Boys and Girls

Now that it's become undeniably obvious that Claire is pregnant, we get a whole new set of comments from virtual strangers. First, they tend to ask when she's due. Then they almost always ask "what are you having?". I still haven't decided how to react to that question. Usually, I just spit out "boy", when what I really want to say is "it's probably a baby, but we can't be totally sure".

Then almost without exception, the asker looks at me and says "well YOU must be REALLY happy!" This is the one that kills me. Why? Because I have a penis, and my offspring will too? Because I won't have to deal with my child having a period? The question kind of offends me and feels like a throwback to an era in which I'd be looking for a male heir to whom I would pass along my legacy.

There's a great and enlightening article in the new Atlantic by Hanna Rosin (READ IT HERE). It begins by talking about the controversial science of gender-selection. The fear, as this process was developed, was that parents would overwhelmingly choose to have male children. The reality in this day and age is that a majority of parents, if given the choice, would choose females. Why? The article concludes that our society is moving towards a full-on embrace of traditionally "feminine" qualities such as social aptitude and the ability to pay attention (that one cracked me up... I can't be on a sales call for more than 3 minutes before I start pacing or checking my email...).

So what's to be drawn? Should I, for some reason, prefer male offspring? I would have been overjoyed with a girl. Before we found out, I was convinced that we were having a girl and I was thrilled. When the penis showed up on the ultrasound, I was, it goes without saying, unable to contain my smile but it wasn't because I was having a boy. It was because I suddenly had a real person to bond with. A little person who just so happened to have male genitals.

Boy, no matter where you look, there's a news story, article, or personal experience that'll scare the hell out of an expectant parent. I swear, I can't go a day without stumbling across an article about a child abduction or a toy recall or the potential threat of Bovine Growth Hormone. It's a scary world, and I think that's why so many parents do their best to keep their kids on house arrest.

When I was a kid, I had to walk 10 miles to school in the snow, and we couldn't afford shoes. Of course, that's not even close to true, but I did walk to school. And it was about a mile. And I had good, supportive shoes to walk in. I met my friends on the way and it wasn't a scary experience or an unpleasant one, instead it was a time for kids to be kids. Nowadays, I know parents that won't allow their kids to ride the bus to school because of the possible danger lurking in those vinyl-upholstered seats.

There's a big part of me that feels that we're cheating our children. We're trying to protect them from invisible threats, and by doing so, we're making them more isolated, less social, and more afraid of the world around them.

So what's the reality here? Are our kids in constant danger from this cold, cruel world? Or are we increasingly paranoid because now, when a kid gets abducted, we hear about it non-stop on the news? Now, I'm not saying that there shouldn't be coverage of these travesties, I just don't necessarily think that it should change the way we parent. It's not like these terrible scenarios are new. There have been awful people throughout history who have chosen to prey on children. In the "old days", a lot of this was swept under the rug or went completely unreported by the kids or the parents. Was that better? No way. But is it worse now? I'm not sure. I see one big difference from the events of the past and those of today. The internet plays a big role in modern incidents involving children. So are we better off making our kids stay inside on the computer instead of letting them walk to their friends' houses?

This is all very easy to say now while my kid is still basically a concept in my mind. Once I've got a child who can walk and talk and is wrapped in a blanket of innocence, I'll probably have a very different perspective. I'm going to try my best to not rob my child of experience out of fear, but we'll see how that goes.

Travel

Well, we're still about four months out and I'm already anxious about travelling with the little guy. We just returned from a week-long trip to Illinois/Indiana and it was exhausting. I'm glad to be home. Anyway, the source of the anxiety is primarily the limited space that we'll have when we do travel in the car. Our spoiled dog takes the trunk, so all of our stuff has to go in the back seat. On this particular trip, we were blessed with a number of hand-me-downs from family, including a cradle that was built for my great grandmother in 1896, so the back seat was especially packed, but even with lighter travel, I think it'll be hard to fit our bags and the baby in the back seat.

Looks like the dog might have to get used to riding on the roof... Or being a little more cramped in the currently luxurious trunk.