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"Do you want to Supersize that combo?" "Would you like fries with that?" "Don't you know that eating this will shave a month off your life expectancy?" These are the questions I expect to hear at the drive-thru window of a fast food restaurant, whether via the giant menu speaker embedded in a plastic chocolate milkshake or courtesy of my own conscience. But thanks to a recent family road trip, I've learned that there's another question to add to this list: "Boy or girl?"
My wife and I have two daughters. One just turned 3 and the other is about to turn 5. On one summer weekend driving trip, we couldn't bear the thought of negotiating through yet another sit-down restaurant meal, complete with marathon sticker book and "I Spy" sessions. Instead, we decided to get the girls something they could eat in the car, figuring that we'd wait until we got home for a late adult dinner.
So I pulled into the drive-thru and ordered two kids meals with milk instead of soda, rationalizing that somehow this drink substitution salvaged an otherwise questionable parenting decision. With Morgan Spurlock's voice still echoing in my ears, the response crackled through the surprisingly audible speaker: "Boys or girls?"
"I'm sorry?" was the only reply that I could muster.
"Are the meals for boys or girls?" the cashier clarified.
As happens many times in life, in retrospect there are many responses I wish I had chosen instead of what I actually said. For example, maybe "Who wants to know?" Or perhaps "Hold on, let me ask them." Or, even better, "They're girls, and since we're getting to know each other better, what are you wearing?"
What I did say was "two girls, but why do you ask?" He explained that he needed to know which toys to include with their meals. Presumably he was hoping to avoid the embarrassing mistake he had made a week earlier, when he had given a Fisher Price's My First Testicular Self-Exam Kit to a girl who would have much rather had a Magic Ovary-Shaped 8-Ball.
Truth be told, the actual toys my girls received, action figures of some sort, seemed fairly gender neutral. But I also don't know what the "boy" toy was. While the latent smart-ass in me laments the sarcastic quips that went unused at the drive-thru window, the experimental psychologist in me rues even more the fact that I didn't think quickly enough to tell them I had one boy and one girl so as to create a basis for comparison.
Now clearly there exist in humans, as in other animals, generalizable gender differences. For example, as one of my colleagues recently described in his Psychology Today blog, male and female athletes exhibit different risk factors for injuries, including ligament damage and concussions. So by no means do I argue that any assertion of gender difference is but an illusory artifact of spurious societal stereotyping. But on a regular basis, perhaps bolstered by my concerns as a father of two young girls, I can't help but wonder at the emphasis our society places on gender in situations when doing so seems unnecessary and even risks sending problematic messages, as yet another one of my fellow PT bloggers recently suggested.
From the start, I'll admit that I'm prone to reading into mundane events that may seem, to most people, perfectly innocuous. I am, after all the guy who, at 3:00 in the morning after the birth of our second daughter, decided that I needed to take a picture of the hospital bassinet (right) because the font for the baby's name, room number, and pediatric service was smaller than the bold text reading: "I'M A GIRL." Right, that's what should be in bold. Not, say, who the baby belongs to or its blood type.
But, hey, the name of this blog is Science of Small Talk, right? And I actually think there is something to the bassinet photo. It speaks to what seems to be a pressing need people have to know instantly the gender of babies they meet. My experience as a parent of newborns is that most strangers I met would have been happier had I stapled the pink "I'M A GIRL" card to my daughter's scalp for the first several months of her life.
When parents dress a newborn in a color or style that does not immediately signal gender (for example, a green sweatsuit), they had better be prepared for confused and even irritated responses from passersby. And pity the parents who have the nerve to dress a girl in blue or in an outfit with planes on it. They will meet well-wishers who'll first apologize for mistakenly referring to their daughter as "he," but then will quickly shift to a more accusatory tone, saying "but her outfit has planes on it!" Ah, Amelia Earhart, how quickly they've forgotten...
People just have to know the gender of babies they meet. It's almost as if they don't know how to interact with a baby without this information, despite the fact that newborns are a lot like turtles: unless you turn them upside-down and blow, the males and females are practically indistinguishable. So I have to say, I'm suspicious of anyone who feels as if they can't interact with my child without first knowing her gender, whether it's a potential babysitter or a drive-thru attendant.
Because where does this insatiable need to know gender come from, if not, at least at some level, an inclination to act on preconceived notions or societal stereotypes? Psychological studies have shown that new parents' perceptions of their newborns vary by gender, with parents seeing daughters as smaller, more "fine-featured," and less attentive than sons, despite the absence of any objective gender differences among said newborns. Parents also react differently to their children's behavior depending on gender. So I think there's a case to be made that unnecessarily emphasizing a child's gender is not innocuous. Why does Burger King need to know if I have sons or daughters? Why can't they just ask, "Would they prefer the toy boat or pony?"
I'll leave you with an illustration of why such emphasis of gender bothers me. When each of our daughters was born, a relative gave them a very nice alphabet quilt with name and birthday embroidered. Not wanting to get both girls the exact same gift, he ordered the two quilts in different color schemes (immediate left and below right). Unbeknownst to him, this meant that one daughter was given the "boy" version and one the "girl" version. according to the catalog at least. At last, a direct comparison!
In the quilt, each letter of the alphabet is portrayed next to a corresponding object. Many of the letters are the same across quilts: both versions have an apple for A and blocks for B, for example. Then there are subtle variations for some letters: the "boy" quilt has a wagon for W; the "girl" quilt has a wagon too, but with a doll sitting in it. But some of the differences are not subtle at all. Boys get a pencil for P. And why not? Boys can be authors, architects, or draftsmen, right? What picture do girls get for P? A purse.
To the immediate left are the R & S panels for boys. As you can see, Radio and Star. Below is the girl panel. Ring and Shoes. Why do I get testy when people seem hell-bent on finding out my child's gender for no important reason? Because I'm worried that, deep down, whether they're aware of it or not, these pictures reflect the true reason. I'm worried that these people expect that sons of mine, but not daughters, might grow up to be interested in music or aspiring astronauts. That, at some level at least, they think my daughters' loftiest aspirations will involve jewelry and fashionable footwear. Research has taught us that expectations like these affect how we perceive and interact with others, even when we're not aware of them.
