must have son
At our yard sale last weekend, I got to talking to a guy about my age who came with his two-year old daughter. He was shopping for clothes for his daughter and we talking about parenting daughters. He looked like your typical kind-of-crunchy Denver dad, and he talked like one, too, until this exchange:
Denver Dad (surveying all the baby stuff we had for sale): So, it looks like you’re done having kids.
Me: Yes. One is enough for us.
DD: Yeah, I thought one would be enough for me, too. I actually didn’t even want kids. But now that I have a daughter, I realize how important it is to have a son.
Me: Why is that?
DD: You know, to carry on my name.
He said that like it was a perfectly sane thing to say in 2006. Like I would understand and perhaps even agree that my husband wanted a son, too, but alas, we were stuck with just a crummy daughter. Is this really where we are in 2006? Having multiple kids to ensure the man’s name gets passed on? What a pathetic reason for breeding.
When we found out we were having twins, I can honestly say I was hoping for
two girls. That said, as one of two boys to carry on about five
generations of my paternal family name, I certainly felt pressure to have a
boy. What's interesting to me is how easily this gets disconnected from
gender politics for some folks--that what is being preserved is some notion
of family, not a vestige of a patrilineal primogeniture system...
Sigh...
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