Gender Disappointment

Dissatisfaction or distress experienced by mothers whose babies are not the sex they had hoped for.

In a fascinating article for Elle magazine [expired from Elle's Website but reposted here], Ruth Shalit Barrett explored “gender disappointment” – the little-discussed subject of mothers who are disappointed by a child of the “wrong” sex:

Gender disappointment is not an official psychiatric diagnosis. It’s an Internet-era label, an appellation coined by women who are bitterly unhappy about their baby’s gender and who can’t get over it, even after their child is born. It’s also a subculture, or, as [one mother quoted] says, a club. …

Shalit Barrett also discussed the lengths some mothers go to influence the sex of their baby:

Much of the talk on the GD message boards revolves around sex selection methods, ranging from various folk remedies to sperm-sorting and spinning methods (MicroSort, Ericsson) to the holy grail: in vitro fertilization with preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), a technique in which a doctor determines the gender of the embryos and transfers only those that fit the parents’ request. The most popular at-home option is the Shettles method, named after the doctor who developed it and involving the exquisite timing of intercourse relative to ovulation. You’ll also see lots of homegrown recipes for conceiving daughters that turn sex into a kind of kinky mad-science experiment: “Have your [partner] give you a ‘sample.’ Catch it in a cup or condom. Add warm lime. Do not warm lime in microwave — warm in hot sink. Then layer egg white (with a pH of 9 to 9.9) on top. You then incubate it for an hour … and insert it into yourself with medical syringe. Lay with hips raised.”

According to Shalit Barrett, the demand for girls at licensed clinics is double that for boys:

What’s behind the modern-day girl fetish? One explanation: Women envision a brighter future for their daughters than they do for their sons. Boys are practically the underdogs these days, having fallen behind girls on nearly every measure of academic achievement, from college attendance to high school graduation rates. According to books such asThe War Against Boys and Boys Adrift, they are in danger of becoming, as Christina Hoff Sommers has written, “tomorrow’s second sex.” …

Others link the yearning to women’s belief that they’ll have a richer lifelong relationship with a daughter than a son. “Families are raised differently these days,” says Kathleen Rein, a New York psychiatrist who specializes in postpartum disorders. “It’s much more isolating to be a mother. You don’t have your mom and grandmother next door. Women want girls because they want that close female bond they’re not getting in other parts of their life.”