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.

Love the fact that there are others like me that read the sunday times supplements a week after buying them!

I wonder about this TBH...women tend to be so competitive and i wonder if that can trickle into a mother-daughter relationship - I don't know as I only have a son who I have an all consuming love and affection for....but I wonder if I will be as close to our next child, for a variety of reasons, one being how I would fair in the mother-daughter arena. I always have such a mixed bag of emotions about my mum and I'm guessing she feels similarly.

Some refreshing honesty on this thread an not too much bashing over those with gender preferences. I certainly don't think it is true that the majority out there prefer girls - everyone i know in RL seems desperate for sons, and those that have sons already wants more boys.

I have a DD and am pregnant - really not sure whether to find out gender this time round because i would love a boy. I wanted a boy first time round - for various reasons - horrible relationship with my own mother and other female relatives. I could not have loved DD more when she was born and actually think my anxiety over the gender contributed to pre natal depression. What I do know now is that if we are blessed with another girl I will love her to death just like DD but I will be sad further down the line that I will never exp the mother/son relationship as this will be my last pregnancy.

zukie Oh, a shrink would have a field day with me!!!! Eldest child of an Irish catholic clinically depressed mother???

There is lots about my childhood I would like to forget. Lots I remember with fondness, but most of it has left me feeling sad. Sad that I dont have a proper "mother/daughter" relationship. Sad that she has had such an unhappy life. Sad that it affects me in ways I probably am not even aware of.

I cant change the past. But I can learn from it.

1 in 4 children aren't the product of the father named on the birth certificate? That can't be right, surely! Or am I misunderstanding?

This thread is at the same time happy, sad, and thoughtful.

What causes a mother to not love her child? It is an interesting question.

It makes me think about my cousin. He was born two weeks before me, so we were very close. Now, he has grown up not loved by his mum, and the background is heartbreaking. His mum was an orphan, and taken in by a local family in the far north of the country. Her adoptive father did not take kindly to the news of her engagement. He raped her.

My uncle (my mums brother), is possibly the kindest man I have known (he paid for my mums education, when my gran dad said: Nonsense, a girl need no book learning). When he heard what happened, he decided to bring the wedding forward, and sought employment as far from the adoptive parents as he could. Nobody would then know that the child this young bride carried, was not his. My uncle loved his son, and was both mum and dad and friend for him. His mum tried her hardest, but couldnt. She was diagnosed with OCD and Schizophrenia. My cousin spent his childhood with a mum who went in and out of institutions, and by the time he himself got married, his mum was in care, and his dad had developed dementia. He now divides his Saturdays between the psychiatric ward seeing his mum, and his dads care home. He has two gorgeous little boys of his own now, aged 6 and 4, one of whom has a heart defect. My cousin is the loneliest person I know.

So lets give warm thought to children who grow up not loved, and mothers who struggle to love their children. Life can be unfair, life can be shit, but we all do our very best.

zukie Good luck for tomorrow. Whenever I feel lonely/upset/angry about my childhood I think of the following quote;

"comparison is the thief of joy"

And it is. We can spend so much time comparing our childhoods to others we dont enjoy what we have today.

Yes, good luck Zukie!