Incoming First Time Mom to Be Ponderings

First, I am pregnant, hello! This is chalking up to be my first HerDiscovering post about motherhood, how fun.

Deciding to have a child has got to be one of the hardest choices I have had to make in my life. The responsibility it takes to care for, raise, nurture, and support a future life living on this planet has always been a daunting thought in my mind. So when I did make the choice, it was because I felt ready. Ready for several reasons.

I was ready because I believed I had chosen a loving, respectful, helpful, caring, nurturing, and excellent partner to do this child-rearing with. I was prepared because the thought of having a baby and eventually a child of my own seemed like a challenge and an honor that would make me grow as a person. I have heard countless stories from parents saying how being a mom or dad has changed them for the better. 

Regardless of the true unknown of raising a child, I feel like a well-rounded individual with a good head on my shoulders, so I trust that I can do right by this incoming child. I won't be perfect, but a child doesn't ask for perfection; they ask you to show up and be there. 

So, here we are. 23 weeks pregnant, and I have made announcements, my family and friends are happy for this news, people in my community know and are excited for us, and even strangers offer congratulations and glowing admiration for the news.

I also knew that having a baby and being pregnant would come with some less-than-appealing feedback, unsolicited advice, and comments, but honestly, the good conversations have far outweighed any of those small offhanded comments. 

One such comment that has rubbed me the wrong way, regardless of people's good intentions, has been the comment that "girls are harder to raise than boys."

Of course, I have considered that this phrase is an individual's perspective based on so many factors. These factors include their upbringing, their struggles with parenthood, the number of children they may have, the type of relationship they currently have with their children, their partner's support or lack thereof, and on and on the list could go to explain their reasoning. 

Now, if you haven't guessed why hearing the phrase, "girls are harder to raise than boys," was/is rubbing me the wrong way, well of course, it's because I am in fact, having a girl. And, because after 34 years of not wanting to have children and then purposefully and intentionally making the choice to go for it, and after all that conscious decision-making to bring a child into the world, hearing that phrase felt, at times, hurtful.

As a person who can understand that people are only meeting you as much as they have met themselves, and that people show up as who they are based on their experiences, I haven't let this phrase ruin my relationships with folks or cause me to judge them..too much. I mean, I haven't even had my child yet…but it got me curious.

I ended up trying to search online about this topic and then used our friendly neighborhood ChatGPT to do some research by prompting it to pull information from posts, parent forums, and research discussions. I truly wanted to see what could be said about this phrase in a more cut-and-dry context with more voices than the few I have heard. 

So, for your viewing pleasure, an infographic I put together based on the data I got from my query. 

A lot of this infographic shows a big difference in what makes child rearing in general hard, and in this case, gender based fears around safety, puberty, cultural norms, societal standards and expectations, and the like.

When big studies track outcomes over time, the differences in actual parenting difficulty between sons and daughters tend to be small. The "harder" label is usually more about perceived risks, cultural conditioning, and the way gender norms shape parenting approaches.

All in all, this reasearch path set my mind more at ease knowing that when I encounter this phrase, which I eventually will because people love sharing, that I can hold this information in my back pocket as help to educate the conversation or to just sit back, listen, and let that person express their experience, regardless of how it may make me feel. 

What are your thoughts on this topic, on the information presented, on your own experience? How can you challenge your way of thinking, on how you show up in conversation, or in raising your kids? So many fun questions to ponder. 

With love and respect,

Taba