**Disclaimer…the following piece may contain some unpopular opinions**
Boy Mom vs. Girl Mom culture. I will admit…in the beginning, I thought it was cute.
“Awwww. Look at that adorable shirt! ‘Dirt + Noise = Raising Boys. That’s so adorable!” “Man I really related to everything in that blog post I just read about how special it is to be raising little girls and how the author would just not know what to do if she had a boy. #GLITTERRRRRRR.”
It’s a thing right now. You see it everywhere. Everywhere you turn.
But it’s not just on t-shirts…and coffee mugs….and wine glasses….and TRAVEL coffee mugs….and bumper stickers (you get it.) People are talking and writing and posting all about how having children of a certain gender is just soooo much more special than the other. And it’s really lead me to step back and unpack that a little bit.
With each of my first two pregnancies, I was obviously preparing to have a daughter. Everyone I talked to just gushed about how amazing it was going to be for me to be able to dress up my little girls in bows and dresses. Everyone I talked to ALSO just loved to extend their sympathies to Jake and immediately ask us if we were going to try for ‘that boy.” By the time we announced the sex of our third baby…I knew what was coming.
“OH THANK GOD YOU’RE GETTING A BOY THIS TIME! IS JAKE SO RELIEVED?”
“You’re going to love having a boy. There is just something so special about the bond between a mother and her son. There’s nothing like it.”
And on. And on. And on.
Now don’t get me wrong. I love the Disney princesses and the Barbies and the dress-up clothes just as much as the next chick. AND…I am so looking forward to whatever crazy boy antics are in store for me with my son. However, when it comes to the whole boy mom/girl mom culture…I have to call into question what the actual intention is behind this whole movement.
In this age of what seems to be the most overwhelming wave of division in our world, why…why on God’s green Earth….why do we need one more thing to divide us? Did the people who came up with this boy mom/girl mom movement have a difficult time accepting the fact that they had all children of one sex? Was this their attempt to make themselves feel better about being a “boy mom” or a “girl mom?” Was this a really cruel attempt to exert superiority over the moms who aren’t members of either sacred club? Was it simply a fun and innocent thing some moms cooked up so they could slap something new on a t-shirt with their Cricut? AND ALSO…what about moms like me that have both? Are we just the commoners that don’t get to be in EITHER club? Are we in both? I WANT A DAMN T-SHIRT, TOO, OKAY?!
I don’t know if we will ever have the answers to these odd questions. But doesn’t this seem easier:
“Hey! You have girls and I have boys…turns out they both wipe their boogers on the wall no matter their genitalia. How are you getting yours to stop?”
OR…
“Wow! You have a son and a daughter! Me, too! Have you noticed a ton of similarities or are they really different?”
Maybe I am being overly sensitive. But I challenge you to marinate in this thought. Being a mom is a crazy, difficult, beautiful, scary, taxing thing. No, wait…being a parent is. Wait…BEING A HUMAN IS. Everywhere we turn there is something or someone telling us that we are different from everyone else and that we are less. Do we really need ONE MORE THING to compartmentalize us? Working moms vs. SAHM. Breast vs. Bottle. Boy Mom vs. Girl Mom.
Instead of pointing out our differences, maybe we could just try to rest together in our “sameness.” What bonds us together as a group rather than divides us by something silly? I know personally I am going to focus a lot less on my children’s gender roles and the impact they have on my social status. I am choosing to make a conscious effort towards relating to other parents on more important levels like the core principles of their parenting styles. And also…booger wiping.