When Did Boy Mom Culture Become So Problematic?

My mother used to tell me a story from when she was pregnant. She was desperate for a girl; she’d had three brothers growing up and the last thing she wanted was a repeat of that experience.

Boys, in her mind, were slugs-and-snails clichés: dirty, smelly, loud, unruly, and emotionally stunted compared with their female counterparts. 

Perhaps to nudge fate, Mom picked out the perfect name for a girl and a million cute little dresses. Then, a close friend gave birth before her, and Mom’s heart sank. “Louise had a girl,” she’d say at this point in the story, “and I knew then that I’d probably end up with a boy.” 

I wasn’t a boy, of course. Mom was delighted—over the moon. 

It’s a story I asked to hear over and over again as a child, because it showed me how much I was wanted. But it’s also a story that burrowed its way into my psyche and came out the other side looking very different. Because when I became pregnant with my first and only child (shoutout to other members of the “one and done” community), I was genuinely taken aback to find out—at eight weeks, via a routine blood test—that I was having a boy. By the look on my mother’s face when I told her, so was she. I could tell she was disappointed for me.

As for me, I didn’t know how to feel. I had two half-sisters; all of my cousins were girls. I’d spent most of my career writing about feminism. What did it mean to raise a boy?