When one of my sisters found out she was expecting, she immediately said, ‘I hope it’s a girl.’ She wanted to buy the adorable pink clothing, toys, etc. and thought that it would easier to raise a girl nowadays. When her sonogram revealed a little member…well, she was a tad disappointed. Hell, I think she shed a tear or two. Now that my nephew is nearly six years old and full of spunk, she couldn’t imagine things being any different.
For some ladies, getting over that initial disappointment is not so easy. In the recent issue of Elle, I discovered that some women are so obsessed with having the gender of their choice (most often a girl) that there’s even a new term floating around the web, Gender Disappointment. It’s not an official psychiatric diagnosis but many women are diagnosing themselves with the affliction. Basically, any woman that is pissed her baby isn’t the gender she wanted, and is still unable to get over the fact even after her child is born, can be classified as a card-holder of Gender Disappointment.
In order to increase their chances of having one gender over the other, numerous tricks/methods are often used. One movie example of a couple doing what they can to conceive what they want is Nine Months (1995), which featured Joan Cusack and Tom Arnold who are already the parents of a few daughters. In order to have a boy, they do specific sex moves that are supposed to increase their chances and other crazy folklore. In reality, women that want to increase their chances of having a girl often stick to a strict calcium rich diet, douche with vinegar, sleep with a tampon soaked in lime juice, and go to clinics that only implant eggs that have been determined to be little ladies.
Now, I don’t care if you do the things mentioned above to increase your chances of having the little boy or girl that you desire. What I found upsetting about this Elle article is what some of the ladies that diagnosed themselves with Gender Disappointment said…Take for example, a 37-year old woman who is the mother of four boys who so desperately wanted a girl. When she found out her fourth child was a boy, she said she felt ‘gutted’ and would have had an abortion if she was able to find out the sex earlier. When she found out she was pregnant again, she opted for a diet rich in cranberries and douching to increase her chances, but that didn’t help. After finding out she was pregnant with a fifth boy she said, ‘I’d always assume I’d have just one child…I’ll have five children under the age of six. And I’m not even particularly maternal.’ Five children all because she wanted one girl? Ei yi yi.
Another woman, who also really wanted a girl and finally gave birth to her own biological girl (after having three boys and adopting a baby girl from Korea), told Elle that her ‘expectations of what it would be like to mother a daughter were not fully realized’ for her two girls are not frilly and have no interest in tea parties, ballet, or princesses!
The real kicker for me is when one woman said she thought of giving up her little boys for adoption because she wasn’t happy. Why wasn’t she happy? They were not the little girls she wanted.
For most of these women, I hope they do find the help they need to get over this obsession of sorts. In my opinion, these women have a need for a control-they do all that they can to increase their chances and when they don’t find out they’re getting what they want, they snap. That’s just my opinion. I would like these women to find acceptance in just having a healthy baby (especially when so many things can happen) then having child after child and resenting their children for not being the gender they had in mind.
nicole!
Photo courtesy of Info Barrel. Thank you, Elle, for the scoop!
