I have both gender kids. For me, it wasn't about gender.

My son was more like me, so we got along great. Him and my ex not so much, still don't. My daughter was more like my ex, and she always adored her father. She was and is a daddy's girl. My son knows it, everyone knows it. I don't think it is that he liked girls more, he just got along with her more.

My husband doesn't seem to have a preference. I will say that I am loving having little girly girls. My mom left when I was a kid, and so having a great relationship with my girls has meant the world to me!

How about this for a doozy:

(My family is Chinese by ethnicity, so keep in mind the cultural connotations.)

My dad's mom had 3 boys (technically 4, but the first died shortly after birth.) She thinks she has the golden uterus because of it. My dad is the oldest of his brothers. They thought my dad was going to be a bachelor for the rest of his life and his brothers and their children (each of whom have boys) were going to inherit my dad's fortune (self-made millionaire). Then along comes my mom when my dad's in his 40's and my mom's in her 30's, they marry, have me and my sister.

Literal shitstorm ensues. My grandmother attempts to set my dad up with women every time he went to visit them in Taiwan saying they can give him a son. She hated us, me especially being my dad's eldest, and would make comments to 6 year old me about how ugly I was or stupid or whatever and my cousins would follow suit. Drove my mom to depression (would lock her out of the house while it was raining, etc.) ADORED my male cousins. To the point where she wanted my dad to adopt one of my uncle's son's as his heir and she pushed for it for a very long time (this is actually somewhat common in Asian cultures). When he refused, she tried to have him adopt a male child from the village where they are from (I come from an old lineage... so there's an entire village with people with the same last name as me that I'm related to.)

When my mom got pregnant again in her 40's (which ended in a stillbirth), my grandma kept making comments about how she's sure it was another girl (it was), and would torment my mom about it constantly.

Part of this whole thing is my mom's fault--she felt bad that my dad and his parents were so distant and didn't have much of a relationship so she tried to "fix it" by inviting them to live with us. It was the worst decision ever. Even my dad, when they were first married, told my mom to stay away from my grandmother because she's unbalanced, but my mom didn't listen.

This is a funny contradiction to my Mom's mom, who comes from the province of Nanking, where it's much more matriarchal. Nanking has, historically, provided the most beautiful queens and concubines to the emperor and so they prize their female children. After all, who is more powerful than the emperor's consul? His wife/wives. So my grandma from my mom's side more than made up for my grandmother from my dad's side. Everything had to be the best for us.

Now, my mother-in-law. She also only had boys (DH and his brother) and as much as she says she loves BD1 and is "excited" about BD2, she also made comments while I was pregnant hoping for a boy. Because of my experience with my dad's mom throughout my life, I highly dislike it (possibly even traumatized by it) when people favor or desire children of a certain gender. I told DH (when he would make jokes about trying to another one so a boy can carry on their family name) that if he made that joke one more time, I was going to leave. This is how much I hate it. I got my tubes removed during the C-section with BD2 because I'm done and the only way I'd ever get pregnant again is through IVF. MIL made comments about how she'd even pay to determine the gender (around 10k here) for a boy if either myself or BIL's wife were willing to do it.

On the other hand, in a really weird contradiction, she's also pleased that SS is the only boy that shares DH's DNA (even though DH is not on the birth certificate nor does SS have DH's last name)--I can't imagine the insanity that would have occurred had BD1 or BD2 been a boy and I would have been really sad for my son, had I had one, because MIL would have made it her personal goal (even more than she already did when we had BD1) to make sure SS was in the spotlight. I wouldn't have wanted my child to go through that.

In some ways though, I know, simply because DH and my dad are alike enough, that if we had a boy, he and DH would have bumped heads constantly and probably fight all the time. Same if myself or my sister were boys--I doubt we would have a relationship with my dad if we were. DH and my father both take "no" as serious personal rejections, and if you differ in opinion (religion, life goals, ideas etc.) with them, they also take it SUPER PERSONALLY and will argue and try to beat you mentally into submission. The fact that we're girls gave us a good layer of protection (although me more than my sister because she refuses to humor our dad) because whenever he got too much and we would cry, he would back off and apologize because he doesn't understand girls. If we were boys, he'd probably get madder and meaner. So when we differ from him, he is more like to go, "It's a female thing." and back off.

DH is the same way. Little girls (including ours) that he meets, even if they're sort of bratty or doing bratty behavior, he thinks it's cute or "just a girl thing." But if a little boy does the same thing (like talk in a whiny voice), he'd get really annoyed and think the kid was a brat. So this respect, I wonder if his testicles purposefully spared us (me) the horror of father-son conflict, but I would have been happy with either gender, as long as the baby was healthy.

My grandparents (my dad's parents) always said how wonderful girls were and how horrid boys were. My dad's two sisters kept that going. One of his sisters had a daughter. The other sister had two daughters. My parents had two daughters and two sons. My sister and I could do no wrong. My brothers stayed out of sight when we visited. I was the youngest and mostly too little to understand what was going on at the time.

Now I feel so sorry for my dad. His parents left him nothing in their wills -- everything went to the two sisters. Men take care of women, you know, so my dad wasn't entitled to anything himself. Turns out the two sisters fought over everything and my dad was glad to avoid the whole shitstorm.

All families have their own brand of craziness, but this one is beyond my comprehension.

My dad was in the army and when I was about 4 we lived in Okinawa. My brother was 2 at the time. We had a housekeeper that watched us and she would let my brother get away with EVERYTHING. One day my mom came home and found my brother sitting on top of the car roof out front wearing nothing but a diaper.

On the opposite spectrum, if I didn't behave, I got punished. It was so bad, I ran away from her once and ended up stepping on a cut off piece of bamboo and slicing the bottom of my foot open so badly that they couldn't even put stitches in it.

Not long after that, we got a new housekeeper.

I am a very girl girl and when I was pregnant I really wanted a daughter, I lived in a household of men. Well I would not trade BS for anything in the world. Yes it would be easier to relate to Barbie verses baseball but I do it because he loves it. To me who cares about the sex of a child. Your job is to love, guide and raise good citizens.

I've shared before about my late FIL and the weird dynamic DH and his sisters grew up in. FIL was a misogynist, very distant emotionally. He was raised by his GPs and not told that one of his sisters was actually his mother until he was a teen. He joined the military right out of school, loved it, married at 27 because he thought that was the next step in life and wanted to be a father. He chose a very pretty, needy 18 yo to marry (very like his BM) and give him children but the marriage did not last. FIL never remarried and had little to do with women for the rest of his life - except for his daughters.

FIL adored his daughters. While DH, as the eldest and only boy had expectations, rules, and punishment, the girls were indulged and idolized. They learned how to cajole and manipulate their father out of $$, while DH learned to be satisfied with crumbs and negative attention. And avoidance. DH learned young that not being home at all was best. So was living with distant relatives and avoiding his family altogether. Avoidance is still a big part of who he is.

From around the age of eleven, each kid chose to live with FIL in a home where there were few rules, fewer expectations, and a father who wasn't even home at times due to TDY assignments. The girls ran wild, did drugs, failed school, were sexually active and trashed FIL's home, but they could do no wrong in FIL's eyes. When he retired from the military and took an out of town job, the teen girls were left to live in his home. DH, who was a young cop by then, was asked to keep an eye on them. Yep, that was supposed to be sufficient. Cue more drugs and illegal behavior, but FIL never lifted a finger. He just took out a second mortgage and kept doling out the dollars.

When the grandkids came along, it was more of the same. The firstborn was female, and FIL always openly proclaimed her his favorite. The grandsons were ignored. By then, the eldest daughter was twice divorced, on welfare, and a drug addict, but FIL didn't mind. If anything she needed daaaddy more. Did he encourage her to get clean, get a job, be a better mom? Of course not. Another daughter and her much older bf lived with FIL for years. They smoked their pot and worked their menial jobs for a decade before eventually straightening out. Did FIL care? Of course not. By then he had retired, and loved having his family living with and off him. He had to borrow money from DH to pay to refinance his home again, but who cared, right?

FIL is gone now. He died almost penniless from decades of subsidizing his beloved daughters and granddaughters. One daughter is in her fifties. She has no education, hasn't worked for nearly thirty years, and is a drug addict. She cannot take care of herself, has many health problems, and is lost without her daaaddy. Both of her kids are addicts, and the girl is the worst.

None of the kids are close. None of the gskids are close. They all have issues. That's FIL's legacy.