London - Before I had children, I always imagined myself having boys rather than girls. Actually, that’s a tactful lie; every fibre of my being yearned for boys. I’m not religious but I prayed hard for sons, promising my maker all sorts of good future behaviour in return for a little fella.
Given my feminine working environment and almost all-women group of friends and family (no sons for three generations), I thought a female-free domestic scene would be refreshing.
Anyway, God didn’t care. She had much better things to do, and today my girl offspring outnumber their “beloved brother”, as they call him, three to one.
Obviously, I’m grateful for four healthy, relatively stable children - but I still illogically think I’d be a better mom to all boys than girls, though I don’t know why.
I had a huge list of boys’ names for my first child and hardly any girl alternatives.
Then when I had our second 16 months later, I was desperate to break my family’s genetic predisposition for girl after girl.
But out popped wonderful tomboy Gracie.
The third pregnancy was different. For medical reasons I was wrongly advised by my GP early on to abort the baby. Luckily we chose to risk ignoring this advice.
I noticed that during the many scans needed, my gynaecologist became increasingly eager to tell me what the sex of our baby was. I didn’t ask, but his excitement could only be down to one thing.
And so the child who spent his pre-school life calling himself “Miss Argentina”, wearing dresses and sleeping in a nightie was born: my baby boy - who every night tells me he “loves me more than a thousand kisses”. Then, of course, we had another girl.
My relationship with my son is the easiest of my four maternal love-fests (crikey, I said that out loud). Which has no doubt influenced my continuing daydreams of being “a mom of boys”.
Last week I got to test this “boys only” fantasy briefly on holiday in Cornwall.
Due to arrangements for beach activities, I ended up looking after just my son, nearly eight, and a friend’s little boy, aged ten. Blimey, it was brilliant, easily one of my top ten best parenting days ever.
“Do you want to play putt-puttf?” I asked them. “Yes,” they replied in unison.
The version of this conversation with my girls (aged ten and nearly 12) would have gone something like this.
Me: “Do you want to play putt-putt?”
Them: “When? Where? Who with? Can we have an ice cream, too? Do we have to walk there? What will we do afterwards? Can I go first? I’m not playing if she goes first.”
After a swift, enjoyable game of golf (I came last), I asked the boys if they wanted to go on the trampolines. They bounced around, then wanted to go for a run on the beach.
We had an ice cream and, miracle of miracles, they knew exactly what they wanted and weren’t even bothered when the lady gave them tubs instead of cones by accident: had this been my girls there would have been much grumbling, out of earshot, about the tubs-not-cones “debacle”, as they would have dramatically called it.
When we got home they played Mousetrap noisily while I cooked chicken nuggets, without them negotiating what they wanted for tea.
It was strangely relaxing - a day with my three fearsome females is always fun but nowhere near as simple.
My day was probably a fluke, I hear you cry, and not related to “boydom” at all. “Stop the stereotyping,” I hear you yell.
You could be right - but later, discussing the pros and cons of boys vs girls (or “dogs vs cats” as a friend once controversially commented) with other moms, I came to the unscientific conclusion that boys seem a less complex parenting conundrum (at least until the teenage years).
But it also dawned on me that maybe the responsibility of raising men is a bigger one for moms.
As a female you can hopefully easily instil the virtues of a good woman in smart girls, ever-observant little sponges that they are. But tell me, how do you make a future man? - Daily Mail
* Lorraine Candy is the editor of ELLE.