Maternal Dominance Hypothesis and Priviledged Daughter Hypothesis

[sunnygirl]

I agree with every word you say in both posts!! The interesting thing is that the GUILT is incessant for many of us and it's so draining, to envision all the things we "should" be doing for everyone in our lives and it just is not really possible to keep everyone happy and satisfied, there aren't the hours in the day to meet everyone's demands. But it doesn't mean that we don't think we should. I (not as much now but back in my boy-making days) would plan and plan and think and figure how I was going to do all these things that various people wanted me to - even people I barely knew like neighbors down the road and great-aunts and stuff, and many times my plans didn't work out. Most times. But the plans were amazing and phenominal, it's just that I'd have needed a million dollars and a cast of thousands to pull them off. And then I spent so much energy planning these elaborate scenarios because I wanted everyone to like me, that I had very little energy left over to do things that were a lot more practical, like housework. So then I'd draw up this minute by minute schedule of how I was going to clean and maintain the house over the next 12 months and waste tons of time on that, but then it was so un-stick-to-able that again I'd have needed a million dollars and a cast of thousands to acheive it. And on, and on, and on. It's NOT the clean house, it's not even what you do that the outside world even sees, it's that inner life and what goes on inside your mind.

Over time I realized that even the great things I pulled off were going over like a lead balloon - I'd spend literally a month working on these huge Christmas boxes for everyone and send them out and I was so proud of them, but then I found out that most people were throwing practically all of it away. People don't WANT the big elaborate show. They'd much rather have a postcard every so often than nothing for a year and then 20 page letter. We Marthas just get it wrong when we think that people are impressed by the big plans and schemes, even when we manage to accomplish them.

Ha ha, I smiled the whole time I read this.....You just explained me to the core lol!!

[Complex Emotions]

..not only do boy moms try to be in control, on some level they feel like they HAVE to or dire consequences will result. Boy moms on balance are a lot more anxious and wound up than girl moms are and have the idea that they must control, control, control...

Girl moms on the other hand, don’t seem to have this same drive to the same extent; in my opinion they may have a bit more tendency to attribute things to being out of their control or as being the responsibility of someone else and that they are either powerless to change them or that it isn’t really worth it to bother because someone else will take care of that...

This is fascinating. I do have one question for you though, Atomic. Is it possible that this pattern you've see has to do with a boy mom's need for a daughter being a whole different thing than a girl mom's hopes for a son? For example, I suspect there may be some kind of a (for lack of a better description) "life resolution" you experience through raising a child of the same gender that you are yourself. If there's something to this, then maybe the boy mom's desire for a daughter is coming from a need within herself to experience that resolution. Whereas the girl mom already has had this need filled, so for the girl mom having a boy is maybe at least partially to provide her husband with it. She could relax more easily with her sway because her need is more distanced and removed than the boy mom's. In short, maybe it's not that the boy mom is a more anxious person in general, but maybe she's more anxious with gender anxiety because she's feeling this need in a different way. (Plus it can't hurt that the girl mom's sway plan is mostly good for her body and lifestyle has a reported 80% chance of resulting in a son, so she may feeling overall optimistic and hopeful, while meanwhile the boy mom's sway plan is harder on her health and has lower odds of working.)

[atomic sagebrush]

This is fascinating. I do have one question for you though, Atomic. Is it possible that this pattern you've see has to do with a boy mom's need for a daughter being a whole different thing than a girl mom's hopes for a son? For example, I suspect there may be some kind of a (for lack of a better description) "life resolution" you experience through raising a child of the same gender that you are yourself. If there's something to this, then maybe the boy mom's desire for a daughter is coming from a need within herself to experience that resolution. Whereas the girl mom already has had this need filled, so for the girl mom having a boy is maybe at least partially to provide her husband with it. She could relax more easily with her sway because her need is more distanced and removed than the boy mom's. In short, maybe it's not that the boy mom is a more anxious person in general, but maybe she's more anxious with gender anxiety because she's feeling this need in a different way. (Plus it can't hurt that the girl mom's sway plan is mostly good for her body and lifestyle has a reported 80% chance of resulting in a son, so she may feeling overall optimistic and hopeful, while meanwhile the boy mom's sway plan is harder on her health and has lower odds of working.)

No. For a couple reasons.

First of all, for at least some of us the desire for a son isn't any different than the desire for a daughter. I think there's probably an innate desire to have both boys and girls that we don't realize really and/or try to explain via psychology or cultural issues or "life resolution" but the reality is, it's just THERE naturally, for some more than others (just like all innate drives are there for some people more than others). I had a strong gender preference with my first for a BOY and I was just lucky enough to get him (and I experienced FAR FAR more "life resolution" from being a mommy than I have gotten from having a daughter.) I do think it's less common but it's real, and if anything I had a stronger desire for a son than I did for my daughter. My daughter, it got so bad partly because I was running out of time, and partly because I thought that DS 3 was a girl because of symptoms and stuff and it was like someone "took her away" from me. I know that it's different for everyone but for me, my primary desire was children, secondly I wanted a son, and having a daughter only came in after a long time of being pretty happy with the first two things.

There are plenty of ladies on here, like me and Nuthin, that do feel a pretty burning need for a little dude and their husbands aren't into it and are happy with girls. Not as many ladies as you might think are doing this for their husbands, because it's only the ladies who are most motivated who make it this far (even with swaying) it takes a level of commitment that women who don't have the desire, are rarely interested in. In fact we do occasionally have a man show up on the site and again and again his wife isn't interested and thus he usually gives up. The ladies who are here hanging out every day, almost without exception, are the ones who really truly do want boys - they're not doing it for their husbands and they're not doing it because of cultural pressures, they just want a boy. And just as an aside I think we should be extra considerate not to diminish their gender desire as being less profound, because that's not what this site is meant to be about.

Now, the anxiety. I've talked to roughly 123,456,789 ladies by this point and the anxiety goes WAYYYYYYY beyond gender. It's not even comparable. I have made friends along this journey who are just my personal friends now, and TRUST ME they are completely anxious, wound up, all the time about everything (myself included, once upon a time). I would not have written this essay, with all the potential to ruffle feathers therein, if I didn't have a pretty good bead on the behavioral differences between the boy moms and the girl moms. The Ferris Bueller comparison is very apt - it isn't just swaying, not at all, it's not even MOSTLY swaying. The reason why boy moms may seem to have a stronger desire for a girl than girl moms do for a boy, is NOT because they actually DO. It's because they are more GGRRRRR in your face about it - they are more "I must have this and I will wrest it from the universe by hard work and trickery" while the girl moms are more like, " Oh, I so hope this happens for me, but it probably won't, because I don't have that kind of luck."

Now, onto swaying. The boy moms will literally go over, line by line, detail by detail, every element in a sway. They will take apart everything in a sway from both directions, worried about safety but at the same time worried that it's not the absolute best sway (this gets kind of frustrating at times LOL) They will send me chapter long descriptions of things that happened years ago that they are still obsessed about and wondering if it will affect their sways (like things that happened at work and medical things, etc) It is just not possible for some of them to stop being anxious. When I say "control what you can control and let go of the rest" they think I"m speaking Greek - and I KNOW this because I have been there myself. 10, 15, 20 years ago, I couldn't have let go of control over anything to save my own life. Worrying and anxiety was a method of control to me, just like handwashing may feel like control to someone with OCD. If I worried, I was doing something about situations that were out of my control. It may have been totally pointless, just like an OCD person counting to 317 when they get stressed, but I was doing something. It was ritualized and important to me (and swaying had nothing to do with it). Like, I'd go on a plane trip in summer and take a coat just in case the plane crashed. NOT NORMAL LOL. But I liked it, it made me feel like the plane had less chance of crashing or something.

The girl moms just don't DO that (with the interesting exceptions of a couple of ladies who actually were swaying for a second BOY) and it is NOT because they don't really care if their sways work. They do. But they are by nature often "sufferers in silence" and they don't want to bother me or anyone with their emotions. They want it just as much, are just as passionate about it, but are just more hesitant about sending me the massive 5 pages of interrogations like the pink swayers do. Additionally, at the end of the day, I think they don't believe that they have that kind of power over their own lives and bodies. I get a lot of blue swayers who will almost give up before they even start, if their husband smokes, or rides a bike, or they don't have time to lift weights, and they are like "well, I probably shouldn't even bother, then". They aren't necessarily optimistic or even laid back really. IT's just a different approach to life. The boy moms think "I have got to control this even if it destroys me as a person" and the girl moms believe differently - they know that at the end of it all, it's out of their control (and they're right about that!!) but the downside is that they end up being so fatalistic that they won't even change the things they can change sometimes.

[maidentomother]

This is/was me...exactly. I am naturally all or nothing and if I can't do something perfectly I won't do it at all so mostly I just fail these days. But I have made progress with 'acceptance' (of myself and my failures) and that alone is a huge personality change for me. I had a lot of 'help' (tragedies) via God/the universe so I obviously really needed to learn that lesson. Still have a loooooong way to go though!

I agree with every word you say in both posts!! The interesting thing is that the GUILT is incessant for many of us and it's so draining, to envision all the things we "should" be doing for everyone in our lives and it just is not really possible to keep everyone happy and satisfied, there aren't the hours in the day to meet everyone's demands. But it doesn't mean that we don't think we should. I (not as much now but back in my boy-making days) would plan and plan and think and figure how I was going to do all these things that various people wanted me to - even people I barely knew like neighbors down the road and great-aunts and stuff, and many times my plans didn't work out. Most times. But the plans were amazing and phenominal, it's just that I'd have needed a million dollars and a cast of thousands to pull them off. And then I spent so much energy planning these elaborate scenarios because I wanted everyone to like me, that I had very little energy left over to do things that were a lot more practical, like housework. So then I'd draw up this minute by minute schedule of how I was going to clean and maintain the house over the next 12 months and waste tons of time on that, but then it was so un-stick-to-able that again I'd have needed a million dollars and a cast of thousands to acheive it. And on, and on, and on. It's NOT the clean house, it's not even what you do that the outside world even sees, it's that inner life and what goes on inside your mind.

Over time I realized that even the great things I pulled off were going over like a lead balloon - I'd spend literally a month working on these huge Christmas boxes for everyone and send them out and I was so proud of them, but then I found out that most people were throwing practically all of it away. People don't WANT the big elaborate show. They'd much rather have a postcard every so often than nothing for a year and then 20 page letter. We Marthas just get it wrong when we think that people are impressed by the big plans and schemes, even when we manage to accomplish them.

[Throwaway_panther]

There are plenty of ladies on here, like me and Nuthin, that do feel a pretty burning need for a little dude and their husbands aren't into it and are happy with girls. Not as many ladies as you might think are doing this for their husbands, because it's only the ladies who are most motivated who make it this far (even with swaying) it takes a level of commitment that women who don't have the desire, are rarely interested in. In fact we do occasionally have a man show up on the site and again and again his wife isn't interested and thus he usually gives up. The ladies who are here hanging out every day, almost without exception, are the ones who really truly do want boys - they're not doing it for their husbands and they're not doing it because of cultural pressures, they just want a boy. And just as an aside I think we should be extra considerate not to diminish their gender desire as being less profound, because that's not what this site is meant to be about.

This is me to a T. You even told me in another thread that you thought I sounded like a boy mom, and boy... are you right, haha. After reading through this thread, I'm sitting here feeling almost 100% sure that I'm having a girl because of my insane LE diet (and the added bits of my husband being the most stressed he'd ever been, ever, etc.).

If I had known ANYTHING about swaying before getting pregnant (especially since I got pregnant so fast), I'd have been obsessing over every aspect going into it... and instead, I'm obsessing over every aspect as I'm 23 weeks pregnant with a girl, just waiting to get going on a boy!

As an aside, I find it interesting how anecdotally I know so many women who fit the "girl" or "boy" mom type, but have the opposite gender. But then, that makes me again look to the diet (which I believe you've said is the most important, in your opinion, right atomic?)

Now, onto swaying. The boy moms will literally go over, line by line, detail by detail, every element in a sway. They will take apart everything in a sway from both directions, worried about safety but at the same time worried that it's not the absolute best sway (this gets kind of frustrating at times LOL) They will send me chapter long descriptions of things that happened years ago that they are still obsessed about and wondering if it will affect their sways (like things that happened at work and medical things, etc) It is just not possible for some of them to stop being anxious. When I say "control what you can control and let go of the rest" they think I"m speaking Greek - and I KNOW this because I have been there myself. 10, 15, 20 years ago, I couldn't have let go of control over anything to save my own life. Worrying and anxiety was a method of control to me, just like handwashing may feel like control to someone with OCD. If I worried, I was doing something about situations that were out of my control. It may have been totally pointless, just like an OCD person counting to 317 when they get stressed, but I was doing something. It was ritualized and important to me (and swaying had nothing to do with it). Like, I'd go on a plane trip in summer and take a coat just in case the plane crashed. NOT NORMAL LOL. But I liked it, it made me feel like the plane had less chance of crashing or something.

This will be (and sort of already is me) within the year, lol.

[Throwaway_panther]

Has anyone taken the time to take Valerie Grant's test on her website?

Will I have a boy or girl? Can I choose the sex of my baby?

I find this stuff so fascinating! When I conceived DS I was in a high powered career and scored around (if memory serves) 80% of having a boy. This time (pre conception) I'm scoring around 55% girl. I'm obviously not foolish enough to think a test like this can predict my child's gender but I DO think staying home and being away from a high powered career has lowered my testosterone some and might at least help me sway girl a little bit.

My result:

Out of ten possible categories, your score put you in Category 9.

Of all the women who have taken this test so far, 5% have had scores that put them in Category 9.

Of those women, 90% of them have conceived and given birth to boys, and 10% have conceived and given birth to girls.

So for you we would predict, if you become pregnant within the next 4 - 5 weeks, you would be 10% likely to conceive a girl and 90% likely to conceive a boy.


Is there a "loling" emoticon? My emotions have not changed -- and I'm definitely having a girl! Haha, how typical for me to be in the minority on something...


Edited to add: I changed them up to reflect the time period around when I conceived, since I had a bit more positive/hopeful feelings going into TTC... and it said I had 95% chance of conceiving a boy! LOL!

[maidentomother]

Diet is the biggest external factor to our knowledge. Things like PCOS or very low sex hormones can sway very strongly blue and pink, respectively. And there are many other genetic/biological aspects which (strongly) sway, most of which we are not yet aware.

But yes, diet can absolutely override personality factors, but so can other things which affect your physiology.

[2lovelyboys]

Atomic
"Now, onto swaying. The boy moms will literally go over, line by line, detail by detail, every element in a sway. They will take apart everything in a sway from both directions, worried about safety but at the same time worried that it's not the absolute best sway (this gets kind of frustrating at times LOL) They will send me chapter long descriptions of things that happened years ago that they are still obsessed about and wondering if it will affect their sways (like things that happened at work and medical things, etc) It is just not possible for some of them to stop being anxious. When I say "control what you can control and let go of the rest" they think I"m speaking Greek - and I KNOW this because I have been there myself. 10, 15, 20 years ago, I couldn't have let go of control over anything to save my own life. Worrying and anxiety was a method of control to me, just like handwashing may feel like control to someone with OCD. If I worried, I was doing something about situations that were out of my control. It may have been totally pointless, just like an OCD person counting to 317 when they get stressed, but I was doing something. It was ritualized and important to me (and swaying had nothing to do with it). Like, I'd go on a plane trip in summer and take a coat just in case the plane crashed. NOT NORMAL LOL. But I liked it, it made me feel like the plane had less chance of crashing or something. "



This made me laugh, it is soooo me and i think when swaying with DS3 i send you some of those horrendous messages lol

[Beau82]

So interesting! This makes me believe even more that diet is big. According to this I'm definitely a typical girl mom. Even down to messaging Atomic. So many times I've thought about posting in my coaching forum and then I think "no, I'm not going to bother her with that, it's not important". Makes me hopeful that I can indeed conceive a girl with a change in diet.
I have to say, I just love all the information on this site. It is all just so fascinating.

[3'sacharm]

I'm such a typical boy mum!! Planning things to the T, competitive, obsessing and over analysing everything!!! I think I've chilled generally anywa and I'm hopeful that with dh NOT particularly being on board, that I can't obsess and be too *obvious* about swaying and ttc so therefore an accident may happen that would hopefully be pink... I'm trying to do all I can sway wise for a pink with diet and exercise then let everything else go, c'est la vie!