Published by EverParent Staff
January 17th, 2012

By: Lome Arieux Aseron

When my wife, Janine, got pregnant for the second time, we both agreed that we wanted a daughter. We loved our son, Joaquin, but we wanted balance and the opportunity to parent a child of each gender. At least that’s what we jointly stated as our motivation. Secretly, I had my own reason.

I wanted to have a daughter to test the degree of my own sexism.

Children are great mirrors. Maybe it’s the innate knowledge that we’re consciously and unconsciously transmitting information to our kids, wide open receptacles that they are, that makes us reflect on our thoughts, feelings and beliefs. Or perhaps it’s just having another person around all the time, like the first time you lived with someone you were in a relationship with.

I consider myself a pretty good ally to women. I do my best to observe my thinking around gender and how I allow it to impact my choices. When a woman was running for mayor of the city I live in, for example, I realized that part of my resistance to voting for her was based on a mistaken belief that she wouldn’t be able to navigate the male-dominated political system as well as her male opponent would. There were other factors, but gender affected my thinking.

So a large part of my motivation for wanting a girl was to uncover any gender bias I might be carrying. Not that having a son doesn’t provide its own opportunity to work with gender roles. More people than I expected told me how lucky I was to have a son after Joaquin was born. I wondered what would they have said if he’d been a girl: there’s always next time?

Discovering my own gender bias wasn’t the only motivation for my desire for a daughter. When we were in Panama during our first pregnancy, Janine bought the cutest little baby dress. I fantasized about summer months when our future daughter could wear it to the park and be the envy of all the other parents. When a friend of mine told me how he loved to braid his daughter’s hair, I nodded knowingly. Visions of pig-tails and patent leather Mary Janes danced in my head.

The thought of having a daughter triggered questions about how I would treat a female child. Would I show affection for her in the same way as I did to Joaquin? Would I discipline her differently? Would I have the same expectations of her? Would I become the stereotypical dad who greets his daughter’s boyfriends at the door with a shotgun? As she got older, would I stifle her sexuality out of my own inability to accept her sexual development? Could I be a model of positive masculinity that would foster trust in men while at the same time instilling confidence that her worth was not dependent on male approval?

One question that kept recurring was how I would parent a girl in the context of society’s gender biases, particularly with regard to children. When Joaquin started watching TV, I noticed the imbalance between male and female characters on kids shows. Even my beloved Sesame Street, which was the subject of a piece I wrote for ColorLines Magazine, is dominated by male characters. Zoe, the most prominent female character on Sesame Street, didn’t make her appearance until 1993, nearly 25 years after the show first aired. It wasn’t until 2006 that Sesame Street introduced a leading female character, Abby Cadabby. Would I be more concerned about the impact of gender imbalance on children’s television if we had a daughter? At what age would it be appropriate to talk to her about gender identity? Should I attempt to transcend identification based on gender, as this preschool in Sweden is doing?

Like we did with Joaquin, we declined to learn the gender of our second child until the birth. When Mico was born, disappointment that he wasn’t a girl was the farthest thing from our minds. Though his entrance into the world was extremely gentle, we’ve decided that he will be the last baby that Janine births. The Panama dress, folded lovingly, remains in a storage container in our garage.

There’s always adoption.

Lome A. Aseron is father of two amazing sons and husband to a magnificent wife. He captures (hopefully with some success) the beauty and joy of fatherhood at http://NewDadforLife.com and [http://LIFEclectic.com]http://LIFEclectic.com.