Everyone is jealous because I have a girl!!!!!

[MeganLew]

This is exactly what one my friends said to me today! She wreckons that some of her friends (who have only boys) are jealous because she has a "princess". She asked me if I find that people who only have children of one sex (she clearly meant boys) are jealous because they didn't end up having a girl, seriously what kind of person or normal person thinks this way never mind comes out and says it?.... I just so happen to have two girls and a boy but if all three of them had have been boys I wouldn't have felt envious of those who had girls not one bit.

The thing is my friend had two boys first and didn't hide her disappointment about the fact they weren't girls, but later pretended that she was happy "with her boys" A couple of years later she became pregnant again and was that desperate to know if she was expecting a girl that she persuaded a private clinic to scan her at 15 weeks instead of the usual 16/20 to find out the sex. She had a little girl and since she was born she has been all about her and she treats her boys so differently and is kind of mean to them. She goes on and on about how lucky she is that she's got a little girly and that she feels sorry for anyone who has all boys.

One of her so called close friends posts pictures of her two boys on Facebook quite regularly as she's very proud of them and all my friend had to say was that she was secretly jealous of her for having a girl and that she is bitter, but to me my friend is completely nuts, so aibu to want to distance myself from her? She clearly has issues and thinks that she's the perfect mother and has the perfect family when I know that in reality nothing could be further from the truth.

Did she actually say "princess"? Ugh!

eeoow to ''princess''. I've a girl and a boy, but no princess!

I think that gender disappointment is pushed under the carpet though which is why it comes out in little digs and PA comments people (sometimes) make when they're coming to terms with the family they got. When I was prg with dc2 I was very unhappy in the relationship but that was such a terrifying thing to admit to myself that I think my gender disappointment was a sort of transference of issues. AS soon as I left the dc's father I felt better about everything. It instantly became, well, this is the family I HAVE. In the past it had all felt like the image, or the appearance.

theres nothing wrong with feeling you would prefer a certain gender over another. But if it becomes disappointment that is displayed to loved ones and friends, and even goes to resentment that is wrong. The child will grow up becoming aware of this, and feel unwanted. This is ingratitude.

most people do want to know the gender that's why they take the second scan. but increasingly now some hospitals are refusing to divulge this information because in some areas it is a problem.

. People forget they are fortunate to deliver healthy babies with5 digits on each limb, and all their senses intact, these little things are important, and it is taken for granted, over the gender issue sometimes.

OP up to you if you want to distance yourself I think you are making a mountain out of a mole hill. Clearly you have other issues with her and want to split so that's your choice. I think you are wrong to say she is a bad mother if yo claim to be her friend. Her doing a scan to find out gender is not the crime of the century, people do private scans to see if they are having multiple births because their midwife appointment is a long way off, so does that make them bad people? Hell no.

So shes over the moon with the girl she had that's natural, its a new baby she will spoil her it doesn't mean she doesn't love her sons anymore (sighs)

I have 2 boys, I would have been happy with either. Children all hav etheir own personalities - they don't just get a "one size fits all" boy or girl personality.

I probably relate better to little boys just because that's what I had and have spent more time with over the years.

I can't say I've ever been jealous of people with girls or wanted my own special princess....

I totally get that we should be thankful for healthy babies, regardless of their gender. I have boys and they're grown and have their own families. Whilst I love my sons as much as it's possible to love anyone, I do miss having a daughter at my age. I think daughters are far more likely to care for their parents. (I was one of 4 girls and we cared for our parents into their old age and death) When I'm in OP at hospital I can't help but notice the number of daughters that are accompanying their aged parents.

I have 2 good DILs but it's not the same as having your own daughter. I suffer from a mental health problem and my sons don't know how to cope whereas I think a daughter would be more willing to try to understand.

Friends who have daughters are all well supported and have good r/ships with daughters and go out for days together - can't imagine either of my sons going out for a day with me!

I know there are some sons who will care but I think they're in the minority. My parents spent the last few months of their life in a Care Home (my mom was there longer than my dad) and there was only one son who used to visit his mom - all the rest were daughters. When my son and DIL were pregnant with baby No. 2 both DH and I secretly wanted a girl (first one was a boy) and she turned out to be a girl. We confessed we'd hoped for a girl and my DIL said "my mom wanted me to have a girl, she said you raise girls for yourself but you raise boys for someone else." !! I think there's an element of truth in that, and in the old saying "A daughter's a daughter all of her life and a son's a son till he get's him a wife."

We have ds and we (dh and I) both wanted another boy. We're expecting a girl in 6 weeks (I'm in desperate countdown mode!) and I'm ashamed to say I'm still a little disappointed.

I'm the first person on one side of the family to have a daughter, and I felt sorry for other members of my family when our older relatives kept commenting about we have a perfect family; one of each, wonderful etc. So their families of just little boys wasn't perfect? I guess people don't think before they speak.

Oh don't get me wrong. I completely agree that there is nothing wrong with feeling disappointment - when I found out I was having another DS I bawled my eyes out. NOT because I was having another boy but because we're only planning on having two kids and that meant I would never have the chance to raise a daughter. I had to have a chance to mourn the vision that I had had in my head for a very long time. Of course, I got over it very quickly and by the time my second born was placed on my chest I didn't give a shiny shite what was between his legs.

The reason she is a dick though, is because she's vocalizing her thoughts and applying them to everyone else. Assuming that everyone woman wants a "princess". The use of the word "princess" and her obvious favoritism of her daughter makes her a douche of the highest order.

I was over the moon both times when I had my DS's and believe that I was meant to have boys, mainly because my relationship with my Mum was sometimes tricky and I would have worried about it being easier to pass on my own issues to girls. However (and this does not mean I am horribly jealous of my friends who have girls), there are times when I think it would have been nice to have a girl because a girl might have cared more about being in trouble and pleasing me. Also I sometimes feel in a house full of boys that nobody understands me or has any feelings. Also, I would have loved the whole girly spa day/shopping etc if it had come about. This does not however mean that I am bitter or would want to change anything in any way or that I am not grateful for my boys, as I said before I believe that they are what I was meant to have. My DH would have loved a girl and if I had wanted to try for a girl (not that I would have ever tried for another baby foe that reason), he would have readily agreed. As it was I felt that a third baby would push me over the edge and I was determined to stop at 2.

Just vommed a little bit over "princess" (shudder). If anyone called me a princess I'd take it as a massive insult - why do some parents call their own dds this?

Yanbu obviously. What an odd thing to think that people are jealous of your baby for its sex. This could be a hormonal thing if she had her DD recently though. My mum said that when she had my DB (her first), she thought everyone in the maternity ward must have been jealous because she had the most beautiful baby! She laughed about it later.

I don't understand why she thinks girls are 'better' than boys. Is it so she can dress them up like little dolls?

It's almost ALWAYS women being disappointed about having boys and wanting girls . You don't realise how lucky you are, you really don't.

Also I agree about the princess thing. I'm 25 and my mum still calls me princess and 'Dolly'

Although I tend to agree with Nina about the daughter for life/son til he finds a wife thing. Pople with only sons hate it when you say it and get all defensive but it's true. Males and females are very different.

NanaNina, I think you're spouting some fairly unthinking, heavily-gendered generalisations - the fact that daughters are more likely to cultivate ongoing relationships with parents is nothing to do with their possessing a vagina, but with the gendered social expectation that women 'caretake' family relationships, and look after other people emotionally, expectations from which men are largely exempt. That's also why you see daughters with elderly parents at the hospital and the care home. Daughters aren't inherently nicer or more loving or more empathic than sons - why would they be? - but, as your post demonstrates, far more input and empathy is expected of them.

We need to be combating that kind of stereotype, not passing it on.

*People not pople

Flowers, males and females are different because our society still treats them very differently. Does it not occur to you that if you go into raising a son or daughter believing stuff like 'A daughter's a daughter for all of your life, a son's a son till he takes a wife', and 'you raise a daughter for yourself, but a son for someone else', you are actually reproducing male emotional disengagement and female involvement?

Mild, don't be so ridiculous. There are evolutionary and biological differences between males and females and there always will be. Women tend to be more nuturing and maternal than men, which is why females are the ones that usually end up caring for elderly relatives and also being primary caregivers for their children.

gosh I haven't seen the term twincess for bloody ages, I have twins and twince and twincess are all the rage on fb twin groups.

I think MammaTJ gave you some really good advice.

She's batshit. And quite the humungous asshat.

Most sane, decent adults I know were happy that they were able to have children full stop. Not one of the Mums I know would admit to being disappointed if they produced a boy. It's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. But then, most of my friends are lovely. Not imbeciles.

I can see where you're coming from NanaNina, you only have to look at some of the posts on here here about "nightmare mils". (Mostly) Women who don't really want their mil that involved with their lives, they don't want their mil to visit a new baby etc etc, but quite happy with their own Mum who they're obviously closer to.

My twin boys are 5, I hope we are close when they grow up.

I was depressed anyway (due to baby's father being so controlling) but before my son was born, I learnt from the scan that it was a boy and I felt disappointment. But not because I was an imbecile! I think I saw the second baby as an accessory to the first! And I would have liked her to have had a sister. But the second he was born I thought, amazing! I got a boy!

So that's why, although scans are great for health reasons, I don't know if I should have found out in advance. That was just me.

Also agree with you Mild that it's a nurture not nature issue.

I have always been really happy to have 2 boys, but I do worry (although worry is the wrong word, it doesn't keep me up at night ) that we won't be as close when they grow up as we would be if they were girls.

I have 2 boys and my sister has one boy - she's currently pregnant with her second child.

My mum phoned to tell me the good news and the first thing she said was 'Oh I hope it's a girl this time - wouldn't it be nice to have a girl at last'.

Not sure what reaction she thought she was going to get from me but I asked her bluntly what was wrong with boys and she flustered on about buying dresses and having a granddaughter to balance things out.

I don't buy into all that old fashioned nonsense about wanting a girl so you've got a carer in old age etc. Raise your boys to have a close relationship and stop pigeon holing them into one role or another!

I was delighted to find out our first child was a boy just as I would have been delighted with a girl. This time round I secretly half wanted another boy but wasn't at all disappointed when we found out we were having a girl. I come from a family of nearly all female births and it's pretty dysfunctional so I guess that's why I thought I'd prefer a boy!

Flowers, you are the one being 'ridiculous'. I have not suggested there are no biological differences between men and women - of course there are. But read something like Cordelia Fine's Delusions of Gender on the lack of any actual hard evidence for any biological hardwiring of sex difference like innate higher qualities of nurturing-ness in women over men.

A quick read of Mn alone makes it very clear that women are more likely to be primary caregivers to their children for social reasons - because our society still defaults to that, and insufficient affordable childcare means that one parent often feels the need to give up work - unsurprisingly, this is far more usually the woman, whose earning capacity has suffered from having children, who 'cannot afford to work'. Again not surprisingly, societies where there is free or cheap high-quality childcare show a far higher number of women in the workforce.

And looking after the elderly, whether they are related to you or not, is a low-status, unpaid or low-paid job, which is often relegated to women, especially -when it concerns relatives - those who are already out of the workplace and are perceived to have free time their WOHP husbands and brothers don't. All those women NanaNina sees taking elderly relatives to hospital or visiting them in care homes - were they there because women are somehow biologically more loving and empathetic, or because (i) they're expected to and (ii) they're less likely to be working FT in a demanding field that means they can't regularly get time off to deal with family stuff on the average Tuesday morning?

Your friend obviously tries to justify her own disappointment at having sons by saying "everyone must feel like that"

^This.

If you don't enjoy her company any more, I would say stop meeting with her.