Glad to Have a Girl

This post was inspired by The Underground Girls of Kabul by journalist Jenny Nordberg, who discovers a secret Afghani practice where girls are dressed and raised as boys. Join From Left to Write on September 16th as we discuss The Underground Girls of Kabul. As a member, I received a copy of the book for review purposes.

There was a time when I could only imagine having a male child.  I’m kind of a teenage boy myself, disguised in a 44-year-old woman’s body.  I figured I would know how to interact with a boy.  I like to be gross.  I like getting dirty.  I like to play rough.  I pictured us investigating dinosaur bones together.  While pregnant, I squeezed my eyes together and tried to picture my future child.  I didn’t get a face, just a pair of legs swinging from a chair in the cafeteria of the local science museum. 

Yup, it’s a boy I thought. 

We only had one name picked out for him:  Holden.   And at 11 pm each night, he kicked the stuffing out of me, such that we took to calling him “Boom Boom Moore.” 

He had to be a boy. 

I wanted his sex to be a surprise, much to my husband's disappointment.  When we went in for our week 20, high-level ultrasound, I told the technician in no uncertain terms that though my husband wanted to know the sex of the child, I was to be left in the dark.  I didn’t want any pointing and giggling.  The technician aimed her wand and peered at the screen, pointing out body parts, like a transdermal tour guide.  I followed along, but when she got to the pelvic region I averted my eyes because I didn’t want to accidentally see the penis.  She gave nothing away.  When it was over, I left the room to pee (they make you do this on a maxed-out bladder), and my husband remained behind to find out what we were going to have.

“I don’t know,” the technician said.

“What do you mean you don’t know?” my husband asked.  After all, wasn’t it their job to look for nuchal folds and other things indiscernible to the untrained eye?

“The way the baby was turned, I couldn’t tell, not with certainty.” 

We walked out of there knowing one thing for sure, our baby did not have an obvious penis.  Well, so be it. 

Fast forward to 20 weeks later, when the director of the Maternal Fetal Medicine department stood over me and announced that I had just given birth to a baby girl.  Much to my surprise, I was thrilled.    

How nice that I could be thrilled.  That I don’t live in a society where a daughter means shame and disappointment, where a daughter is something to be mourned or hidden.  Rather, that I live in a place where being female means freedom—freedom to wear pants or a dress, freedom to cry or be stoic, freedom to get pregnant or decide not to. 

Life might have been different had Sophie been born a boy.  Different, but not better. 

Growing a Grrrrrrrrrl

Before Sophia was born, I tried to conjure images of what it would be like to have a baby. The best I could do was a brief fantasy of taking a pre-school aged boy to the Museum of Natural Sciences. I imagined showing him the dinosaur bones and then having lunch, just the two of us, in the café. I couldn’t see his face, just his legs gleefully swinging back and forth, not touching the ground.

Just in case you missed it, here are the key points in the previous paragraph:

• Preschooler, not baby (not our topic for today)
• Boy, not girl

I feared having a girl. Partly because I had bought into cultural stereotypes (girls are whiny and moody) and partly because I blame some of the misery of my childhood on girlhood (the snarkiness, the underground competition, the rapidly shifting allegiances). Then, of course, there are Bratz dolls, eating disorders, teen pregnancy, cutting, thongs, roofies, HPV, Cosmo Girl ....you get the picture.

The fact of the matter is, I think of myself as a pretty male-identified female. I don’t like to be touched when I’m upset. I can build a kick-ass fort. I enjoy hunting for earthworms and have no qualms about picking them up with my bare hands. Dolls, on the other hand, have always spooked me. And I never did get the hang of applying makeup. Which is why I knew, in my heart of hearts, that my he would be a she.

Of course, there was the possibility that like me, she would move more fluidly between established gender roles. And so, I’ve done what I can to foster it. Before she inherited a Little Tykes Country Kitchen from my friend Pam’s boys, she had a trash-picked Tool Bench. I avoid buying pink clothes. I’ve banished the word “princess” from my vocabulary.

But given a mountain of stuffed animals, Sophia selected a plush doll for her transitional object, who she named “baby” and carries everywhere. And recently, when I furnished her with an old purse of mine, filled with the accoutrements of womanhood (wallet, sunglasses, chapstick) she slung it over her arm, gave me a backwards glance and said, bye bye, as if now she was armed with all she needed to move forward in the world.

I really am sick of nature vs. nurture arguments. Certainly, our behavior results from a synthesis of the two. But as Sophie’s childhood looms before me, I wonder, how much influence can I exact? How do I do it without having her run screaming from me in the opposite direction, towards Spike, the pierced and tattooed, verbally abusive spermdonor of her learning-disabled crack baby?

Okay, maybe that is extreme. But, you get the picture.

I want so badly to do it right. Balance the love and boundaries. Hold her tight and let her go. And it means fighting impulses and influences and Sophie herself at times. And I’m always questioning whether I have the wherewithal to do it.