(Wails) “I’ll Never Get My Girl!”

Children are not Pokemon.

Let me start with two quick anecdotes for ya.

Years ago, I went to this camping/hunting weekend with some guys. I am good at neither of those things, although I can drink beer around a fire, so I had that going for me. One of the guys there, who I did not know that well, had five girls. Him and his wife wanted a boy. I think his dad owned a bunch of car dealerships in and around Paris, Texas (“the other Paris”), so he was doing OK financially. Around the fire, we asked him: “Well, can’t you adopt?” He said, with a straight face: “If we adopted, we’d never love the boy like we love the girls.” Hot damn.

Here’s №2.

I had a neighbor years back who had a girl, and the whole family minus the husband was estrogen-laden. Even the dogs were female. They wanted a boy. She came to a book club we hosted, hammered as shit (I mean slugging white wine out of a massive cup) and would have her eyes roll in and out and drunkenly purr, “I can’t wait till we (hiccup) get our boy.” That was at the very beginning of our infertility bullshit. At the time, I laughed to myself and thought, “This train wreck ain’t ever ‘getting her boy.’” That boy is now walking the Earth.

Even as these situations were happening, before I realized I’ll probably never have a biological child and that can inherently destroy lots of other life elements for you —

The Baseline Problem Of Male Infertility

— I never understood this whole narrative about “getting your girl” or “getting your boy” or such a strong desire to be the mom/dad of one specific kind of gender. Like, what the fuck is happening here? Are children Pokemon? Do you need to “collect ’em all?” I could obviously see how a dad having a son, or a mom having a girl, would be more palpable. I totally get it, but like … why do we need to talk about it so much?

Part of the issue here is — well, the issue is manifold. Let me chop down a few for you:

1. We have an entire digital industry related to pregnancy and birth…