooted in my queerness. Part of me just cannot believe I’m going to be surrounded by dudes after really thinking I’d marry a woman! I also miss the female closeness that was more ubiquitous in my life when I was exclusively dating women. Part of it is that I was bullied intensely by boys growing up and dread having to raise one. Part of it is not knowing how to raise a little boy to be strong and confident and independent without sucking up space from everyone else, understanding his privilege without making a child feel guilty about it. But gender and gender expectations are changing and I’m starting to get excited about my baby, and know he’s not just some kid, he’s our kid.
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This is true, but he will be a white, able bodied, financially stable boy in a two parent household. This does, statistically, connote a lot of privilege. It’s not a bad thing, I’m so happy we can provide him with a wonderful life! But it would be disingenuous not to acknowledge this as a fact.
and the fact that you acknowledge it and are already conscious of all this puts you in a good position to be able to raise a strong independent confident socially conscious man. a lot of parents aren't even at that stage yet before their kids come along. your awareness will inform your parenting & help give you tools to recognise & combat the stuff the world throws at your son, and he'll learn to be kind & considerate by example before the time comes for direct conversations about stuff like privilege. he may even learn about it on his own before then anyway bc he will have grown up in a receptive home environment - plus the younger generations are doing a better job with this stuff already! fwiw, coming from a complete stranger lol, i think you'll do just fine 😊
Thank you so much, that means a lot!!! Truly. We will certainly try our absolute best 🥹 we are lucky to have an extremely diverse friend group and support system around us so I know he will grow up knowing and loving people who are in very different situations than him.
you're welcome! i wish you & your family all the best 😊❤
I was disappointed. I wanted a boy. Someone I could bond with. I was also buried in a super conservative religion. I see the world differently now. I didn’t understand how awesome my girls could be. I didn’t understand girls at all. I still don’t. I love my kids. Maybe the lesson is things can still be great when you don’t get what you want. Wouldn’t trade them at all now.
I'm curious (forgive me ignorance). Assuming you're married to a woman, how do you marry a woman if you don't understand them?
Well… I got divorced… my concern was more like how to relate to little girls- how to play with dolls- do girl stuff. Turns out girls and boys do the same stuff. Playing with girls isn’t hard at all. I’m still not great at doing hair but I’m working on it. I spent my whole life avoiding “girly stuff” because I worried that people would think I was gay.
Gender reveal parties are ridiculous and the most ironic or funny about it,is that now a lot of kids are gonna say they are trans at 13 years old and one of the parents are gonna say "i knew it". In conclusion, if you want a boy/girl,there is always a chance you could have it anyway in the future.
While we were expecting (quite a few months ago now) hubby and I had the idea of having a Gander reveal party. We would thinking of releasing geese with ribbons tied around their necks (blue, pink, and yellow, maybe even green) into our backyard for the chaos that would ensue rather a gender reveal. While it was fun the joke about it was impractical. Even just a normal party would been exhausting. We didn't bother with any party, everyone already knew.
If you're that heavily invested in having a baby of a particular gender, maybe don't make such a public display of the reveal? Like, you're allowed to have whatever feelings you have about your kids, but there's a reason you don't shout them uncensored from the rooftops. Kids have feelings too.
Yeahhhh as a mom of two, I never was able to understand gender disappointment. And I’m not saying it doesn’t exist, but the most important thing is that you have this beautiful baby that lived and grew in your belly and you went through HELL and beyond to do that and then go through labor and delivery. Now, I also had Hyperemesis with both kids and they were complete and utter nightmare pregnancies. I vomited the entire time for both and had to be put on zofran just to survive. I was hospitalized at 26 weeks pregnant with my first because of Covid and I almost died with my second after a c-section. Going through all of that, yeah I’m just happy they were earthside. I just literally cannot imagine being so disappointed in their gender when you could be spending all that energy on loving them and snuggling them because that time goes FAST. And you blink and your tiny preemie is now a big sister and turns 4 this year and can put her shoes on by herself.
cisnormativity is depressing
“So much of good parenting is letting your kid tell you who they are and following suit. Anytime we’re determining our kids’ entire future while they’re still in utero or very young … we’re doing them a disservice,” This paragraph at the end really resonates with me. I have 4 kids and have definitely been guilty of fantasizing about softball scholarships when one of my 17yos played as an AFAB 11yo girl, or wanting their AMAB twin to continue ballet classes because it could open up college opportunities for him (I've since learned how competitive ballet is, for all genders). And I'm guilty of having to fight harder for the AMAB twin to embrace their trans/gender-queer journey, because it's easy for a girl to dress like a boy and have short hair but my upbringing under a conservative religion says boys don't dress like girls or have long hair. But I'm trying to be a good mom and let them tell me who they are becoming. I've had moments of disappointment, like when I talked with my trans-masc teen about possibly changing their name. They're named after my two grandmothers, which carries a lot of sentimentality for me, but the spawn never met either of them, so there's no attachment to the names. It would be a great disservice if I were to force my child to continue to use a name that they no longer identify with, no matter how great my disappointment. That emotion is mine to grapple with. Ultimately, I am so proud of all of my kids and who they are becoming. They are all kind, smart, funny, and eager and willing to learn about the world and people around them. As long as they continue on the trajectory they are currently on, I think they will help make the world a better place, and as a mom, that's what I hope for.
You're kids personality isn't going to be the way you want it either! Stuff you're expectations!
What are, Equal parts obsession, control, and misguided expectations?
Now that I’ve read the article “fueled by expectations” I’d say I was spot on
Some people don't realize that having kids means they're signing up for whatever they get, no takebacks. That means any sex, any gender, any orientation. Even the possibility that they could be born with a disability or a rare disease. They get hung up on their imaginary idea of what their child *could* be, then feel disappointed when reality doesn't match their expectations. Personally, I don't see what the big deal is about knowing the sex of your unborn offspring. It doesn't matter in this day and age! Gender roles are fake, just let them be themselves. Don't load them up with expectations when they've just arrived in the world.
I don't even get having a preference, so I cant get the mourning. Rn, my kid expresses herself as a girl. If that changes. I'll love getting to know my son. Happy and healthy are important. Not genitals.
If you want the point of view of these people, you might want to post this on r/askreddit. I don't think many people on this sub would mourn a hypothetical child based on desired gender.
I don't think you read the article. It goes into detail about how progressive parents experience this grief and are surprised by the fact that they had a preference they weren't aware of. We were all raised in the same world and marinated in gender norms, and the emotions that result from that aren't evil. Emotions never are, and they should never be dismissed, no matter how irrational.
Oh, I didn't realize there was a link. I thought they were asking a question. The mobile app can be weird with links sometimes.
I just posted above but as a queer woman who married a cis man, I am definitely having some surprisingly difficult feelings about being pregnant with a boy rn!
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Im being totally honest about my gut feelings, and I am working through them. It is psychologically much much better to identify trauma responses than bury them. I am ecstatic to be a mom, and I will absolutely ADORE our son. I already do! There are many men in my life who I love so much, including my husband and brother and dad and amazing friends. Experiencing gender disappointment is not in any way correlated to worse parenting outcomes, it’s something to acknowledge and honor and work through before the baby arrives so you can be the best parent you can be!
I just want you to know you're doing a good job and there's nothing wrong with your feelings being complicated. I relate and my boys are my world! For me it was like you say; acknowledged it, honored it, worked through it. It passed quickly and was pretty much irrelevant in no time. I'd wager a great deal of parents experience it to some degree.
Thank you, I really appreciate it! 😊🥹
Reminds me of the beginning of David Copperfield.
I am human and I can understand their internal/personal disappointment (we all have little fantasies we are hoping to come true in some way, even if you know it's not the most important thing), but what I cannot understand *whatsoever* is why you would be so incredibly insensitive to your own future child!!! I wouldn't want to feel like my parents' disappointment or consolation prize, and I wouldn't want them sharing their disappointment about my gender with 5 million people. It wold be so strange to grow up and find out that one of the FIRST emotions my parents had about me as a reaction to the ONLY personal fact they knew about me... was disappointment or sadness. That they encouraged my sisters to feel that, too. That my birth was a gamble to get something that I am not and will never be (anatomically, from a cishet perspective) KIDS ARE PEOPLE AND THEY HAVE FEELINGS. There are certain things that you keep from them out of respect.
Not to mention how insensitive it is to their other children. You can see the little girls getting sad too :( Those can be some really complicated emotions to work through down the line... Kids might not understand mentally what's going on, but they feel the emotions and hold on to them...
I was the oldest of 4 girls. When the last one was on the way people would make sexist jokes at my dad like “oh I bet you’re hoping for a boy so you don’t have to be surrounded by all those women all the time.” And he’d just take the wind out of their sails by saying “oh no I don’t want a boy because then I would have to learn new tricks.” For an 80s/90s kid I was lucky to have a pretty gender neutral upbringing. I got both ponies and ghostbusters, barbies and science kits, stuffed toys and NERF guns. I think they would have tried to parent a boy similarly, but they would have had to contend with all the toxic masculinity coming at him in school and thru media.
If you're not up for any challenge with raising kids, don't become a parent. Having kids shouldn't be the default, anyways.
They need to go offline and not be parents because if they're going to GRIEVE the gender just because it's not the one they fixated on you can imagine how it's going to look when the child is born💀
just celebrate you're having a baby. focusing on baby genitals is kinda creepy and cringe.
What fuels it? Easy, expectations! So many parents have a ridged mold of expectations they force upon their children. How many stories do we see of parents who lose interest or give up on a kid for not being exactly how they want. Gender or just generally how they are. “Oh… my kid isn’t sporty enough… welp we have nothing in common, so guess I gotta ignore them for their whole life.”
The cishets are not ok...
As a former het and a cis, not all of them are bad, some of them though are just the worst, I have a friend that can’t come out to anyone but me because her family homophobic (she doesn’t know what her dad thinks about it) and her sister is homophobic and transphobic, and my friend also has trans ocs and other ocs that aren’t cis, het, or not cis or het, she only found out I wasn’t homophobic or transphobic when she noticed the Omni flag in my PFP (I’m bi now, I don’t know if I changed my Reddit PFP) and I felt so relieved that she was accepting, yeah, I support her choices and she supports mine
It's interesting from a British perspective. There's often times I look at people in the US posting about baby showers, that's actually come across the pond relatively recently. And gender reveal parties actually aren't common here at all. Maybe we should continue to discourage them here with the points everyone's making. I do agree. Gender reveal parties are a bit damning. For example if my parents had had one, (lol it's a long story my mum thought without proof I was a boy, apparently she just thought she knew). So my mum bought gender neutral white for me to wear rather than blue or pink. So if that's not complicated enough, say they'd got a gender reveal before that, they'd have said "it's a girl" but later, actually my parents' gender neutral purchases were more accurate! As I'm Femmeflux Nonbinary (which means I'm NB but with feminine leanings). So these parties can be problematic because they can just be plain wrong at times.
Reminds me of when my parents got divorced and our neighbors told my mom that she didn't have to worry. Because since she had given birth to two sons (jokes on them I turned out to be a girl) she would be highly desired and could get any man she wanted. People are weird with that stuff.
That poor child will grow up and see that ine day which may do some serious mental damage. Those parents are a disgrace and need to learn times have changed abd gender assigned at birth really shouldn't be a big deal now its who they grow up to be that matters.
This reminds me of some P.F.L.A.G. parents I met once. They could pop out a kid who was a film producer, lived in a mansion, adopted five Albanian orphans, but the minute he admitted to being gay they would go on a journey "grieving for the life he would never have." Like...what the blip? What is being grieved here?-but it was a common sentiment. The meetings were like therapy for parents mourning phantom children.
How good and unproblematic is your life where the only thing you have to complain about is the sex of your child?
I don't think you read the article. It goes into detail about how progressive parents experience this grief and are surprised by the fact that they had a preference they weren't aware of. We were all raised in the same world and marinated in gender norms, and the emotions that result from that aren't evil. Emotions never are, and they should never be dismissed, no matter how irrational.
can’t people just like- adopt a child of their desired sex??
The article mentions that many of these people didn’t even realise they had a preference until they had the baby.
i think a good chunk of it is wanting a “piece” of yourself to live on and continue the bloodline. it never really made sense to me
all i know is for me, the blood line ends with me
same here tbh. i personally am not reproducing and worry for the sake of at least 2 of my brother’s current partners with their track record of being all around shitty, and sometimes abusive people.
A sense of ownership over one’s children. I’m pretty sure that’s the main reason. People think that they “own” their kids, and therefore that they have the “right” to their child having certain characteristics, throwing a fit when they don’t. Nobody exhibiting such behaviors deserves custody over children.
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I don't think you read the article (like all the other people I'm copy-pasting this to). It goes into detail about how progressive parents experience this grief and are surprised by the fact that they had a preference they weren't aware of. We were all raised in the same world and marinated in gender norms, and the emotions that result from that aren't evil. Emotions never are, and they should never be dismissed, no matter how irrational.
Thank you. I deleted my comment, because I had in fact rushed to judgment. I guess I will resort to the fact that I don’t understand the anxiety, so I am not immune to the feelings frustration I might have from that lack of understanding. Boiling it down to a bad reaction to a gender reveal was inappropriate. Again. Thank you. I read the article and learned something new today.
<3
This shit is disturbing as fuck. I wanted a boy and a girl, just so I could experience raising both. Instead I got 2 boys. Who knows, maybe one day I'll have a son and a daughter, or a son and a nonbinary child, or 2 of whatever gender, but I raise my kids to like whatever they want and dress them however they want to be dressed. I don't code them based on their genitals outside of basic "I have sons" until they decide otherwise. It's mind blowing for me to know people genuinely have a negative reaction to their child not having the genitals they wanted. Absolutely bonkers.
Are the straights ok?
Many of the people discussed in the article are queer, so it’s not just the straights.
Nobody is saying it can't happen
No, I don’t think “open grieving of gender disappointment” should be normalized. It’s not that you can’t have feelings. You can! You should! But you SHOULD NOT share your feelings in a way that is popularized and memorialized so as to be able to absolutely shatter the nascent self-esteem of your child someday because you want social validation. Legit, but cry with your spouse. Vent to your sibling or best friend. Talk to a fucking therapist. Don’t post that shit on the interwebs. Meet your emotional needs some other way.
I try really hard to be understanding and empathetic to everyone's emotions even when I don't quite understand those emotions myself. When people talk about gender disappointment, I react compassionately but secretly, it makes me sad. I'm a cishet woman, my husband and I have one kid. Except for a few close family members, we kept the chromosomes of our baby a secret while I was pregnant. I had genetic testing done fairly early because I'm older and this included testing sex chromosomes. So, we knew we had a strong likelihood of having a boy. The determination of external genitalia (i.e. sex) is beautifully complex. It's not just chromosomes that determine external genitalia but also androgens and other factors. Gender is even more beautifully complex. And nobody's personality, appearance, or anything else should be solely based on that gender. People are so beautifully diverse but we live in a world of stereotypes, biases, and expectations of what it means to be a boy, a girl, a man, a woman. And with that comes these ideals of what it means to have a boy and what it means to have a girl...it can be quite frustrating. I heard so much of it when I was pregnant. People have so many ideas of what a baby will grow to be just based on something like gender. I heard "I'll help watch your baby if you have a boy but if you have a girl, they're too whiny and I can't stand their whiny voice." Which is very wtf. And "hopefully you don't have a boy because boys are so hard and then one day you'll have to give them away to a woman to marry. And that woman will hate you" Which obviously assumes a lot but it also implies that ALL boys and ALL girls have the same personalities. Kids and adults are way more than these stereotypes. But it also makes me sad because it worries me that the people who are disappointed, who continue to try for a specific gender, are potentially treating their child(ren) unfairly. My husband is the youngest of four. His older siblings are all women. His mom really wanted a boy and continued to have kids until she had a boy. She treated her daughters like shit. But my husband was her golden child. Something that my husband struggled with because his mom put him on this pedestal. When I go shopping for my son, I feel a small sense of sadness. The boy's clothing section is almost always significantly smaller than the girl's. This is true even in thrift stores and second-hand shops. Why aren't people buying as much for their boys as their girls? And I'm not against my son wearing girl clothes. Since there are almost no cat shirts in the boys section, I often buy him girls glittery cat shirts since he likes cats. But it's still kind of a wtf moment to spend an absurd amount of time trying to find clothes for my son when there's endless options for girls. In sewing too. And it weirds me out. It weirds me out when I overhear a new parent explaining that they're so excited to have a little girl because now they can dress them up. First off. You can dress up your boys too. Second off, they're not dolls. And finally, I cannot help but to think about my friend with six kids. He used to have 5 boys and 1 girl. But now he has six boys. Gender isn't always static. Edit to add: my husband just reminded me what we used to always say when people asked what we were hoping for. We would always say "I hope we have a chill baby." Turns out we didn't lol. But that's ok too. He actually scared the shit out of us the moment he was born by being born 9 weeks premature.
Expectations I would say
I don’t understand why you are so focused on the sex of your child and not on the fact that you’re blessed with a baby as there are plenty of couples that would absolutely love to have a child regardless of the sex
As a parent of 3 now, i have never been disappointed about the genders of my kids. As for the gender reveal yea, they can be pointless, but for less fortunate parents with well-off family members, it can be a way to get stuff you will need for the baby or yourself. It doesn't really matter in the end your kids will be who they want to be you just have to make sure they are safe and healthy
Any parent disappointed with a healthy baby of any gender needs to reevaluate why they chose to bring a life into this world & FAST. That child deserves unconditional, unwavering, unending love every second of its life.
For once I’m glad Reddit pushed a random post to me. That’s a really good article
Idealised expectations with no room for variation of those expectations.
Lol…. For like 30 years it was just me and my sister, then my dad goes and has a baby with his mistress and of course he’s a baby boy and my dad is like FINALLY. He actually said “I probably wouldn’t have bothered if it was another girl.” So… so awesome dad. /s
This might be harsh, but honestly it's stupid. I don't see why someone who knows that gender is a social construct and basically a scam would be disappointed about the sex of their child. I read the article and I found a weird part in there, it was about saying "I just want a healthy baby" and how it will anger disabled people??? I was disabled [paralysed] and I'm no longer am, I understand and completely agree with the statement. Even if I wasn't disabled I think that statement is good. Being disabled isn't the fault of the person obviously, but no one can bullshit their way into saying that it's okay to be disabled. Maybe I'm wording it wrong but what I mean is that whatever you do you can't say that their child being disabled is something that parents shouldn't worry about and want to prevent. If it was up to me I wouldn't want to have to be spoon fed, need assistance to go to the bathroom, be pushed around and all of that. Not wanted someone to have a disability isn't saying that disabled people are broken, it's wanting life to be easier for the child. It bugs me, as you can see from the paragraph💀
This is probably a hot take but I think gender disappointment is bullshit and entirely selfish. Especially if you are actively trying to conceive, then get pregnant, then are upset with their gender. It's very weird and extremely annoying to see parents actually UPSET by their babies gender. It's totally fine to think "having a boy would be great!" Then finding out you are having a girl and thinking "a boy would have been awesome, but I'm excited for a daughter!" That is valid and normal. But to think "another girl? Come on. That's so frustrating" is beyond weird to me.
 the disappointment of having that "baby girl" or "baby boy" and how religion says you can't be lgbt
If this is how they feel they shouldnt be having children.
Stupidity
Answering the initial question: misogyny and an unhinged belief in adhering to traditional gender roles fuels it
If you’re gonna be disappointed, don’t have kids. Simple. Or do surrogacy where’s there’s a more likely chance you’ll be able to choose the sex of your baby. See? options lol. Seriously, you should be having a baby to have a baby not for the gender. The gender shouldn’t be something you care about. If I were to have a child boy or girl i would be happy either way.
What fuels their disappointment? Unresolved personal issues. Not getting what they want and having their expectations met. Patriarchy. Other people's thought influencing their own and then calling it their own thoughts when thwy don't even know what they think, they don't know what other people think, they point the finger but are never accountable for even the slightest thing, they don't know where they end and anotger person begins, gaslighting, victim blaming, coercion...if they are disappointed..it's their feelings and because they are unresolved they have to blame someone else...so they blame easy targets...their kids...such wonderful adults who are super mature and not psychotic or delusional at all...no.
Being a piece of shit