May 2, 2006

It's a Girl!

When Andi Buchanan contacted me about participating in the blog tour for her latest collection, It's a Girl!, although I said nothing to her, I was reluctant. After all, what do I know from girls? My one and only child is a boy. I read Andi's sibling collection, It's a Boy!, with great interest and wrote a post that combined some review with some personal reflection (and another for her Literary Mama). But I was less sure about this latest collection.

Strange, I know; after all I read — and review — all sorts of books, many of which have a lot less to say to me than a book about parenting. Upon reflection I think that I was chary of this book because I am still not entirely at peace with the knowledge that I will not parent a girl of my own. I know, I know: there are many ways to parent, and I have had, and continue to have, a series of close and wonderful relationships with the daughters of various friends (and a big hello to Rachael, Sarah, Crystal-Anne, Bliss, Beatrice, and new and tiny Chloe), so whenever I have the impulse to buy something girly there is always someone to whom to give it.

But — and this should hardly have been a surprise — a number of the authors in both these collections address this very issue: the girl or boy who never was.

A second reason for parents of boys to read this latest collection (and for parents of girls to read the earlier one): to explore the gendering of our children. Are girls and boys really that different? If so, how? And, when does it start? Since the Jinker Boy was born I have rejected the "gender is a social construction and nothing else" argument. Not that I have embraced my inner essentialist, for though essentialism has, face it, considerable political utility (read Essentially Speaking by Diana Fuss) it is ultimately pretty pessimistic. But … but … although JB is as empathetic and sweet-natured as one has any right to expect from a five year old, he is still, well, a boy. Or so it seems to me, though tainted as I am by decades of living in a gendered society, how on earth I think I or anyone else can think clearly on these issues is a good question.

And none of these writers has the answers, either. These are not studies: these are stories, some fictional and some auto-biographical. Moving, interesting stories for parents of any flavour of child. For daughters themselves. Or for anyone interested in how any of us have gotten from there to here.

Check out Andi's blog.

Five minutes later: Thinking further here:

I wrote that JB "is a boy", which may sound somehow limiting or dismissive. I certainly hope not. In fact, having him has made me see nuances and intricacies in boyhood that I would not have thought possible, even after years of knowing many boys and men, some very well.

And finally, in practical terms the nature/nurture question, while interesting, is largely secondary. We live in a gendered society, we cannot help but define ourselves within, or against, those limits, and whatever our own self-definitions we are always aware that others are using that framework. JB is a boy because he was identified as one even before he was born, and as his parents Joe, from within, and I, from without, have to help him to negotiate the inevitable frictions between his nature and aspirations, and the strictures of his gender role.

Or, he could just become a hockey player.

Scribbled at May 2, 2006 2:06 PM AST | Permanent link to this post | More? gender/sexuality, parenthood

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