The ‘gender disappointment’ taboo: ‘That’s it, I’m never going to have a little girl’

It starts almost from the moment a pregnancy is confirmed. The “when” of baby’s estimated arrival date is quickly followed by speculation about “who” will be arriving.
Boy or girl – the question on everyone’s lips.
However, for some, it goes beyond a simple curiosity as to whether their baby will be a boy or girl. There is, instead, a strong desire to have a child of a particular gender. Sometimes, to the point of disappointment if those hopes aren’t realised.
Admitting it publicly is difficult and often unpalatable, however. Gender disappointment remains somewhat of a parenting taboo, often shrouded in shame and fear of judgment.
Simone has three boys. When she was pregnant with her first child, she didn’t mind if it was a boy or a girl. She didn’t particularly mind when she was pregnant the second time either. But, after her second son’s birth, people began to pass comments about needing to “go again for the girl”. She says the comments started less than “48 hours after having a baby”.
“I never found out what I was having, but on my third I had the sex written in an envelope and hidden,” she says. A relative decided to host a gender reveal party for Simone, something that she had never had before. However, the party never materialised as Simone’s relative explained the envelope had been lost. Simone suspects her relative learned she was expecting a boy and decided against the party as a result.
Simone hoped her baby would be a girl. “I was finding two boys hard,” she admits. She found herself looking at baby items and clothing for girls. “I took screenshots of things that I would order if the baby was born [and was a girl].”
After a difficult labour and birth, Simone’s third son was born.
She becomes upset as she explains her reaction to discovering the baby was a boy. “They said, ‘oh it’s a boy’ and they put it in front of me. And I said, ‘oh what else would it be?’.”
[ Tanya Sweeney: A part of me feels like wanting a second child is being plain greedyOpens in new window ]
“I’m so ashamed of myself,” she continues tearfully.
“I think, within families, boys are treated a bit differently. I don’t think they get as much special treatment as girls do. I can see with my nieces there will be sleepovers in other aunties’ houses, but none of the boys have ever been for a sleepover.”
Constant comments from family members describing boys as “mad” or lamenting that Simone didn’t manage to have “one girl”, make things harder, she says. “I can’t even laugh [about it] anymore.”
Simone reminds people she can’t change her family, but still the comments continue, suggesting that life would be easier if only she’d had girls instead.
Thankfully, she had no difficulty bonding with her third son, she says, but adds that, every now and then, particularly if she’s having a difficult day, she wonders what it might have been like to have a daughter. Her partner has had a vasectomy and so they won’t be having any more children.
Breda has four children. Her first child was a boy. When she was expecting her second, this time with a new partner, she hoped her baby wouldn’t be a girl.
“I felt a lot of pressure from his side of the family,” she explains. Much of that came down to her partner’s surname being carried on. Another contributing factor was that Breda had sisters herself. “I knew what it was like living with girls,” she says and thought, “I don’t know if I’m able for this. I know that boys will wreck your house and drive you up the walls, but you just throw them outside and they will play.”
Breda had told her partner that she just wanted boys. The couple chose not to find out the sex of her child when she was pregnant and says when her daughter was born she was in “shock”.
Her husband was delighted, she says.
“I had said, ‘oh my God, I can’t believe it’s a girl – what are we going to do with a girl?’ No one took me seriously. People said, ‘it’s just because you have a boy already’. But no, I was definitely disappointed.”
It “just took a couple of days” to bond with her daughter, Breda says, and then she was “mad about her”.
When Breda was expecting her next baby, comments from her partner’s family about passing on his surname began again. This time, she found out the sex of her baby and discovered it was a boy. “There was so much excitement and hype and everything about him. Looking back, [I see] they really didn’t make a fuss of her.”
Michelle has three daughters. She didn’t find out the sex of her babies on her first two pregnancies. “I was delighted with the two,” she says, and wasn’t looking to add to her family.
“My husband kept saying, ‘I want a boy. I want a boy’.” She explained to him that there was no guarantee but he felt “the odds are” they’d have a son. “When we did start trying, we googled it and we tried all the methods to [conceive a boy]”, methods (some unscientific and unproven) such as timing sexual intercourse around ovulation, she explains. “I remember even googling have celebrities done this before. We did all the bits I found online and then I got pregnant.”
Michelle didn’t find out the baby’s sex through her routine appointments. “But the conversations in the house were ridiculous. ‘I know it’s a boy.’ ‘It’s definitely going to be a boy.’ All coming from my husband. I just said, ‘I can’t do this’, so I rang a clinic.”
At 20 weeks pregnant, Michelle and her husband learned they were expecting their third daughter. There was “total silence” on the car journey home, she says. A little while later, he told her, “I think I’m over it now.”
Michelle felt disappointed for him, but not for herself, she says. She thinks sports played a role, and that he didn’t realise how involved girls can be in sports these days. But she feels he’d still “love a son”.
[ ‘My boys aren’t a consolation prize – they’re equally as precious as their sister’Opens in new window ]
He was also disappointed that his surname might not carry on. “That was a pressure too, that I didn’t even actually know.”
“Countless people asked me, was I going to go again for the boy?” Michelle says. And she heard lots of comments “from day one about how we were going to be screwed when they were teenagers. It’s going to be the worst thing ever . . . just because they’re girls.”
Carla had no preference for a boy or a girl, the first time around. And when her son was born, she was “mad about him”, she explains.
She decided to find out her second baby’s gender so that she could work out the logistics, such as sharing a room and passing on baby clothes. And to share the news with her son.
“We’d always planned for two kids, if we were lucky enough,” Carla says. “I guess when I found out, [the baby was another boy] rather than immediately celebrate him, I was hit with the realisation that, ‘that’s it now, I’m never going to have a little girl’. My own reaction took me by surprise – I’m not a very girly-girl, I was never one of those girls that called her mum their best friend, but I felt a very sudden and unexpected sense of loss.
“I went and sat in the cafe in the Coombe, crying. It took just a couple of concerned looks for me to cop on. A pregnant woman crying in hospital cafe suggests bad news, and I definitely had not had bad news. I was always super happy with my pair of lads, but the contrast of the noise and the physicality of them compared to little girls I’d seen happily out shopping, or sitting still in a cafe was quite something. But that’s personality as much as anything isn’t it?”
Carla’s husband had always wanted a girl, but not to the degree that it upset him when he found out they were expecting a second boy. “He understood where I was coming from and that it was probably a temporary feeling for me.”
A few years later, the couple decided to try for another baby. By this stage, she was used to having boys and “any yearning for the little gal pal was firmly put to bed”, she says. Carla presumed she would have another son, so when she found out she was expecting a daughter, she worried that she “wouldn’t know what to do with her”.
Her husband didn’t mind what the sex of the baby was beforehand, but Carla says “in the end he was more excited for the idea of a girl than I was”. They’ve since discovered their daughter is “a mucky, loud kid” like her brothers.
Gender disappointment is a real thing, Dr Colman Noctor, child and adolescent psychotherapist, explains. “I think all parents have an imagined future for their children and families and there is a sense of loss when this doesn’t materialise. They may feel ashamed of these feelings as often the child is healthy and there are many people who cannot have children or parents who would give anything for their child to be healthy. But, undoubtedly, especially in families where there is only one gender, for example a parent of three boys, the parent might really long for a girl.”
Dr Noctor doesn’t believe people should feel guilt for this. “Guilt is of no benefit to you. You had some hopes which didn’t materialise. It’s an understandable disappointment. You are not disappointed in the child that has arrived, and you need to understand it’s nothing personal against them, and they shouldn’t bear any consequences for not being the hoped-for gender.
“Like any disappointment, you need to allow yourself to feel it, but then acknowledge what you have – hopefully a happy, healthy child – and remind yourself of that and make the most of that reality.”