Girls are Worse

As you may or may not know (and if you do not, shame on you and your penance is to reread my opening blog entry at least thrice over and memorize as many details as you're able) I have two darling children for whom I have given up career and waistline to love and raise at home full-time.  My firstborn is a boy, Joshua, of whom I am insanely proud, who makes me laugh, who endears me every day, baffling me with all he knows and all he learns at a breakneck speed.  My second born is a girl, Claire, who is my darling, my sweetie, my heart.

I've said it before that having a girl was the best decision I've never made.  Let me explain.

When I was pregnant for the first time, I soon realized that I wanted to have a boy.  No.  I didn't simply "want" to have a boy, I WANTED to have a boy.  Bad.  I have no idea where this passion came from, perhaps some ingrain desire of my descendants to have a boy first, ensure the family name would continue,  someone who would take over the family fishing/sealing/hunting business (I'm from Newfoundland, enough said?), that sort of nonsense.  So for 38 long weeks I hoped and prayed and wondered and obsessed if in fact the being I was growing in my belly was going to be the boy I so desired.

And, it was.  Out popped* (*=painfully, excruciatingly delivered) my first born, a healthy baby boy.  We were insanely happy and proud.  I was a mother.  My husband was a father.  We had our son.  We were a family.  I later would have dreams where we were mistaken and the baby we had was a girl, and I'd wake up from these dreams frantic, panicked, and would have to check to ensure my baby was indeed a boy.  Nuts, eh?

Anyway, when I became pregnant with my second child, I again felt that having a boy would be nice, but that obsession of simply NEEDING to have a boy was diluted (perhaps from living with a little boy for the previous 1.5 years?  Yes?  No?  I'll not wander down that road.)  We figured if it was a boy we'd save a lot of money on clothes.  If it was a girl we'd have a totally new experience on our hands.  Being a busy, pregnant mother of a little boy kept me from focusing too much on the gender of my unborn baby, there were many welcome distractions in those long months.  Also, some unhappy ones - when I was in my second trimester, I found out that our baby had a kidney disorder, and might require some medical intervention upon being born, to prevent further kidney damage and other related complications.  We were frightened.  But also, we were given a clue - most babies with this condition were male.  So without actually "finding out" the sex of our unborn baby, we were basically told we were having a boy.  A little scared about the baby's health, but mostly excited, we waited for the arrival of our second son.

Well, sonny boy never came because who arrived on June 7th, 2010?  Baby Claire did, that's who!  I was shocked and thrilled and amazed all at once.  (By the way, her kidney condition is stable, no surgeries for now, and we are all very pleased with how she's doing and is otherwise perfect in all ways).  We had a girl.  We had a GIRL!  WE HAD A GIRL!!!  Life is just...  so...  well.  Amazing.

So since the arrival of my lovely daughter, I've noticed many things.  Firstly of course is how CUTE girl baby clothes are, especially having just come off of having a baby boy, you can't even begin to compare cuteness.  Sure, a baby boy dressed in a green polo shirt and dark washed jeans are cute, but compare that to a frilly baby-soft pink dress with ruffly-bottomed white tights and shiny, tiny black mary janes?  Come on.  Add a flower-embossed headband and a tiny beaded bracelet?  Cute overload.

Secondly, people are unfairly judgemental to little girls.  It's true.  We as a society are TERRIBLE when it comes to our daughters.  For instance.  I took my children to an indoor playground one winter morning as a way for my son to play with other kids his age and to have some fun and get some exercise.  In fact, for the entire winter we did this twice a week.  It was great.  Mama could sit back with a coffee (okay, with a coffee and a donut), the baby could nap in her stroller, and Joshua could run around like a crazy person.  Perfect!  One day, Joshua threw a fit when I told him it was time to go.  One sympathetic mother caught my eye and said "If you think this is bad wait until SHE'S 2!  Girls are even worse!" referring to my angelic, sleeping daughter.  I shrugged it off, too busy dealing with Joshua the Horrible to really think about what she had said, what she had accused my daughter of doing and being before even having the skill of holding up her own head.  Awful!  How dare she say that my daughter will act less or more awful when she is 2 and doesn't want to leave a fun place?

But it wasn't just this nut job's opinion.  Other parents have told me similar tales of "how bad" it'll be when "she" is in the terrible 2's/3's/teenage years.  And this cockamamy advice is usually given to me with a smile and a knowing tilt of the head, all the while smiling at Claire.  I mean how AWFUL can you get?  Predicting that my sweet angel girl is going to turn out to be even more terrible than my son's terrible times have been?  Any why is it that no one ever says "Wow your son is awful, good thing your daughter won't be as bad!".  No one has ever said that to me.  Or, "Wow you think your ass is big now?  Wait till you're 40!".  Nope.  Haven't heard that one either.  At least, not to my face.

So why this preference to boys over girls?  Why do we not give our daughters the benefit of the doubt that they will act like a 2 or 3 year old when their time comes?  Why do we set this predetermined pattern upon them that they will "be worse" than their male counterparts?

Is it that we don't expect face-down-on-the-WalMart-floor tantrums from our daughters?  Because, sister, I've been there with Joshua.  Oh yes.  I have.  Been there.  With him.  And of COURSE I'll expect Claire to do the same.  And, as with Joshua, I'll probably laugh, pick her up and go about my day with a raging lunatic trapped in the body of my 2 year old child.  Is that so bad?  To expect the same behaviour from my daughter as I did from my son?

Is it that we STILL view girls to be more subdued?  More calm?  More placid and unlikely to cause a scene?  You can put a dress on a Tasmanian devil, but I'm pretty sure it'll still be a Tasmanian devil (yes, I just had to use spell check to write Tasmanian).  And one day I'll put a dress on my sweet and innocent daughter and she'll act just the way Joshua did that fateful day in WalMart - she'll act nutty.

I don't know.  Maybe because I'm a girl (surprise!) that I'm overly sensitive to girl-predjuguce.  Also, I'm a second born, so I can sympathize with precedence set by an older sibling (especially an older brother) and I want to do my damnedest to help Claire feel special, appreciated, and loved and hopefully not view the world as an underdog who has to fight for attention and equality within her own family.  I don't want family members or strangers or ANYONE predicting how well or poorly my daughter will do in her life before she has a chance to prove herself.  

There are lots of things that piss me off, but one that grates me to my very soul is when people say the phrase "Girls are worse".  They are not.  Girls are wonderful.  Girls are special.  My girl is especially awesome, if you're asking.  It's small children IN GENERAL that can be awful.  I mean can't we all just agree on that and leave gender out of it?  It's small children who throw fits, mess up our homes, throw a pile of JUST FOLDED laundry on the dirty floor, smudge windows, throw food, pee in their pants (on purpose???), and who mess up our hair when we're bending down to do up THEIR shoes.  It's small children that lead to the purchase of toddler harnesses, who cause valuable breakables to be put up on high shelves, and who cause their mothers to stop buying BOTTLES of wine and reach for the BOX instead.

It's small children who don't have the words or ability to express what they want or are able to understand why they can't have what they want at any given time.  They are prisoners in their own bodies, in their own homes, and in life in general.  They are trying to navigate a world that is 100% NOT built for them, so of course from time to time they're going to snap.  And when they do, they are going to make sure that it's spectacular.  It's up to us to love them, not despite, but because of these outbursts, because we know that they're normal, they're part of growing up, and because they make for a great story when we're talking to OUR parents later that night.

So, mother's of daughters, let's chill out a bit.  I'm not asking you to be hypocritical and start favouring our daughters over our sons.  No.  That's tipping the scales too far the other way (don't get me started on the Women's Lib movement).  But just give our girls some slack.  They have it tough from the get-go, let's not predict their futures or pretend that their behaviour is any worse than their brothers' was.  Because it's not.  Every child is different.  They all need our love.  Kiss your daughter twice tonight.  And tomorrow morning, break out those ruffly-bottomed tights.  They'll look SO CUTE when she's flailing around screaming on the WalMart floor.

-TDW