To feel sad I'll never have a daughter

[Tatatatata]

I feel horribly guilty.

I am currently pregnant with a healthy boy. My first child and likely my last due to a few reasons I won't go into here to keep it short!

I know I should be grateful to just even be here at all after everything we've gone through to reach this point but in a way, I can't help but feel a little sad that I'll never have a baby girl.

I don't know why, I just always pictured myself with a daughter. I'm an only child and I love the relationship I have with my mum and worry I'll never experience that the same with a son.

Don't get me wrong, I am so excited to meet our boy. I'm just feeling sad that this is likely it now for us and I likely won't ever get the chance to be a mum to a little girl.

Yanbu. You can love this baby very much and wish you were able to have a girl. It's not wishing this child away, it's grieving the loss of a dream. I'm sure your little boy will be lovely.

I have similar feelings about never having had a son. However people including on here have told me that unless genitals are somehow involved in parenting (and they are not!) then it makes no difference because boys and girls are really no different from each other nowadays. You can treat your son just like you would a daughter and do all the same things.

* then it makes no difference because boys and girls are really no different from each other nowadays*

Absolute nonsense

Absolute nonsense

Guessing you’re one of those old school people who believes in boys vs girls toys, pink vs blue etc Girls can do anything boys can nowadays.

Yes because that is the only other view to thinking that there are common (but not definitive) gender differences

Inform us then, how are boys and girls different? Without making generalisations.

msflibble
Your dad sounds lovely. I'd imagine his parents didn't hold the attitude that it's inevitable your dad would ignore them once he got a wife.

Sometimes I wonder if it's a self-fulfilling prophecy:

• a woman hears all the rubbish about how girls are so much better, how it's disappointing to not have a girl, how boys will inevitably ignore their mums once a wife is on the scene etc.
• the woman's disappointment is reinforced by people who have nothing to offer other than to talk nonsense about whether number 2 will be a girl / son's a son until he gets a wife
• the new mum goes into parenting expecting that one day her son is going to start distancing himself from her because she hears lots of women talking about how they demand their DH withdraw from his family and why her family has to come first
• all these subtle messages affect the development of a mum's relationship with her son(s)
• mum ends up not being as close to her son as other mums do with their daughter (because they're expecting a BFF for life and so parent with that in mind)
• son drifts apart into adulthood because they don't have the same close bond
• son meets woman who has the BFF mum/daughter deal and accepts that because his wife is closer to her family than he is to his mum that wife's family comes first.

Then the MIL issue arise, for example:

• mum expects her son to drift away but tries to keep him close = MN thread about why MIL should leave us alone
• mum gets clingy to adult son and limits independence, huge apron string issues
• Mum wants to be involved with her son's children but never gets more than crumbs = thread about why son's wife is totally right to exclude in laws from their child's life, after all she gave birth so her family are more important
• both MIL and DIL have been socialised in this stupid idea that men need to have women in their life fighting over them so find drama at every opportunity. Son in the middle can't win whatever he does.

Whereas ignoring the people who chat idle nonsense that offers very little to new parents could stop that situation developing.

But of course I would have to make generalisations as that’s the crux of my view.

There are general differences and interests common within a gender and not shared with the other.

Are there some that don’t conform? Or course
The majority - do

You seem to have got swept up in the belief that gender doesn’t exist and we are all just humans.

You and I won’t agree on this. So I think best to just leave.

I am curious why you have similar feelings to the OP about not having a boy though
If you truly believe no difference whatsoever