Читать книгу Raising Girls: Why girls are different – and how to help them grow up happy and confident - Gisela Preuschoff - Страница 7

Long before a baby sees the light of day, a film is playing in the minds of the parents-to-be; they imagine what their life with the baby will be like, and they often have fixed ideas about the qualities a boy and a girl will have. This is completely normal – it is fun, and it increases their joy in their child.

While she was pregnant with a girl, one woman wrote in her diary, ‘I have the feeling that I could just pull the finished picture, which is a perfectly formed little figure inside me, out of a drawer. She has already been born, because my imagination has already shaped her; she’s a beautiful, strong, self-confident, lively and intelligent creature.’¹ On the other hand, the father of this little girl imagined a lovely, sweet, affectionate little girl he could snuggle up to and cuddle.

Apart from these images, parents should try to remember that there are many prejudices with regard to the sexes, and that most children develop quite differently from what their parents imagined in their dreams. Girls are by no means always calm, loving and good, just as boys are not automatically wild, aggressive and intelligent. Each child is unique: each child brings a distinctive personality into the world, and each is also shaped by her or his environment.

Most women who know they are expecting a girl identify completely with the unborn child. They see the baby as a miniature version of themselves and feel a strong symbiosis with the child in their belly: ‘We’re the same – we want the same things and are interested in the same things.’