![]() ![]() Then I saw the incontrovertible proof on the sonogram (or what they said was incontrovertible proof to me, it looked indistinguishable from, say, a nose) and I suddenly realized I had wanted a girl-desperately, passionately-all along. My husband, Steven, is nearly a decade older than I am. A few years before my daughter was born, I had read about some British guy who'd discovered that two-thirds of couples in which the husband was five or more years older than the wife had a boy as their first child. And that was the problem: What if, after all that, I was not up to the challenge myself ? What if I couldn't raise the ideal daughter? With a boy, I figured, I would be off the hook.Īnd truly, I thought having a son was a done deal. I had spouted off about it everywhere from The New York Times to the Los Angeles Times, from the Today show to FOX TV. I was supposed to be an expert on girls' behavior. While my friends, especially those who'd already had sons, braced themselves against disappointment should the delivery room doc announce, "It's a boy," I felt like the perpetual backseat driver who freezes when handed the wheel. Yet, when I finally got pregnant myself, I was terrified at the thought of having a daughter. Here is my dirty little secret: as a journalist, I have spent nearly two decades writing about girls, thinking about girls, talking about how girls should be raised. ![]() Excerpted with permission by Harper Collins. From the book Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture by Peggy Orenstein. ![]()
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