Saturday, September 23, 2006

The Gender Debate

Cousin Kage asks, "Do you have plans to find out the gender of your sesame seed?"

Obviously, some people would prefer not to learn the baby's gender before birth. That is the way it was for thousands of years, and they would prefer to keep with the tradition. Other people might look at it from a practical point of view and might prefer to know ahead of time, in order to properly prepare for the new arrival (ie: buying blue items vs. pink).

I was talking to someone from Russia the other day, and she said it is bad luck to buy anything for the baby before its birth. She told me that when she was 10 her parents came home from the hospital, laid her baby sister in the middle of their bed, and left her to babysit while they went to buy diapers, clothes and everything else. She just sat there, terrified, until they came back. That seems a little extreme.

We are pretty old-fashioned in some respects. For example, we don't have cable. Until recently we only had dial-up internet access. Despite the overwhelming trend to buy white gold or platinum, our wedding rings are made from yellow gold. Neither of us has a mobile phone. I could probably find some better examples, but those will do for now.

If you asked us a few years ago whether we'd like to know the baby's gender before the birth, we probably would have said no. The topic came up the other day and it almost seemed laughable -- after all the interference/assistance from doctors and clinics -- to suddenly turn around and say, "No, we insist on doing everything the traditional way."

The short answer to your question, Kage, is that we would love to know the gender. We aren't Russian, so it shouldn't do any harm, right?

2 comments:

Kage said...

knowing the gender isn't the same as buying anything....you don't HAVE to do anything with that knowledge. For us, it helped us to get to know our baby better. We named them, called them her/she....I liked that better than IT. Anyway, I find it really helps to start our family even earlier and have a great connection that much sooner.

I think it is also "bad luck" in some Jewish cultures to buy before bambina comes....

I think it's best to wait on major purposes until you are pretty sure the pregnancy is going to STICK.

Anonymous said...

Hey Derek,

I owe you a few comments on your site. As far as finding out the gender of your zygote, you may find that the technicians have a policy of not telling you. This is becoming a popular trend now as studies have shown that it is lowering the abortion rate. Sad but true.