disappointment over having a girl

[deird1]

Dear Prudence,

My husband and I are having a baby and recently found out it is a girl. This came as a shock to us, as we really thought we were having a boy. My husband is devastated. We already have a girl, and my husband decided that this is God punishing him. His father passed away, and he feels he will not “carry on the family name” (though he has several male cousins with his last name). He said he “failed his father.” My husband is now moping around the house, not interested in my pregnancy or in announcing the gender on Facebook, something he was extremely excited about before. I feel alone and upset. I have broached this with him, delicately, as I realize that gender disappointment is a real thing, but come on! I think he needs to get over it. He says I am being judgmental. I think we are supposed to be in this together, and now I can’t even mention the baby. What am I supposed to do?

—Gender Disappointment

There’s another word for “gender disappointment,” and that’s misogyny. I don’t want to encourage a pregnant woman to leave her partner lightly, but everything you’ve told me suggests that your husband doesn’t just wish he had a son—which would be a perfectly understandable desire—but that he actively resents you and your unborn child, and he would prefer she didn’t exist rather than exist as a girl. You should make it clear that he has a limited amount of time in which to shape up for the family he has, not the family he wants, or else he’ll have no family at all.

He calls you “judgmental” for being upset that he considers your unborn child a failure? How is he going to treat your daughter when she arrives, if he’s only willing to acknowledge her existence now as a punishment? This is it not normal “I wish I had a son” behavior. Your husband isn’t Henry VIII. This is no time for delicacy or compromise. The fact that your husband has not apologized for his hysterical, histrionic, deeply cruel behavior suggests to me that he thinks throwing a hissy fit is a reasonable response to hearing “It’s a girl!” Your daughters are better off with no father than a father who would treat them like this.

Comments

[deird1]

While the husband sucks, I'm surprised by Prudence moving so quickly to "dump him!" Really?

[recessional]

I have come to observe that there is a very definite streak in certain areas of agony aunting (Prudence, Captain Awkward, etc) to not actually seem to grasp the idea that for some people other parts of the marriage (whatever those are) or a parental relationship may actually be worth finding solutions to bad behaviour/etc, rather than merely abandoning the relationship, and that those reasons may not be apparent even in the full version of the letters.

I mean there's also the other end of the spectrum where "actually you should just . . . get out" is verboten, but.

In this particular case I don't think leaving him is totally unreasonable IF the behaviour continues through escalations: I think LW is definitely at the point where she gets to go "okay no, this is bullshit, this is REALLY hurting me, it actively makes it sound like your daughter you already have isn't good enough for you to start with and that you won't even love this daughter that's coming, and THAT'S NOT FUCKING OKAY" - and I think if he fails that conversation, we are in fact into territory of "this is making me severely disinterested in staying married to you, dude" and if he fails THAT one, well.

That point, she probably should get out.

But. There's steps between here and there, you know?

[jadelennox]

See, I'm glad about that response. I think it makes it completely clear that this is full-on DTMFA behaviour if it doesn't change, without apologia. Yes, it could have included some sympathetic talk about therapy, etc -- but fixing things before the girl knows her dad is better than when she's old enough to need therapy for life.

I didn't read this as "DTMFA", I read it as "Tell him, 'motherfucker, get your eighteenth century misogyny away from our daughters and back in its cave or I will drop you so fast you'll break the sound barrier.'" Which is legit.

[cereta]

I think I agree. This is the kind of thing that she needs to go into with solid leverage. If she's not prepared to leave, then she'd better be prepared for the fact that he may well continue to behave like this.

[minoanmiss]

... what.

I am having a hard time finding any sympathy or even understanding for the father. I look forwward to potentially finding some in the discussion.

[recessional]

*tosses in 0.02$?*

As long as we understand "sympathy" in the sense of "we are going to just TAKE AS READ that this behaviour is totally unacceptable and regardless of what's going on with him that sucks it needs to change and apologies need to happen okay, but at the same time that that is true things can also suck for the person behaving totally unacceptably and that sucks":

My first assumption is that our "not actually a horrible misogynistic sociopath" possibility for the husband is (given the "failed his father" part) the kind of severe fucked up from his father or possibly both parents/other environments of childhood that tends to push people towards personality disorder traits, and leave them as adults genuinely lacking the ability to deal with disappointment or anxiety or any of those.

In that situation a guy can wind up with the really strong bred-in-the-bone understanding of the world that means that not managing to have a son actually makes him a lesser human being: that he is bad/wrong/broken/tainted, that he has in fact done something for which he deserves "punishment" from God in the form of being denied this last achievement (having male offspring) without which he is worthless.

Which in this case means that right now he . . . feels worthless and like a broken tainted human being, which tends to make people act badly. And also sucks.

(I want to reiterate that his behaviour is still not okay, and is in fact un-okay enough that he needs to either suck this up or get the help needed to do otherwise, even if he is suffering, because no. Especially not when there's already a daughter around, who is absorbing the message sent by his behaviour about her, never mind the future baby. But that doesn't mean he's not also genuinely in psychological pain.)

[ellen_fremedon]

And it says the husband's father passed away; I'm taking that to mean recently. Grief can make those understandings of the world that people can usually perceive as personal and not rational seem very overt and real and obvious.

Still not an excuse for the husband's behavior, but if he's having a hard time coping with his father's loss, this could be one of the ways that's coming out.

[recessional]

Yeah. It's just "he needs a kick in the ass and possibly some grief counselling and normal kind of therapy" Not Okay, rather than "run. Run now. Run far." kind of Not Okay.

[wordweaverlynn]

Yes, this is what I was thinking.

[minoanmiss]

This is *exactly* the kind of thing I was looking for. My first reaction was pretty much "how can he look at his current daughter and his pregnant wife and hate the idea of another daughter this much, while also being a comprehensible human being?"

I still think he needs to get his head out of his ass butyou've given me some understanding of the forces which rectocranially inverted him. :)

[recessional]

Oh GOD yes he does.

But yeah, social forces are really, really capable of making it so that he could, in fact, honestly feel deep love/attachment to his wife and current daughter and just find the idea of not having a son SO DEVASTATING that it's not because she's another daughter, it's because she's not-a-son; it's entirely about her not being the thing he desperately needs in order to feel whole/worthwhile as a human being.

So like if he had another daughter AFTER he had a son, he'd be fine! It's just without a son he is somehow literally a failure as a human being - basically, it's culturally-ingrained misogyny doing in his head (potentially!) rather than specifically directed, conscious misogyny and loathing.

It's still shitty, it's still almost certainly already hurting his daughter and he needs to stop that shit RIGHT NOW, but that's how you could end up with someone doing that and being a salvageable human being rather than actual waste.

Oh and as ellen_fremdon noted, if the loss of his father is recent, he may be dealing Very Very Poorly with that, as well (almost even more if the father was directly emotionally harmful/abusive but the relationship was maintained - you can get some really weird and unfortunate emotional/behavioural Stuff when a parent of that nature dies).


Of course it's also possible he just needs to be dropped in a frozen lake from a great height! But knowing for sure would require a lot more personal contact.

[sathari]

And, yet again, I +1 your comment. Like, soooooo much could be going on in his family! (It is even possible that the very fact of other male cousins with his last name is working against his ability to be rational about this, if there are any kind of "competitive manliness" issues among that branch of his family. Which, let's face it, if you can be a person who feels as though not having a son makes the daughter you ARE having into a divine punishment for unspecified wrongdoing... yep, that could easily be a thing, like, "I have failed my recently-deceased father by our branch of the family not being the one to carry on the family name". Which is loaded with unresolved family-of-origin issues and, dude, get ye to some professional help! But, yeah.)