Until now.
On Saturday afternoon Youngest Son and his wife Danica are planning a gender reveal party at their west suburban home. Hopefully it will not make the evening news.
When they informed me of their plans, using my best patriarchal voice, I strongly advised the kids against doing anything explosive. So, there's what? Maybe a 50-50 chance they'll listen?
Youngest Son and Danica have been longing to start a family of their own for some time. They've had their troubles, which I won't burden you with here. Suffice to say that, after what they've been through, if Danica and Youngest Son want to have a gender reveal party, Long Suffering Spouse and I enthusiastically support it. Even if (no surprise here) I don't entirely understand why a party is really necessary.
When my kids were coming along, gender reveals generally took place in the delivery room.
I was in the delivery room when Older Daughter came along, in 1984, watching the proceedings from my wife's bedside, at the head of the bed. I remember the doctor congratulating me on the birth of a healthy baby girl.
I also remember the thought that flickered through my little pea brain -- how can you tell?
In my defense, you must remember that I'm a lawyer. Like soon-to-be-confirmed Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, I'm not a biologist.
Also, at that exact moment, I could only see the baby's backside.
But young parents in the 1980s did not typically know whether they were having a boy or girl until the child made its appearance in the world.
Obviously this has changed. It was already changing by the early 1990s, when Youngest Son was born.
Not that there weren't all sorts of people willing to venture predictions in those days. When Older Daughter was coming along, total strangers would come up to Long Suffering Spouse in the grocery, on more than one occasion touching or tapping her belly, and offering prophecies. Long Suffering Spouse took these intrusions in stride. Not once, insofar as I know, did Long Suffering ever slap away an offending hand and say, "Look, lady, the watermelons are over there."
Even without a party to announce it, today's parents can, and often do, find out the gender of their infant long before birth. Long Suffering Spouse has noticed that baby clothes these days are almost exclusively pink or blue (with an occasional Millennial gray, she will concede). She attributes this to new parents knowing well in advance whether they are having a boy or girl. In our day, she reminds me, newborn clothes were frequently yellow or green -- neutral colors that could be purchased before the blessed event but which could be worn by either a boy or girl. I've recently started looking for myself in the course of our increasingly frequent post-Pandemic retail forays and I can confirm Long Suffering Spouse's observations about baby clothes being almost exclusively blue or pink.
This gets me to thinking... has anybody informed Twitter about this gender reveal phenomenon? Or about the predominance of pink or blue baby clothes in the stores?
In the Twitterverse it seems gender is merely a construct, and a fluid one at that. If, in a moment of boredom or curiosity, a little boy picks up a dolly instead of a ball or a little girl plays with a truck, anxious adults start researching puberty blockers and gender reassignment surgeries. I suggest this may be a bit extreme. Sometimes, to paraphrase Sigmund Freud, a truck is just a truck.
Anyway, back to Saturday. I wish to venture one of those fearless predictions that will forever exclude me from the ranks of real pundits: Though I'm no biologist, I predict that, on Saturday, we will find out that Grandchild No. 11 will be a boy.
Or a girl.
Just, please God, make him (or her) healthy.
1 comment:
Enjoy. If people like doing these, I certainly encourage them to have fun.
But definitely not for me. It seems as if our culture is constantly generating more occasions to celebrate ourselves. That sounds more curmudgeonly, harumphy, judgy, and get off my lawn than I intend.
Have a good time.
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