To wonder if mothers love their sons more than their daughters?

[wildswans]

I have 3 x DDs, love them with all my heart. If I'm honest by the time we came to DC3 I would have been happy for a DS, but loved DD3 from the moment she was born. DH never been bothered about sex of DCs and I feel very blessed.

However, last weekend - Mothers' Day, the Sunday Times ran an article about how mothers would always love their sons (the implication being that they might love them more than their DDs) and my MIL often goes on about how mothers are closest to their sons (although actually she sees most of her DD who does far more for her). I also have contemporaries who seem to feel the same as MIL and others who are desperate for a DD, to the extent where a DS is almost seen as a disappointment.

Is this true? I can't imagine that I could love a DS any more than my DDs (although I'm sure that I wouldn't love him any less). But is it different? and do you really feel jealous when he finds a girlfriend or feel threatened or usurped in his affections?

I am not asking whether DS or DD is 'better' as that topic has been well ventilated, but just wondering whether you feel differently and/or react differently to them.

thegreylady i completely understand what you are saying. i think my mum felt a bit like that when i was pregnant, she wanted me to have a DD, because she wanted me to have that mother/daughter relationship that she and i have. i was blessed with a DD and my mum has told me she was "made up". My DD is a toddler but i said to DP last week "i hope if DD had children that she has a daughter of her own at some point, so she can have a friend for life like i have with her" DP told me to shut up and said i was mental and that she might not want to be my friend when she grows up, we may have totally different personalities and not have the mother/daughter relationship that i assume all mothers/daughters have. i still hope she has a daughter of her own one day though, as i said in my last post most mothers and daughters i know become close friends. also most fathers and sons i know become good friends, maybe that's why alot of men really want a son (i know my DP does eventually)

Women? They rarely get on with the mothers of their husbands/partners, at least judging by the mother in law threads on here.

Oh there are an equal number of women who seem to have had 'toxic/narc' mothers of their own.

The thing that always amuses me is with women is: their DP is 'normal' but all the ILS are controlling/rude/have weird habits/make unreasonable demands - erm, exactly how is the DP 'normal' coming out of all this dysfunctional shite?

before the baby was born, I remember looking longingly at the pink packs, and desperately hoping I'd be buying the pink pack.

Where I was crying at the thought of ironing out all the frills - mind you I was also crying at the thought of mini football kits .... I think I cried a lot when I was pregnant!

I love all my boys and girls the same.

Zukies post made me cry. I pray you find it in your heart to love him before he feels that you dont.

The thing is it is rare for women to admit they prefer 1 gender over the other in their DCs. And yet lots of women will say their DM preferred their sons to their daughters.

Its like most people won't think they think men are more intelligent than women. And yet in experiments when they ask people if they think their dad or mum was more intelligent, the majority say dad.

Prejudices are that precisely because we usually can't see that we are being prejudiced.

Isn't the old idea that your son would remain part of your family, and his wife would be your daughter-in-law, but that your daughter would be lost entirely when she married into another family?

troisgarcons lol. If the husband was on here, he'd probably print out a link and come and show me (look Jessie, this is your mother), but he certainly wouldn't claim I was normal!

OMG no, no way....don't even have to think about it. I love my children differently but equally. Nothing would make me love one more than the other, certainly not their genitals.

My mum had a strained relationship with my brother, who is the youngest of 3 and the only boy. She was very open with me, the eldest, about how difficult and stressful she found him, from before I was even a teenager. In fairness, he was an awful teenager, the type who used to refuse to get up on time for school and scream and shout abuse at my mum (and everyone else), so eventually she gave up. I took my mum's side at the time, but now I think her attitude towards him was part of the problem. However, the whole thing left me with a very negative experience of boys to the point I believed all boys between 6 and 16 were just plain horrible, until I did teacher training in my early 20s.
I have one DS who is 9 and I adore him, but one of the reasons I haven't had another DC, is because I honestly didn't think I could cope with two boys fairly close in age. I also deliberately found out the sex at my 20 week scan, as I think it would have been a huge disappointment to me at birth and at least that way I had time to prepare and get used to having a boy. If I had had a DD first, I think I probably would have had another DC sooner, and welcomed either another DD or a DS. Now I would like another DC, probably because I feel time is running out at 34, and I wouldn't mind wha

TBH I wonder if people have a favourite gender whether they should really have children at all. What a sentence for any child born the wrong gender.

zukiecat you're honesty is refreshing, and i really do hope that you can get to the bottom of the feelings. i have to admit myself, that i feel slightly sorry for my friends who only have sons as i think they won't have a friend for life like they would if one of their children was a daughter. i feel ashamed of feeling like that too, how can i feel sorry for somebody with 2 beautiful, healthy boys? they are blessed.

QuintessentialShadows your post made me a little sad, i would hate to feel like that if i had a son. i can only go off my own experience with my DP and all my grown up male cousins/uncles. yes, most of them aren't friends with their mother, they don't go out shopping or for lunch, but they love their mother and family dearly and wouldn't be happy with letting their wives family take centre stage, honestly they would all expect compromise with that. my DP always calls into his mums for a cup of tea or a sandwich, he rings her atleast once a week to see how he is. he loves her so much, but yes i do come first, but it's a different love. i love my mother to death but my DP comes first, he has to. it's the same thing. i think the MIL thing is exagerated on here, in "real life" i don't know many people with MIL issues. if you're anything like me you'll be a cool, trendy MIL and you're DIL will want to be your mate

Sorry, posted too soon.
I wouldn't mind what gender I have. As for my mum- she hated being an only child herself (chances are she would have struggled even if my brother had been a girl, as I think 3 children for someone who was an only child and basically brought up by her grandparents was always going to be tough), but she has only ever commented on my choice to have an only once. When DS was still a toddler, she said quite plaintively something along the lines of how lovely and gentle he is for a boy, but wouldn't I like my own little girl.

5 boys and a girl here and NO we didnt keep going until we had a girl, we wanted 4, no 5 was a bit of a bonus baby and we were convinced it would be another boy, even after being told she was a girl at scans as 20 and 28wks we still had a boys name picked out.

i love them all equally, i like them in different ways for their different traits and personalities but i love them all to bits and could never choose one over another.

Oh shit sorry zukiecat, not what you need to hear, I hadn't read your posts. xx

Two adult dds aged 25 and 22, one dds aged 11. I adore them all. love having a ds as I have no experience of boys. He is very affectionate and easy going. If I had another girl I would have loved her just the same

Mil thinks boys are better, but she thinks men are superior to women and girls don't need an education.

I've no idea I only have two DDs, so different from each other that I love them and are infuriated by them in a hundred different ways.

What I would say is that men seem to have a very strong bond with their first daughters. FIL with DSIL, my Dad with me and DH with DD1. My dad gets on fine with my DSIS and DH with DD2, but there is something especially PFB with men and their oldest girls.

I'd guess that for every mother who favours her son, there is another who favours her daughter. But I'd also guess that these women are a small minority of mothers, and that most mothers love their children equally.

I have a DS and never wanted a boy. My parents and inlaws were all hoping I'd have a girl. Everyone was disappointed in DS from the moment he was born. It took me nearly two years to accept him, made worse by family comments such as 'girls are more advanced' 'girls are cuter' 'if he was a girl he wouldn't do that.' I actually think I'd have bonded much sooner without their input.

I will not risk having a second dc because I would be devestated if it was another boy and it is not fair to bring a child into that. It is not the baby's fault. I knew when I got pregnant with DS that I had a strong girl preference but I thought even if I had a boy I would be ok. It turned out I really wasn't and although all is ok now I still feel guilty regarding how disappointed I was in those first couple of years.

Funnily enough my MIL didn't 'like' girls - she was proud she had boys. She took every opportunity to 'diss' her own SILS and neices. BUT oddly she had a very very close relationship with her own mother and in that family she was the preferred child over and above her 3 brothers. I wonder if she felt 'ousted' when her brothers got wives?

I have wondered this OP...I don't know how to explain it but Mothers of boys seem to sometimes have a special facial expression when they speak of them which they don't have when they speak of their girls...it's only 2 women that I have nticed do this though.

my theory is that sons don't feel the need to assert their independance from their mothers in the same way that daughters do from early teens.. my ds is late teens and will quite happily lay his head on my shoulder watching tv and doesn't mind at all being 'mothered'.. i suppose this is why men remain little boys to their mums and are quite comfortable with it..fine for mums but pain in the ass for gf's and wives

We had girl, 3 boys, girl. I only wanted girls. Like others on here my mum made no secret of the fact that she favoured my brother, and her mother did the same. I absolutely did not want one of each, so of course that's what we got. Although I didn't want boys I found my boys much easier than the girls, so I don't know whether that came across as favouritism. That's a conversation I need to have with them. When they were growing up we always got "X is your favourite" but X always changed. DS1 would say DS3 was the favourite; DS2 would say DS1 was etc.

We got used to having boys, so when DD2 was born it was weird. Now I look at familes of boys and they seem alien.

DD1 and DS2 are both in long-term relationships. We get on really well with DD's BF but less well with DS's GF. That's personality though. I don't feel jealous of his girlfriend, and DH doesn't feel jealous of her BF - wouldn't that be a bit odd? It is the natural order of things for children to grow up, form relationships and leave home.

purpleromanesco It was actually really obvious how they favoured my brothers over me on growing up and I think a lot of my struggles as a teenager were due entirely to how unloved I felt looking back. I decided I only wanted boys due to it all, that mum must be right about girls and then my first child was a girl and was wonderful. That was the moment when I finally realised I'd been buying into my mums nonsense for years.

As an aside, my mum has 2 sisters only and had a difficult relationship with both growing up.

I have a girl and a boy. The way I see it I have two children.

I have witnessed boys being valued more highly with the older generation in both my family and my dh's family. This really saddens me. Women who buy into the concept that men are superior to women. While there is breath in my body my children will not be treated like this (by family anyway, I realise I can't control the rest of society).