We closed the last door in the carpool line and made our way back to my darkened, vacated classroom. My teacher friend and I had found ourselves “in bloom” at the same time, as a substitute teacher once described her. I was expecting my first child, and she was expecting her second.
In the afternoons when the halls fell quiet and we could take a deep breath, we often gathered in one of our classrooms to share stories and reflections about our students in an effort to understand them better and to learn new ways to provide them with what they needed to grow.
Today we talked about the tiny beings blossoming within us, still attached by cord and sharing our oxygen and blood. Today we tried to understand them better and to imagine who they might be.
“It’s hard to believe there’s a penis inside me,” Anna said, holding her belly. She had just found out she was having a boy.
We laughed, and I mused, “I don’t think there’s a penis growing inside me…” I was a few months behind her in gestation and had decided to not find out the sex of my baby.
I don’t know what I thought it would feel like to grow a boy. Would I experience a boost of boldness, assertiveness, a change of temperament? Would I feel possessed by a new energy, something unfamiliar and foreign?
My partner and I later decided we would find out the sex of the baby. And I had been wrong. A penis was growing in the home of my powerful female organ.
….
We found out our child’s sex, but we didn’t want to tell others. It felt like really personal information to share. You mean, you want to know if the child growing in the depths of my body has a penis or a vagina?
I didn’t want his sexual anatomy to be the first thing the world knew about him. I didn’t want to be marinating in comments of tired gender stereotypes for half of my pregnancy. I felt the need to protect his identity. I didn’t want to set him up for “identity theft” before he even had a social security number. I wanted this baby to show us who he was, with his expression of gender being one aspect of his richness of life. I guess it was one of the first ways my protective mama instincts came out.
But it was more than that. I wanted to invite others into a more expansive imaginative process with me of the human experience. We are naturally drawn to creating images and dreams of who a baby is, and when gender is the only morsel of information for people to savor in expectation, I believe it can hyper-prioritize that aspect of a life and soul. Who he would be is so much bigger than that chromosome.
A friend remarked recently that it’s interesting that as we move away from binary understandings of gender that we have become even more focused on binary baby gender, with elaborate gender reveal parties and Insta-worthy announcements. Blue or pink balloons pop up out of a box, blue or pink smoke shoots from smoke bombs, blue or pink layers of cake peek out when we cut the first slice. We smile and laugh, we oooh and aww. It’s fun and games, and it is another reason to gather as a community to celebrate the creation of a new child.
Even many of my progressively-minded friends have chosen to participate in this ritual. I don’t fault them for it. As a culture, we are lacking in many meaningful, common rituals. We are hungry for them. I don’t think parents go into these gender reveal parties thinking, “Gee, I really want to confine my child to cultural expectations of who they will be. I really want to limit the scope of their possibilities.” But perhaps there is the opportunity for another kind of celebration, another ritual that brings a community together to honor the new life. Like an engagement party, this would be a party where we celebrate the lifelong engagement of a new being with our world.
We can still let bright colors stream from smoke bombs, and we can eat any color cake you want. Maybe this is why I’ve been so attracted to rainbows in this pregnancy. I want to use all the colors our eyes can see in this rich human experience to celebrate this new soul.
At this party, we can say, “Yay! It’s a human baby! A new being has come into existence and soon will join our laughing, crying, singing human family! Yay life! Yay love! Yay community!”
….
As we approached the decision of whether or not to find out our second baby’s sex, I wondered, Why do I want to know? What am I really learning about this child? What would a picture on an ultrasound tell us aside from the anatomy of our baby, which will show the baby’s sex but not necessarily their gender? Why would someone like me, committed to creating a more gender-neutral environment in the home and reimagining gender norms, want to find out the sex of her baby?
While I would fiercely love any child gifted to me, I knew that there was a longing in my heart for a daughter. Would we have more children? I don’t know. I wanted to prepare my heart for the child who would land slippery in my arms.
I had a difficult emotional start to this surprise pregnancy. I wanted to have one indicator of who this child might be so I could bond more easily with him or her in the womb. Somehow knowing baby’s sex made it a little more real for me. Yes, there is a person in here. Yes, this person will be here in a few months, and I will be wiping sticky poop off of a scrotum or vulva. Yes, this person is a wondrous mystery.
And here’s what I came to in the end: However they would choose to express their gender, a child born with male anatomy will grapple with notions of masculinity and a child born with female anatomy will grapple with notions of femininity. Not exclusively but from the body they would be standing in. I wanted to emotionally prepare myself and to begin the inner work that I needed to do to guide my child on that journey.
We decided that, yes, we would find out this baby’s sex.
….
In my first pregnancy, I was blindsided by the news that we were having a boy. “Are you sure?” I asked in the ultrasound, skeptical. As an intuitive mother, I thought I should be able to sense my baby’s gender. After getting that wrong, I think I started to trust my intuition less.
Going into the ultrasound this time, I didn’t want to have expectations of who this child was. I didn’t want to be wrong. At the same time, I did have a girl name that had been whispering to me and felt right. I thought maybe that was a sign of who this baby was.
Then once again on the black and white screen, we saw a dangle between the legs. “It’s a BOY!” the tech typed.
I became the mother of two sons. My heart stilled. There was not disappointment, not excitement exactly. I entered a great clearing of just me and my breath. I found myself in a field of calm acceptance as I processed this news, my smile preceding any emotion I could name. I entered a neutral territory, aware of how little this told me about this new soul but simultaneously watching visions of our new family flash before my eyes. I walked through the field and collected every flower and weed in my hand, not worried about classifying which was which. I just collected and held.
I guess I had once again thought I was having a girl despite efforts to suspend expectation. Was I wrong again? How could I be wrong again? Ha! I’m horrible at this. Maybe this intuition thing isn’t real. If it is real, what makes me so bad at it?
But now I think, maybe my intuition wasn’t wrong… Maybe my intuition of having a girl was teaching me something, sending me a message.
What if everything I felt growing within me that I intuited as girl energy is inside my boys, too? What if my understanding of male energy was so deeply affected by first-hand trauma from toxic masculinity that I couldn’t even interpret my pure babies’ energy as emanating from beings with male anatomy? What if it’s not my intuition that is faulty but rather this binary framework of who these children are?
There was a voice I couldn’t shake, an understanding that “Women in our family birth boys” and another notion that “The boys in our family are treated like little kings.” My body was supporting this pattern, but I was determined to re-imagine what it meant to raise boys.
“What a big opportunity and responsibility it is to raise emotionally-conscious, self-aware, empathetic, tender and secure boys,” I told my husband as we drove away from the doctor’s office. I would try to do it with every fiber of my being.
….
After leaving the ultrasound, I came away with even more questions about what this news meant for us. The prospect of raising two sons was already challenging me and forcing me to examine my own preconceptions and choices. Even in the womb, a baby will move and respond to the light around her. I was responding to the presence of new light in me, too.
I wanted to know, what really are the differences between boys and girls? What is born with them and what is conditioned? And what about their true selves are we perhaps missing by fitting them into this binary framework?
His genitalia won’t tell me who he is. It won’t tell me if he’ll be outgoing, shy, sensitive, interested in sports, passionate about dance, or talented in art. It won’t tell me if he will enjoy being the front and center organizer in a group, the observer quietly assessing the situation, or the happy follower going with the plan. It won’t tell me whether he will stop when he spots a smooth rock and press it, cold, against his cheek. It won’t tell me if he will rise before the sun and crawl into bed next to me, getting tangled in my seaweed hair and breathing warm ocean tides into my ear. It won’t tell me the kinds of questions he will ask about the world and himself and which questions will burrow deep into his heart, carving a path for him to follow deeper and deeper for the length of his life. Does it tell me much of anything?
What changes for me in mothering boys instead of girls? If I never have a daughter, what experiences will I lose? What might I gain? What wonders and surprises will I witness as the mother of two boys?
Does this news give me the illusion of envisioning his life, like telling me the male bonding rituals he’ll be able to experience? That when he gets older he’ll travel to St. Louis every summer to see Cardinals games with Dad, Pop, and his big brother. That he can follow in the footsteps of his Eagle Scout father, taking hiking and camping trips to New Mexico, coming away with strange stories of what it means to be male adolescents on an adventure. Or will another path fit him better, like the co-ed scouting group that my friends’ children are a part of?
Should I call myself a “boy mom” now? It’s fun to be a part of a tribe, but is that a label I want to embrace or is it more limiting than freeing? What stereotypes do I unwittingly reinforce in myself by hammering their boyness into my conception of who they are and what that means for me as their mother? What if it turns out that being a boy isn’t the land that feels like home to him?
Why is God sending me these two boys to mother? Why do these beings need me as their mother and why do I need them as my children? Our paths have been intertwined, and I believe it is for a reason.
How do I raise socially-conscious white males who are as aware of their privilege as they are of the deep wonder of their being? Am I teaching them that it’s ok for them to take up space in the world, too? Am I teaching them that they don’t have to shine their light smaller for others’ comfort? How do I balance that with teaching them to actively make more space at the table and listen for the voices of color, the voices of women, and good heavens, the voices of women of color?
And how do I open up the options of masculinity for these boys, thus creating a friendlier world with more options for girls, too? How much is it my duty to be conscious of their maleness and how much is it my duty to see them just as humans, liberated from the confines and advantages of their sex?
I found myself straddling frameworks of consciousness, holding paradoxes, living into the questions “like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue,” as Rilke says. I knew that these questions could not be answered in one day. I was on a long journey that was burrowing deep into my own heart, traveling toward locked chambers and pumping life into new places.
….
I started searching out the boy families I know who are approaching boyhood differently. I needed models for what we were building in our family, even if we didn’t know yet who our own children would become. I needed to glimpse what was possible.
A gift was sent to me from the universe. The day after we discovered we were having a second boy, I was scrolling through Instagram when I saw heartening images of three young brothers I know. One is a student of ballet with heart-shaped glasses, one a baby on a rainbow blanket, one an older brother with pierced ears who was nuzzling the baby. Oh, my heart. I saw tenderness, confidence, vibrancy, and self-expression that did not meet the limits of our culture’s masculinity.
I went to the streets. I wanted to talk to other mothers of boys to hear about their experiences. I invited that mother of three boys to go on a walk one day, and I asked her about her experience as a mother of boys.
“You know, all my boys are so different from each other,” she said. “I am a different mother to each one of them.”
Yes, first lesson: Another boy doesn’t mean a repeat of what I already know. This is a different person, a wholly singular being, a new soul. I don’t even really like the way “another boy” sounds. As if this one is a continuation of the last one, a collection I’ve started, a second verse in the same song. No, this child could pick his own melody in his own key.
“How neat it will be to have two boys and see how different they can be from each other,” a family member told us when we gave her the news. Yes! This is so much better to hear than, “Oh, another boy. Well, that will be easy! You already know about that! You already have everything you need!”
I happened to be at dinner with a mother of two boys soon after. She told me, “I read somewhere that in families with kids of the same gender, gender roles are actually less defined. Boys are more likely to learn handwork, like sewing and knitting and baking.” Hmm…it made sense. I would share what I enjoy with my children regardless of their gender and teach them about things that I’m passionate about, whether it be music, storytelling, rock collections, costuming, or baking Christmas cookies.
Another friend who has a boy and is expecting a second child, added to my considerations when she said, “Even if someone’s internal identity matches their external gender identity, there are so many different ways to express gender.”
….
I still have so many questions, and this is just the beginning of my searching. But I have found myself in a field of peace. I have found myself in some kind of balance of embracing the opportunity to raise two boys with an evolving gender ideal and embracing the mystery and unknown in who they will be.
“Do you know what you’re having…or is it a surprise?” people ask me.
Every child is a surprise. In so many ways. We don’t know who they will be, and we don’t know how they will change us.
To my firstborn, you surprised us in so many ways. I thought you would be a girl; they told us you were a boy. I thought you would come early; you took your time and waited two extra weeks after your due date. I thought I would push you out; doctors pulled you from my tummy. None of that changed the fact that we loved you and would look to you to learn what you needed to grow healthy and secure.
My children, this was the bargain we made when we became your parents: We will be surprised over and over and love you always.
We wanted you if you were born a girl or a boy. We wanted you if your insides matched the body you were given, and we wanted you if finding a home in your gender identity turned out to not be that straightforward. We wanted you no matter whom you would love. We wanted you no matter what your struggles would be. We wanted you.
We wanted you no matter your personality or interests. No matter your health. We wanted YOU.
We decided to bring you into this world prepared to love whoever you were made to be. Unconditionally.
We honor the wholeness of your inner being and your unfolding into a self-awareness that is uninhibited by our ideas of who you are. May you grow freely into your authentic being and deep goodness. May we see and affirm your developing sense of self. May your love and acceptance of yourself manifest in a love of others and a love of life.
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I expect this to be the first in a series of pieces about navigating gender in parenting, with more to come about my reflections of gender in breastfeeding, infancy and toddlerhood, and raising socially-conscious white males in the South. I am by no means an expert but am a mother sharing my own raw story that emerges somewhere between real talk and deep truth. Join my mailing list and follow me on Facebook and Instagram @unsilencedwoman.
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Photo credit: Josh Hailey Studios
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