Will Decker knows just what he’ll be receiving for Father’s Day: flowers, most likely delivered personally by daughters Elizabeth and Amanda, 9 and 4, respectively.
And why not? After all, that’s what he gives them on Valentine’s day, even going so far as to have the bouquets delivered at school for the girls and at work to his wife, Sandy, and 22-year-old daughter, Eloise. Daughter see, daughter do — and when daughters see how daddy treats them, that’s what they’ll come to expect in men — that’s what Decker believes. “It’s my job to teach them the man things,” he says.
In his house, he’s the guy — the only guy — to do it. When you’re the lone member of your sex in your household, you’re always aware that you represent not only yourself, but your entire sex. And while dads in all-girl families, and moms in all-boy families, say they enjoy that one-of-a-kind feeling, they’re also keenly and constantly aware that their children are drawing broad assumptions about half the human race from their examples.
“Having opposite-sex siblings sensitizes a person to the opposite gender. Particularly if a male is younger, he gets an idea as to what women are like. They’re acclimated to the garden-variety understanding of what living with the opposite sex is like,” says Carol Tosone, assistant professor at New York University’s Ehrankrantz School of Social Work and a psycholanalyst who specializes in gender issues. “If you’re in a single-sex household, then you might have a more polarized view of the opposite sex, especially if it’s a fairly traditional household with sex stereotyped roles.”
And when you’ve got a critical mass of one sex, the way the mob rules can look like a parade of stereotypes.
Mothers of boys say the energy level of their little men can be overwhelming.
“There’s a real male dynamic in the household,” says Chicagoan Holly Harrison, who with her husband, Andy Neal, parents three young boys. “With my oldest one just turning 7, I see him gravitating toward his dad and being interested in guy things, you know, sports, physical things. He constantly wants to play football, to play soccer, to ride his bicycle. He’s constantly running, constantly in motion. He wants to go sailing. Anything his dad does, he thinks is great. I see that as the way of the world.”
Evanston resident Tina Rohde is relieved if running is all her three school-aged boys do. “One day all the kids had friends over. They were talking about farts. They were talking about sports, and I realized that I liked the energy. They get great pleasure out of making noises and clearing the room with their emissions. I realized, in 20 years, they’ll be doing the same thing, only they’ll be drinking beer,” she says with a little laugh. “They’re so straightforward. Girls are more complex.”
Amen, says Chicago police detective Bill Hougesen, dad to three teen daughters. “There are times when I don’t quite get it, like the loyalty toward friends and the buckling under to peer pressure and even attitudes,” he says.
In the Hougesens’ previous house, he carved out a little retreat for himself in a basement bathroom. He decorated it with posters of cars and built up a stack of motorcycle magazines. The king of the household knew that he’d never have to pound on the door to get into that throne room. In the Hougesens’ current house, the girls have their own bathroom, and Hougesen says he’s more than happy to avoid the female clutter.
“To get out and do some boy stuff, you have to come up with good excuses,” says Decker. He often draws neighborhood boys into his home-improvement projects and even organized a church father-son fishing trip partly so that he could go himself, and bring along the son of a single mom.
Moms also find themselves isolated in their own homes and search for ways to connect with other women. Rohde sometimes invites neighborhood girls over to join her in little crafts projects at the kitchen table.
“A reading session with my two oldest — everybody’s got a question. You can’t do the story from beginning to end. Harry has a question and then Sam has a more important question. Reading is an interactive experience,” says Harrison. “You kind of forget about female things. It’s nice to talk about things that are of no particular interest to the boys. In some ways, it has driven me to my female friends.”
Being the only one of your kind in the household often results in less emotionally charged expectations for how parent-child relationships will evolve, says Jan Waldron, author of “In the Country of Men,” a series of essays on her relationships with men in her family. “I think there’s more air between boys and mothers, and daughters and dads,” she says. “Same gender stuff gets very close. It’s the colossal expectation brought to bear on same-gender children. With the opposite gender there’s lots more space to relax. The opposite sex odd-one-out is very relaxed.”
Parents of one-sex families often admit to disappointment when yet another boy, or girl, arrives.
“Part of parenting is this certain narcissistic investment. You want them to groom them to be like you. How many businesses have so and so and sons?” Tosone asks rhetorically. “It’s a little harder to see your direct legacy in (your children’s) lives because it’s filtered through the gender thing.”
When Wilmette resident Christine Freas discovered that she was pregnant for the fifth time, she assumed that she was finally going to have a girl. “It felt different and exciting. I think that when you’re a little girl, you play with dolls and you’re brought up with the idea that daughters are mom’s best friends. That was big on my list of reasons why I wanted a girl. I thought, all my boys will get married and then they’ll leave me,” she says.
When an ultrasound showed that Freas was carrying a boy, she slid into a funk of disappointment. “I never envisioned having a boy, much less five of them,” she says.
A friend who’d had similar feelings advised her to “go through a period of grieving for all the little pink things I won’t have. And then you make peace with that and you realize that God has given you what you should have and you don’t look at that stuff anymore,” says Freas.
Mike Fern of Naperville underwent a similar epiphany. Nine years ago, he was nonplussed for weeks when daughter Sarah was born. His surprise at not having a son lasted only five minutes after the arrival of Michelle, and to his surprise, he was actually glad to not have a boy when Lydia arrived three years ago.
In one way, his acceptance was a typical guy reaction: The Fern household was completely equipped with girl-oriented clothes, toys, equipment and social contacts. It worked, so it didn’t need “fixing” with a boy.
On a deeper level, though, Fern realized that his original motivation for hankering after a son was a manifestation of his desire to have children whose characters and values reflected his and those of wife Irene. “In terms of putting my mark on someone to carry on, for us, raising a godly child who will be a godly adult is more important than someone who will carry on the name,” he says.
Still, he admits to a smidgen of worldly anticipation when he thinks ahead 15 years. Like mothers of sons, fathers of daughters do tend to hope that they’ll finally have some company around the family table in the form of sons- and daughters-in-law. “The father-son relationship can have baggage. I’m looking forward to having uncomplicated relationships with my sons-in-law,” says Fern. “I want to raise my daughters to pick a guy like their dad.”
