We’re about 15 weeks into the pregnancy and I’ve decided that I want to have a girl. This doesn’t mean that I’d be disappointed with a boy. In fact, among my list of priorities in the pregnancy, preference for the baby’s sex is at the bottom of the list after Katie’s health, the baby’s health, an easy delivery, etc. Nevertheless, because we’re not finding out the sex, I’ve spent lots of time daydreaming about what life would be like with a daughter.
A baby girl, in some respects, would be an immediate underdog. She would enjoy more opportunities and legal rights than women in previous generations, but glass ceilings will unfortunately still exist in her lifetime. When she’s born, there will have never been a female president or female majority leader in the US Senate. Women will likely still be underrepresented in corporate leadership positions and in the engineering and math fields. If Baby Tackett is a girl, when she enters the workforce, she’ll likely still make less than a man for doing the same job. In our competitive culture, she would be born an underdog and I want to root for her to break one of the last few glass ceilings.
Katie and I both come from families of strong and prominent women. On the Klingler side, there are three daughters. All of the women, including Katie’s aunts, are professionals with more college degrees than I can count. They are nurses, teachers, and lawyers. The Wayne Women dominate my side of the family and include my mom, her sisters, my cousin Ann, and my cousins’ wives. They are also nurses, teachers, and lawyers. If we have a baby girl, my daughter can look to her family for models of independent women who have served as Peace Corps and Vista Volunteers, fought AIDS and polio in third-world countries, cared for the sick, and taught future generations. If she wants to become a lawyer she can look to women on both sides of her family (an aunt and a great-aunt) who both served as judges at a young age. Sure, a boy could also look up to these women and would also have amazing male role models in the family—teachers, attorneys, elected officials, business leaders, and bankers. But this is a family of strong women.
When I daydream about having a daughter, I also enjoy picturing her with all the strengths and attributes of my amazing wife, and without all of my faults. Math was always a challenge for me and too often appeared as Bs and Cs on my report card. Katie was one of her high school valedictorians and excelled at every subject, including math. In middle school and during the first years of high school, I had a speech impediment that caused me to struggle speaking hard consonants at the beginning of sentences. Katie was always fluent and impeccably articulate. I’m apt to make off-color comments and occasionally find a foot in my mouth. Katie is well-mannered and diplomatic and to put it in Colbertian terms, she is the it-getters’, it getter. Yes, I know I have amazing qualities. Self-confidence has never been my problem. There’s also no reason why a baby boy couldn’t or wouldn’t also have all of Katie’s amazing traits. But when I daydream, my daughter is much better than me and a lot more like my wife.
We’re in the second trimester now and Katie seems to be feeling much better. Among all the phenomenal aspects of the pregnancy, I was amazed to learn that if we are in fact having a baby girl, she already has millions of eggs in her body. The baby can barely see and can’t eat on her own, but she’s already starting to produce future generations of women, who I picture as strong underdogs who are good at math and don’t stutter.
