Girl Crazy: Women Who Suffer from Gender Disappointment

October 12, 2010 6:45 AM

Upon hearing the good news—about the girl-boy twins—she went shopping. “I didn’t buy the boy anything,” she says. Instead she stocked up on pink paraphernalia for her daughter, already named Cassandra. [...] As it turned out, the sonographer had made an error. Lewis got a delivery room surprise: twin boys. “I was in hysterics. I felt like somebody had died. The nurse had to send over a psychiatric social worker,” she says.

There is a copy/paste error in the article, repeating a large section. The article continues after the repetition.

posted by Chuckles (38 comments total)

And since freerepublic couldn't be bothered sourcing the article.. It is from the November 2009 issue of ELLE.
posted by Chuckles at 6:47 AM on October 12, 2010

There was an article on selective reduction related to ART / fertility treatments in a recent issue of Elle.
posted by zarq at 6:50 AM on October 12, 2010

That sounds healthy. I'm glad she has her priorities straight.
posted by leotrotsky at 6:52 AM on October 12, 2010 [1 favorite]

This appears to be a 2009 article from Elle which Free Republic are reproducing without permission. They have managed to put their own unique spin on it though:

KEYWORDS: babies; eugenics; genderselection; motherhood; psychology; savethemales; sexism

posted by ninebelow at 6:53 AM on October 12, 2010 [5 favorites]

“It takes tremendous insight and maturity to raise a girl if you are yourself a woman, to help her develop in her own unique way,” says psychiatrist Vivien Burt, director of the UCLA Women’s Life Center. “For some women, it’s very hard to disentangle these issues, and a huge burden falls on the little girls.” In other words, there’s a high likelihood that even if GD sufferers get what they want, they’ll be disappointed anyway.

Heh, ain't that life for ya? Turns out sometimes the things we want aren't the things we need. Glad Lewis is working on her issues in therapy. I feel bad for some of the other women referenced in the article- giving up your children for adoption because they weren't the sex you wanted does not sound healthy to me.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 6:54 AM on October 12, 2010

“I hated blue, so I bought mint green,” she says. “That brought me comfort.”


One more example of why you need to pass a test before you're allowed to procreate. If you're as nuts as this woman, no babies for you! I knew from the moment I read "mother-daughter fashion shows" that this woman was deserving of a smack upside the melon and zero sympathy. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

It’s easy to dismiss the GD crowd as a bunch of heartless nutcakes. Yet it’s undeniable that a kind of free-floating girl lust has entered the public consciousness.

And who the HELL is this writer? Can I smack him too? Can all of these people be rounded up and sent someplace remote where the drinking water renders them infertile? We can find sane, responsible parents to raise the unfortunate kids.
posted by PuppyCat at 6:55 AM on October 12, 2010

It’s easy to dismiss the GD crowd as a bunch of heartless nutcakes.

I was gonna go with "shallow narcissists," but then, I've already noted in another thread that when it comes to human emotions, I can be Temperance Brennan meets Dexter Morgan.

I get the profound desire some people have for children and its rootedness in various biological and psychological imperatives, but there's something fundamentally wrong in a culture where so many people seem to invest their entire identities in their offspring. This is just one flavor of that.
posted by FelliniBlank at 6:59 AM on October 12, 2010

And who the HELL is this writer? Can I smack him too?

I don't think the author is a "him":

When I got pregnant for the second time, I really thought I’d be fine with another boy. I tried to picture two little imps playing on the beach in matching Vilbrequin swim trunks. When the doctor’s office called with the results of my amniocentesis, I was drinking root beer and eating takeout pad thai. “It’s a girl,” they said, and I put down my soda with a thud; I went to Whole Foods and stocked up on fresh veggies, brown rice, and an organic probiotic drink called Berry Green. I felt a sudden surge of tender protectiveness. I felt electrified. It turns out I wasn’t alone in fervently desiring a girl: Seventyone percent of American families who use MicroSort—which is still in clinical trials—want a daughter.

Too bad we don't know her name though..
posted by Chuckles at 7:00 AM on October 12, 2010

That sounds healthy. I'm glad she has her priorities straight.

I don't think that's fair. I assume you wouldn't make an equally sarcastic comment about a bedridden clinical depressive, and I think she should be seen in the same light. Whether or not "gender disappointment" will ever be an official psychiatric diagnosis is up in the air; I'm not going to play Dr. Wikipedia here or pretend I know what the annals of modern psychiatry look like. However, being smacked with that amount of cognitive dissonance while not having fully recovered from the hormonal brain-changes pregnancy induces (see also: postpartum depression, which is recognized as a form of clinical depression) is not something to be considered lightly. Especially considering this was her fourth attempt at assisted pregnancy.
posted by griphus at 7:01 AM on October 12, 2010

“I didn’t buy the boy anything,” she says. Instead she stocked up on pink paraphernalia for her daughter, already named Cassandra.

Wow, just imagine how awesome her son's life would've been like if his twin had been female.
posted by ook at 7:01 AM on October 12, 2010 [7 favorites]

Too bad we don't know her name though..

Her byline is on the article. Her name is Ruth Shalit Barrett
posted by zarq at 7:02 AM on October 12, 2010

Oh, and to be shrill and strident for a minute, I don't see anyone diagnosing the bajillions of people who experience Boy Preference as pathological. I wonder why.
posted by FelliniBlank at 7:02 AM on October 12, 2010 [5 favorites]

I wanted to raise a human/alien hybrid with laser beam eyes but eventaully grew up.
posted by nomadicink at 7:02 AM on October 12, 2010

Doesn't it say it's by Ruth Shalit Barrett?

I guess I have seen some of my friends express a preference for girls and some vague disappointment when their babies ended up being boys. It's nothing like the stuff in the article, and they quickly got over it and came to love their sons, but I think I have seen the non-toxic-narcissist version of this phenomenon. It's weird, especially because I think a generation or two ago it's much more likely that people would have preferred boys.
posted by craichead at 7:04 AM on October 12, 2010

I wonder why the article specifically focuses on women that desire daughters over sons, and not mothers who desire a child of either specific sex?
posted by muddgirl at 7:05 AM on October 12, 2010

Seriously, fuck everything about that. Parents should not put those kind of expectations on their children. It isn't good for anyone. Not the parents, because the children will never be able to satisfy whatever it is the parents think is missing. Not the children, because they'll always suspect that they're never good enough or aren't wanted.

However, being smacked with that amount of cognitive dissonance while not having fully recovered from the hormonal brain-changes pregnancy induces

That is not what we're talking about. We're talking about people, mostly women, who were obsessed with their children's gender long before they were pregnant, about people who have spent months or years and thousands of dollars trying for a particular result. Mental illness may have something to do with this--it's almost hard to argue that it doesn't, given the depth of the twistedness here--but postpartum depression this isn't.
posted by valkyryn at 7:05 AM on October 12, 2010 [1 favorite]

The obvious(ly impossible) solution to this is to find some way to eliminate the belief in gender essentialism in hobbies and personality traits from our society. The problem these people seem to be having is that they think there is one archetypal girl and one archetypal boy and all kids are just like that. How disappointed would any of them would be if their little girl so expensively conceived didn't like pink and ponies and lip gloss? What if their frustrating mistake of a little boy enjoys dressing up in mom's clothes and playing with make up but their carefully selected little girl doesn't?
posted by hydropsyche at 7:07 AM on October 12, 2010 [6 favorites]

I wonder why the article specifically focuses on women that desire daughters over sons, and not mothers who desire a child of either specific sex?

I'm more interested in understanding why they're pointing to parents wanting girls as a trend rather than the far more common (to my understanding, and in my experience) occurrence of foreign and domestic parents who come to American fertility clinics and specifically ask for preimplantation genetic diagnosis (pgd) so that they can have boys.
posted by zarq at 7:08 AM on October 12, 2010 [1 favorite]

I don't see anyone diagnosing the bajillions of people who experience Boy Preference as pathological.

Really? Isn't that preference fairly widely decried?

I don't know who to feel worse for in this article, the despised boys or the girls who are a disappointment to their mother because they don't like princesses.
posted by enn at 7:09 AM on October 12, 2010

The mother who wrote:

“I hate my life,” she writes. “My family is complete in reality but not in my heart.” She is considering giving all three of her boys up for adoption: “I want to give them to someone who can actually love them.”

I think that the sex of her child is just a target that she's focusing on as an "end date" for her depression - if only she could have a girl child - THEN she would be happy. The fact that she wants a girl is just a screen.

Also, these sorts of articles are junk bins for all the gender performance nonsense we put on our children. Do you think a little baby boy is going to care if you dress him in pink instead of blue? Or "make" him go as a ballerina for his first birthday?
posted by muddgirl at 7:10 AM on October 12, 2010 [1 favorite]

Holy shit. These poor little dudes disappoint Mumsie from the moment they left the chute. Way to give 'em a fighting chance. I know a lot of stable people who'd surrender folding money for the chance to raise just one of these children.

And I need a license for my dog...
posted by VicNebulous at 7:10 AM on October 12, 2010

So. What I was wondering, as I read the article, is what effect these mothers' pathological desire for a girl has on their sons.
posted by WalterMitty at 7:12 AM on October 12, 2010

No, No no, just send them both to places which practice foeticide and so, imbalancing the gender ratio
posted by The Lady is a designer at 7:13 AM on October 12, 2010

Well maybe these women will hit the jackpot and one of their sons with be a mtf transsexual.
posted by I_pity_the_fool at 7:14 AM on October 12, 2010

FYI, for those who did not check out Shalit's wikipedia page linked above, she's been fired for plagiarism and inaccuracy in the past, and the last substantive edit to her page awkwardly follows that up with a glowing sentence praising an "accurate" hit piece on Carol Mosley-Braun, made by a user who has made no other edits.
posted by mreleganza at 7:16 AM on October 12, 2010 [2 favorites]

I feel like some people have been watching too much Gilmore Girls.
posted by gaspode at 7:19 AM on October 12, 2010

Her byline is on the article. Her name is Ruth Shalit Barrett

Ooops :) I assumed that got cut along with the Magazine... Freerepublic did a better job of sourcing than I gave them credit for.
posted by Chuckles at 7:19 AM on October 12, 2010

I'm more interested in understanding why they're pointing to parents wanting girls as a trend rather than the far more common (to my understanding, and in my experience) occurrence of foreign and domestic parents who come to American fertility clinics and specifically ask for preimplantation genetic diagnosis (pgd) so that they can have boys.

I think it's because that phenomenon doesn't really require explanation. If men have higher social status, higher earning potential, are seen as heirs who carry on the family name, don't require dowry, etc., etc., etc., then it's sort of logical that people are going to prefer boys. That's been true in lots of places and times throughout human history. Since women have generally had lower social status than men, it's a lot weirder when people prefer daughters to sons. Therefore, it's a more interesting story.
posted by craichead at 7:20 AM on October 12, 2010

Thanks for pointing that out, mreleganza. That makes me pretty skeptical that the women in this article exist at all. She is also apparently the sister of Wendy Shalit of A Return to Modesty notoriety.
posted by enn at 7:22 AM on October 12, 2010

Good lord, I hope this woman's children never find this article and read it. Then again, having been mommy's little disappointment for their entire lives already, there's a good chance finding the article would be that magical moment in their lives where everything clicks, and suddenly they understand why things have been so goddamned awful.
posted by Ghidorah at 7:23 AM on October 12, 2010

I think it's because that phenomenon doesn't really require explanation. If men have higher social status, higher earning potential, are seen as heirs who carry on the family name, don't require dowry, etc., etc., etc., then it's sort of logical that people are going to prefer boys. That's been true in lots of places and times throughout human history. Since women have generally had lower social status than men, it's a lot weirder when people prefer daughters to sons. Therefore, it's a more interesting story.

All the more reason to shine some light on it -- to show potential parents that their their home cultures or ingrained attitudes are wrong to portray girls as somehow less valuable than a boy.
posted by zarq at 7:23 AM on October 12, 2010

And, as much as I don't want to sit here policing my own post and everything, I think you all had better RTFA. For example..

I wonder why the article specifically focuses on women that desire daughters over sons, and not mothers who desire a child of either specific sex?

This is addressed, if briefly:

Seventyone percent of American families who use MicroSort—which is still in clinical trials—want a daughter. The Ericsson method that Lewis used is actually more effective for selecting a boy: about 80 percent, compared with only 74 percent for a girl. But the ratio of girl-to-boy requests is as high as two to one at licensed clinics. “The era of wanting a first-born male is gone, not to return,” founder Ronald Ericsson, MD, has said.

posted by Chuckles at 7:23 AM on October 12, 2010

griphus : I don't think that's fair. I assume you wouldn't make an equally sarcastic comment about a bedridden clinical depressive, and I think she should be seen in the same light.

As much as I hate "for the children" arguments, this situation seems like one of the only good times for it. Some people simply should not reproduce - This woman falls into that category.

If you care about any particular attribute of your offspring other than "healthy" to the point that you shop for one of a pair of twins and break down when the "good" twin ends up lacking that attribute anyway - You fail the Parental Qualifications test. I don't care if that trait involves gender, hair color, intelligence (again, beyond "healthy"), or athletic ability. Passing this level of crazy on to a new generation should count as nothing short of abuse-before-the-fact.
posted by pla at 7:25 AM on October 12, 2010

A response from Slate Blogger KJ Dell'Antonia on the article:

A lot has been said lately about the ethics of writing about the parenting experience. Should we detail our worst days as mothers? Blog about the trials of potty training? Profit from the material provided by our child's autism or marijuana addiction, or claim to love our husband more than our kids? As someone who's blogged honestly—and sometimes too honestly—about my difficulty bonding with my adopted daughter, I wrestle with these issues regularly. I am all for talking about difficult experiences in the hope of reaching out to others who have felt, or are feeling, the same way. But there's one line I've never crossed—one thing I think you should absolutely never say to or about your child: I didn't want you. I wanted somebody else.

posted by zarq at 7:25 AM on October 12, 2010

“The era of wanting a first-born male is gone, not to return,” founder Ronald Ericsson, MD, has said.

. . . on his infomercial.

71% of Americans who happen to use this particular service is pretty weak sauce for claiming this as some kind of sweeping social trend.
posted by FelliniBlank at 7:27 AM on October 12, 2010

Seriously, read the Wikipedia article, guys. This woman is not well and has a history of making things up to support her weird retrograde prejudices. I would not believe a word of this article.
posted by enn at 7:29 AM on October 12, 2010 [1 favorite]

Reinforcing my basic belief that everyone should be seeing a counselor to help deal with their emotional issues. Reaching true emotional maturity is a goal most of us can only aspire to.
posted by Argyle at 7:29 AM on October 12, 2010

At what point does hatred/fear of a particular gender shade into actual mental illness? I have to think that's what we're looking at.

I mean, in societies where a mother might actually be killed or beaten for not having sons, you have a straightforward reason for a preference. But absent that, being so invested in one particular gender of a child makes me ask; how do you relate to adults of the unwanted gender?

If a father can only connect with his sons but not his daughters, how does he connect with his wife? How does a woman who is afraid to have sons feel about her husband, or any other males?

I will admit to some nervousness when I found out I was having a boy, because I felt I might not understand him or he might not like me. But that was silly and melted away when he arrived. Because he's a kid, and I'm his mom and everything else is secondary.
posted by emjaybee at 7:33 AM on October 12, 2010 [2 favorites]