Therapy for severe gender disappointment

[HL321]

Hi everyone,

please no judgement here as I appreciate im in a really fortunate position compared to many people, I acknowledge that I think I’m having a mental health challenge. I just found out we’re having our second boy, and I will preface that I adore our son, but I am absolutely devastated not to be having a girl.

i feel like it’s gone beyond gender ‘disappointment’ - I feel very disconnected from my pregnancy and I went from being so excited to absolute dread in the instant I found out :( I keep trying to convince myself that the NIPT was wrong but I know at 99.9a% accuracy that’s not true! I had my 12 week scan recently and I felt nothing…in my head I said I wouldn’t be disappointed if there was something wrong with the baby and we had to terminate which is just not me at all (and if it came down to it I know this wouldn’t be true) but I am regretting getting pregnant despite it being very much planned and wanted. everywhere I go I am comparing myself to other families with girls and feeling even worse.

i think my fear is less so about having a boy but more so about never having a girl. I worry about our future with sons and not having the same mother/daughter close relationship with them, not getting to help plan a daughters wedding, being the ‘mother in law’, not having someone to care for us when we’re old as this is typically a female role. All ridiculous I know but I’m so in my own head.

I had the same with my son, not to this extent, but I was really gutted, however I always knew we would have a second and could have a girl then. It continued even beyond birth to feeling really jealous and resentful of friends having girls, so I’m thinking I probably need to address this now before the baby is born.

has anyone had therapy relating to gender disappointment who found it helpful? Im feeling very low and lost but hoping with some professional support I can work through it. Thanks so much x

@SeaLettuces That’s bizarre and sad about your SILs. My cousin was desperate for a girl (eventually had one after 4 boys). The boys grew up knowing that she loved their sister more. The daughter emigrated to Australia in her twenties as she felt stifled.

What are you talking about!? We have abortion on demand here. Obviously I wouldn't state the reason, but ieven if I did I'm not sure I could be stopped? Either you believe in abortion or you don't.

I think women have a right to choose whether they want to have a baby. However, aborting a baby that you would otherwise keep if she was a boy just seems so horrible.

Well, you don't have to do it, do you!? Either you believe in abortion for all, on demand, or you do not. Believe me, I've had friends who've had terminations for reasons I considered completely frivolous,(one because she didn't want to be visibly pregnant on an important occasion where she wanted to look good!) but I've not judged them for it at all, because it is their choice.

There is a lot of room between 100% pro-life and abortion used as sex selection. It is possible to believe that both extremes are quite problematic.

OP this sounds really difficult for you and well done for taking the first step to understand your feelings and get some help. Please do reach out to the professionals too.
just to add a few things from my own perspective - Having a baby was an absolute medical miracle for us, having been told our chances were less than 5%. We had a boy, and whilst I certainly wasn’t disappointed I was surprised. I come from a large all female family, including nieces, so think that’s just what I pictured, but our little boy is incredible and I wouldn’t swap him for the world. We can’t have another, but if we were able to, I’d be delighted with another boy as I think the bond same sex siblings can have is amazing. Obviously no guarantees there either but one of my sisters is my best friend in the world.
My husband and I have been together since our teens, and 25 years on I’m almost as close to my MIL as I am my own mother. They are both wonderful women. And my MIL actually has a closer relationship with our son, as she lives locally and is very actively and eagerly engaged with him, as well as being loving and supportive of us.
You need to focus on raising your boys to be wonderful men, and on being, if that’s how life plays out, the best mother in law you can be. Please get help to make that possible. Sending you lots of love and best wishes.

No, there isn't. There is no room for nuance with abortion, otherwise you get the pro life loons. It should be on demand, no questions asked.

You sound like you have the same mentality as the 'loons'.

If you put stipulations on abortion, it takes away woman’s bodily autonomy.

Exactly. In some areas of life there is room for nuance, for shades of grey in between the black and the white. The right to abortion is categorically NOT one of those areas. I don't care if the reason is that the fetus is going to grow into a disabled child, or if they are the wrong sex, or that the mother thinks that she is Rosemary Woodhouse and her husband has conspired with the cabal of their Satanist neighbours for her to give birth to the Antichrist. Either she has the right to choose or she does not.

@BettyJoanPerske Excellent post!!! (made me laugh too!!)

I think you might be surprised how many women would like the opportunity to raise a daughter, especially if they already have one or more sons. What’s wrong with being honest about this?!

I have been exactly where you are, with extreme gender disappointment whilst pregnant with both of my sons. I have come to understand this feeling as a form of grief. I am so grateful for my sons and adore them, but will likely always feel some level of grief over not also having a daughter.

Like you, the source was about missing out on a mother-daughter relationship. I was so very close to my own mum who passed away, and I continue to feel grief that I will never experience a mother-daughter relationship as the mother, regardless of whether that relationship would end up as a close one.

As you can see with many of the responses in this thread, people can be incredibly judgemental. I ended up essentially not sharing my feelings with anyone outside of online forums because so many people will essentially treat you like a monster. Often they will imply or outright say that you should not be a mother at all. This is just judgemental nonsense. Gender disappointment is seen as an acceptable thing to be judgemental or downright cruel about. Wanting a daughter is a common and natural desire. It does not make you mentally ill or a terrible person, or any of the other awful things you will hear.

Two things can be true at once. You can feel real grief over never having your own daughter whilst also being so grateful for your sons and being a wonderful, loving mother to them. Grief whilst pregnant is very difficult and steals your joy. At the moment the joy and gratefulness may be difficult or impossible to find, but it is there and will grow. Time will help immensely.

I never went to therapy for this issue specifically, so I am afraid I can't say if it helped. But I wanted you to know that you are not alone.

Exactly.

You can be grateful to have a healthy baby but still be sad and disappointed at not getting the chance to raise a daughter!

Why are some posters so dismissive about this?

That’s not especially relevant though is it?

And there’s a lot of whataboutery on this thread.

How many straight adult guys in the UK do you know who - without prompting from their wife / girlfriend / sister / female friend - ring their mum for a nice catch-up chat or arrange to spend time with her or choose thoughtful birthday / M Day / Christmas cards and presents?

IME, the guys that don’t aren’t monsters, in fact if you asked them, they would say they love their mums very much. 🤷🏼‍♀️

And then I would ask, how many women do you know who do those things for / with their mums spontaneously, without prompting?

Whatever the reason, the reality is that mums and daughters tend to stay close (obviously there are exceptions) and mums and straight sons tend not to so much. Especially once they have a family of their own.

Again, it’s not the case in every situation, but generally, in many countries not just this one, the maternal grandmother gets a lot more contact and involvement with her grandchildren than the paternal grandmother. I see this repeatedly in my work. All this will be playing a part in how OP is feeling.

And I should say at this point, of course I am raising all my sons as free of unhelpful gender stereotyping as possible. But we don’t parent in a vacuum. Society’s perceptions and historical trends - including disparagement of guys who are close with their mums (‘mummy’s boy’, ‘apron strings’, ‘Oedipus complex’ etc) - help form the cultural amniotic fluid we’re all floating in, and it is powerful!

Sorry OP, am not helping much here. But think is important to present some realities that people seem to be wilfully ignoring on this thread.

So weird how the (many) boy mums feeling like that don’t talk to you about it 🙃

I think maybe you really want a doll you can play with, not a daughter.

Honestly I find that geographical proximity plays the bigger part in grandparent relations etc. I know a lot of women whose daughters live hours away or in different countries. And besides- if current birth trends continue then at least 1 in 4 baby girls born now will never have children, so that is a huge number of girl mums who aren’t going to get that experience anyway so I don’t think expecting it as a definite thing is advisable.

Just look at the many threads on Mumsnet where so many women, especially once they have babies, HATE their mother in laws.
So even if you raise your son well and he loves you very much, his future wife may well have different ideas. It’s sad but often true.

Get mh help now.

Probably because these women have been raised to expect 'their man' to bin off his family and feel hard done by when his mother expects differently. Try telling Italians that it's natural for a man to cut ties with his mother as soon as he marries.

I always wanted a girl when I had my first, I ended up with 5 girls 😂🙈
suppose you should be careful what you wish for.
i had major gender disappointment with my last two because everyone in the family wanted a boy and it just didn’t happen. I felt like I’d let everyone down. But all those feelings went when they were born.
we fell pregnant in January and I got so worked up about the gender and sadly we lost the baby.
I’m currently 14 weeks now and after our loss I don’t care what we have as long as I have a baby to hold and love.

It's ok to feel this way OP. Lots of people do.
You get strong reactions on here from the Mums of boys who feel fiercely protctive of them

I have two daughters and a son. My son is gentle, loves animals and reading and is an absolute darling. He's gutted we aren't having any more as he is desperate for a brother. If I knew I could have one more boy like him I would probably go for it.

Boys are interesting and wonderful. Your son might grow up to be a painter like David Hockney, a footballer like Harry Kane, whatever he is he will love you to bits and you will be proud of him

You are greiving you didn't get the different experience and the 'perfect' one boy one girl family. That grief will go, and you will love your new scrunchy baby boy. He will look for you in the crowd at his school plays and will write you little notes. It's ok to be sad, it will pass. When he's here it will all be fine

It’s not OK. And I don’t think that because of the sex of my child, I think it’s not ok because it’s based on a reactionary, reductive, wrong set of ideas about sex, gender and socialisation. I think it’s important the OP interrogates her own ideas about dutiful daughters being close to their mothers, letting them plan their weddings and looking after them in old age for the sake of both her daughter and her son. Because she will be socialising them with these gendered expectations as she raises them. If you want to see why many men don’t call their parents or remember birthday cards, and women bustle about managing their husband’s relationship with his family as well as their own, this is why. It’s not to do with the presence or absence of a penis.