I had just helped a coworker find her online email so that she could find an order which was placed before Christmas and never arrived (not exactly a work-related question) and was about to leave my office to check up on some real work that was going on, when she asked me: "So, do you know what you're having?"
"Yes," I replied, with a smile, "We're having a baby."
When I came back into the office a little later, my male office mate, who has been present at many of these inane conversations, was still laughing.
When I ask people why they need to know the gender of my impending child, they tell me it is because it makes it much easier to buy something for the kid. Even after several explanations, I fail to understand why. A stuffed teddy bear is a stuffed teddy bear. A bottle is a bottle. As for clothes, I myself do not recall what I was wearing much before the age of two, and at the age of two I recall being so uninterested in the idea of wearing clothes that I spent most of my time trying to get out of them. (This was the era of Super Me, who leaped over tall leggos in nothing but a towel tied around the neck. Super Me could get out of her street clothes and into her superhero costume in 5 seconds flat.)
One person tried to entice the gender out of me by painting a tantalizing story of a woman who, by virtue of knowing the gender of her child, was able to decorate the nursery in an "airplane" theme, with the logo of an airline stenciled on the wall, and elements of flying scattered about the room. I will leave it to the gentle reader to determine which gender was entitled to this sort of design concept, but my immediate thought was: a bedroom full of airplanes! I would have loved that!!
At some point we will no longer be able to keep Stanley's gender a secret (although, I suppose if we named him/her Pat and dressed him/her in yellow all the time, the secret could be prolonged for an indefinite period of time), and at that point I can imagine gender related presents being steered towards Stanley's perceived best interests; train pajamas if Stanley is a boy, Cinderella pajamas if Stanley is a girl. But I hope Stanley can determine his/her own interests without outside interference. If Stanley my son wants to be a ballerina when he grows up, then ballerina he shall play. If Stanley my daughter wants to be a car mechanic when she's older, I'll get her to change the oil on my car. If Stanley my child wants to be things which fall within the artificial gender divide, that's okay too.
Don't know what to buy for Stanley before Stanley meets the world? Buy Stanley something you'd have liked as a baby. Stanley will like these things too. Stanley will like everything that goes on-- it'll be so much more interesting than where s/he is now.
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7 comments:
My parents vigilantly dressed me and surrounded me with yellow, very much avoiding the whole gender thing. I was the experimental, groovy birth, done at home with a midwife and without the commercial trappings and fixed roles that the seventies were merrily solidifying as Absolute Necessities.
What they found, however, was that they were frequently concerned that I was sick, perhaps jaundiced. Midwifes and holistics were abandoned in a flush or parental panic, and a doctor made a house call! And determined that, of course I looked jaundiced, I was surrounded by yellow, yellow, yellow.
I'd also like to point out that while you may be fine with avoiding set gender roles, in order to post this comment, Google requires that I "choose an identity". So neutrality is fine... up until one wants to become Time's Person of the Year.
Stanely's room happens to be blue and will remain blue. We painted it that color 4 years ago and painting it again would be a waste of paint. Here's another mystery I'd liked solved: why blue and pink to denote gender, and yellow to denote gender-neutral? I myself have always liked blue. And dark red. When Stanely gets older and decides s/he has a favorite color, we can enlist his/her help to paint the room.
As for Blogger's need for you to identify yourself, I apologize. The only consolation I can give you is that at least it didn't ask for a biometric stamp to prove you are who you say you are... you could have said you were Pat, after all.
Well, Google/Blogger may be leveraging me to choose an identity, but I agreed only to more readily identify myself beyond "Anonymous".
Also, Google has a happy little answer about your pink/blue associations... not infinitely detailed, but contains the bibliographies necessary to do further research should one care:
"At one point pink was considered more of a boy's color, (as a watered-down red, which is a fierce color) and blue was more for girls. ...The current pink for girls and blue for boys wasn't uniform until the 1950's."
Stupid '50s!
Yes, those stupid 50's ruined everything!
One last thing... this t-shirt design just swam across the www to be conversationally synchronious.
The other problem with the pre-birth gender identification is that it's sometimes (*gasp*) wrong. I knew a couple who were told after a sonogram that they were having a girl (I assume they were given a disclaimer of "well, at least we *think* it's a girl, but it might be a boy who's just a little shy"). They told everyone it was a girl, and her name was Kayla. They painted the nursey pink and bought lots of frilly dresses, etc.
Weren't they feeling silly when the baby came out as a boy?
My brother was apparently supposed to be a girl. And he's clearly not!
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