A while ago, a friend prompted me to think about what it means to me to have two boys, instead of the girls I so pub­licly wanted when we were preg­nant. I came up with a response then, but thought it might be worth flesh­ing out my thoughts some more. For my ben­e­fit, at least.

(File under: I like myself bet­ter when I have time to be introspective)

I was raised by women. Mom, three sis­ters, and (early on) a maid. Dad has always been there, yes, but he’s a very orga­nized, dis­ci­plined man, not the sort to con­sort freely with messy kids. (Yes, Sweetie, there’s some of that in me, too.) So I believed that I under­stood, when I was approach­ing father­hood, what it was like to raise a girl. More impor­tantly, I had no idea what it was like to raise a boy. I never had broth­ers, injured my pride early on when it came to sports, and found my com­fort­able niche among the geeks (all of whom were boys: revel, current-gen geeks, in your geek girls).

My girls were going to be cute, cud­dly, lov­ing, some­times pouty and weepy, always ready to melt a heart and be… well, girly. Their clothes were going to be bet­ter, and yet they could read the boy books and do the boy things that I did, too. I sorely wanted that. Plus, I had the best name picked out.¹

But we knew it was a crap­shoot, and I did not want to be dis­ap­pointed at the birth of my child, so we specif­i­cally asked after the gen­der at our ultra­sound. And sure enough, there was a penis, front and cen­ter. I had a lot of time to get used to the idea, and I did. When our first boy was born, I was in love, scared wit­less, and so very, very tired. By the time I was rested enough to think again (some six months later?) there wasn’t any bit of my desire for a girl left. And really there’s not a lot of dif­fer­ence between a baby boy and a baby girl, except how you have to be wary dur­ing dia­per changes.

When we got preg­nant for a sec­ond time, I went through it all again, but with the added pres­sure of know­ing this would be our last child, too. And we asked about the gen­der again, and we got a penis again. And sure enough, when he popped out, there it was. And again, I con­fess to no dis­ap­point­ment then, none at all, whether it was masked by exhaus­tion or whether I’d burned it all up over the preg­nancy, I don’t know.

I do know that as I have watched them grow up (they are nine and five now) I’ve had times, twinges, my wife called them, when I have wished for a girl again. Not to replace my boys, cer­tainly, but to add to the mem­o­ries and the expe­ri­ences I’m hav­ing watch­ing them grow. Two boys is a won­der­ful, gar­ru­lous, whiny, heart­warm­ing, bond­ing, bruis­ing thing, no doubt. I do some­times won­der what it would be like with some girly­ness mixed in.

But in the end, I’m okay with two boys, instead. As they say: with teenage boys, you need to pay atten­tion to where the penis is, but with teenage girls you need to pay atten­tion to all the penises. I’ve hand­ily avoided most of the drama that accom­pa­nies own­ing a teenage girl, and yet I get to raise my boys as sen­si­tive young men in a world that could cer­tainly use some.

And after all, you love them all so much it hurts.

When my eldest con­fessed, when he was five, that his secret favorite color was pink, I shed a lit­tle tear for future him and loos­ened my grip on the girl I will never have.