I Thought I’d Have Girls

When I pictured myself having children, I didn’t realise I was picturing girls.

I was always certain I wanted to be a mother. But I think, without really knowing it, I imagined having a child who was a bit like me.

And because so much of my life has been spent thinking about women’s stories, supporting women and girls, and trying to make sense of my own experiences as a girl and a woman, a daughter felt like a natural extension of all of that.

When I fell pregnant for the first time, I said I was happy either way.

And I was.

But if I’m being completely honest, I really did hope I was having a girl.

I felt like I had a whole lifetime of things I could pass on.

I could teach her how to deal with street harassment. How to handle unwanted attention in bars. How to recognise the microaggressions — and the much larger aggressions — I had experienced growing up, at university, at festivals, walking home.

I could tell her about being groped. Being followed. All those strange little rules you slowly learn as a woman about how to move through the world.

I remember thinking: Okay. I’ve done some work around this. Maybe I can help grow a strong girl who knows how to cope.

That word — cope — has followed me for a long time.

My first play was called Handle It. At the centre of the story is a young woman dealing with the aftermath of rape, and a big part of what I was exploring was this idea of what girls and women are expected to handle.

What do we absorb?

What do we survive?

What do we learn to brush off, accommodate, anticipate or protect ourselves against?

Long before I had children, I was already thinking about the ways girls are taught to cope with the behaviour of boys and men.

So when I imagined having a daughter, I think part of me felt prepared.

I could tell her about the things I had learned the hard way.

And… I could braid her hair, about ten different ways.

Because, like those larger lessons, I also had to learn how to style myself – and yikes, there are a few before photos of me as a teenager that never need to see the light of day. I think my younger self would look at me now and think I was quite glamorous! At NIDA, I somehow became the unofficial hair person. If a production required intricate updos, I would often be doing three or four other women’s hair before I did my own.

And, as frivolous as it may sound, I pictured myself passing on those simple style lessons, just as much as the serious, societal ones.

Then I had two boys. Which rather dramatically changed the brief.

There were the obvious moments where I suddenly had no personal reference point at all. Even something as basic as toilet training a boy made me think: Oh. Right. I have absolutely no lived experience of this.

But the much bigger shift was realising that I had to take all the lessons I wanted to give a daughter and look at the flip side of the same coin.

Because when we say we want to raise strong girls who can handle what the world throws at them, part of what we are really saying is: how do we prepare girls to navigate the behaviour of boys and men?

And that made me ask a different question.

How do we raise the boys?

How do we raise boys who grow into men who treat women and girls well?

And maybe even more importantly, how do we raise boys who are not in pain themselves — and who don’t turn that pain outwards?

How do we raise good, kind men who understand their privileges, their responsibilities, their emotions and themselves?

My boys are still tiny. Just four and eighteen months. So I’m very conscious of not placing the weight of men’s harmful histories onto the shoulders of two innocent little boys.

They didn’t create any of these problems.

Their job right now is to play, learn, be loved, make enormous messes and somehow lose one shoe just before we need to leave the house.

I don’t want to raise them under a cloud of suspicion about the men they might one day become. I want to give them the widest possible opportunity to become kind, confident, emotionally healthy people. And I’m still learning what that looks like.

I thought I was going to take everything I had learned about being a girl and a woman and pass it down to a daughter.

Instead, my sons have made me take those same lessons and turn them around in my hands.

And maybe, after a lifetime spent thinking about the experiences of women and girls, raising two good men is exactly the job I was meant for.

I didn’t get the daughter I imagined.

I got two beautiful, miraculous, hilarious boys – who made my heart double in size.

And who completely changed the questions I’m asking.