Why you should find out

As any formerly pregnant friend of mine (and many others as well) knows, I’m a huge advocate of finding out the gender of your child before it is born.  Especially for the sake of the father to be.  First, surprises are way over-rated.  And, its a surprise if you find out at a 20-week ultrasound just as much as it is a surprise if you find out at birth.  Second, there’s plenty of pragmatic, logistical reasons where it really helps to know before the baby is born.

Third, and the real key for me, though, is that the pregnancy becomes so much funner and more real when your future child has a gender.   No matter how gender equal our society may become, suffice it to say there are enormous differences between boys and girls and the parenting challenges and experiences that come with raising each.  The fun of the pregnancy is the imagined possible futures for your child.  The truth is, imagining a gender-neutral future isn’t all that easy or that fun.  I’ve thought about Baby Girl Greene far more in the past day and a half than I did in the past month because I can much more readily envision her as a person now that she has a known gender.  For pregnant moms, you’ve always got that baby with you, but as a dad, in each case I’ve found that the pregnancy has become much more real and exciting when I’ve found out the gender of the baby.  Those of you with children in your future should take this under advisement.