“A real man makes a boy first! Then it can be a girl!” [FRAGMENT KSI¡¯KI]

In a sense, our lives begin long before conception. Even the way future parents imagine their future lives says a lot about what awaits them, as their early fantasies indicate their expectations for the future. “I will have two daughters. I will name them Isabella and Sonia,” says one teenager with full conviction. “This is where I played football; one day I will bring my son here too,” says the young man, pointing proudly to the club’s pitch. But what happens if things turn out differently? What if a boy is born when a girl was expected, or a girl when the parents wanted a boy? How will this affect the child’s life?

In one of his lectures, Péter Popper talked about his life. “My mother always wanted the best for me. She treated me well: she was truly an excellent mother. But I couldn’t open up to her. In vain she kept saying, ‘Come on, Pete, let’s talk! Sit on my lap until Dad comes home!’ « But I couldn’t do it and I didn’t know why. Something just wasn’t working, mood-wise, emotional-wise. When I was thirty, my cousin had a stillborn baby due to a medical error, and my mother tried, in her own way, to comfort her. She told her that since she was a little girl, she had prayed for one thing: not to have a boy. And I was born. She never wanted to be pregnant again what was the problem with trust in our relationship? What terrible problems I caused for this poor mother who did not want a boy in any way! From that moment on, all my reluctance softened and our relationship was very good until her death. I am extremely grateful to my cousin for her long tongue, because until then I only felt that something was not right between us. I needed this hidden, valuable information to understand my own feelings and explain why I couldn’t be close to my mother and why women’s acceptance was so important to me even as an adult.

This is not a unique story. It’s never easy for a child who doesn’t meet their parents’ expectations if one or both of them wanted a child of a different gender.

One day a woman in her fifties came to me, looking distressed. She told me how depressing her life was. She had no partner, no children, lived alone. At the age of twenty, she stopped menstruating – she was diagnosed with premature ovarian failure. “My femininity is over, although I was never very feminine before either,” she smiled bitterly.

When I asked her why, she said that her father was expecting a boy and couldn’t get over his disappointment when the girl was born. He regularly said that girls were useless. That they bring only trouble. That it would be so much better if they had a boy. And he treated her as if she were a boy. She wanted a swirly dress and tap shoes in vain: she was allowed only trousers and sports shoes. Similarly, she wanted a doll in vain – her parents only bought her toys for boys. Her father didn’t let her grow her hair long either. Every other week he cut them himself until they were only an inch and a half long. He would bring a small, worn-out stool to the middle of the kitchen, and she would have to sit there, cowering in fear, while her father did his thing. She was called Brachu and the nickname stuck to her – initially only in the family, but later also among her classmates and friends. Wherever she went, people thought she was a boy, and she didn’t have the courage to say (even though she wanted to), “Hi, I’m a girl!”

Due to her “wrong” gender, she felt that she had committed a crime – one for which she could in no way atone. Despite early menopause, she was still a woman. She felt wrongly guilty because of her gender. I suggested to her that we try Imago therapy (a Latin word meaning “copy” or “likeness”). During Imago therapy, stimuli from the outside world lose their importance and attention is fully directed inside. Relaxed clients recall images, feelings and symbols from their unconscious in a meditative state. Traces of often painful memories from the past are replaced by healing images during this process. Over time, the brain perceives these new images as reality, and thus the force of old traumatic events may be reduced.

I asked her to recall an image from the past when her father cut her hair, to allow her body to remember it and experience what she felt. Then she should step into that scene as an adult and do what that little girl couldn’t yet – stand up for her former self. She imagined walking up to her father, grabbing his hand and putting an end to cutting her hair which was causing her mental pain. She tells her father to stop abusing his daughter because she feels he is hurting her by depriving her of an important attribute of her femininity. Then she turns to herself as a little girl, pulling herself in, hugging her, rocking her, and comforting herself. He asks her to calm down and have the courage to protest in the future if something happens to her that she doesn’t want.

This very moving inner film was the first step that took her away from her original attitude of “I’m guilty because I wasn’t born a boy.” Of course, the therapy was still far from over. It is not easy to achieve lasting and profound changes. The earlier in life a trauma occurs, the longer it usually takes to bring it to light and overwrite deeply encoded patterns, relationships and beliefs.

My client’s case is not isolated. It’s really hard to believe how widespread this problem is. The UN estimates that 200 million girls are “missing” around the world – girls who were abandoned by their parents because of their gender. In many cultures where marrying off a girl requires large sums of money from her parents as dowries, girls pose a significant financial burden on their families. “Pay 5,000 rupees today to save 50,000 tomorrow” – this is how some Indian doctors advertise, suggesting that abortion, although expensive, is still cheaper than a wedding dowry. Even though sex-selective abortion is illegal, many couples still choose to have an illegal abortion if the embryo is female (this also has other disastrous social consequences – for example, in India there are more single men than single women, so a large some of them have little chance of finding a wife. In many places, men perceive the lack of women as a cataclysm equivalent to famine, which portends an increase in social tensions and the spread of violence).

You might think that this is a problem alien to our culture, but unfortunately it is not – it happens all over the world. For example, about ten years ago, secret recordings of doctors from Great Britain came to light and aroused great emotion. Doctors talked about how they often terminated pregnancies only because the sex of the embryo did not meet the parents’ expectations. As a result, some hospitals have banned parents from finding out the baby’s sex during the first trimester of pregnancy (when abortion is still possible).

Most people answer the question whether they want a boy or a girl: “It doesn’t matter to me, as long as it’s healthy.” However, after a few minutes of conversation, preferences emerge: “I always wanted a girl”, “when my son is born…” etc. If we keep our eyes and ears open, we will easily notice the influence of our surroundings. Let’s look at some examples. A father announces to his friends the birth of his third daughter. “Well, I don’t envy you, man!” his friends say, patting him on the shoulder sympathetically. Men goad each other: “A real man makes a boy first! Then it can be a girl!” – this is a typical reaction that can be heard everywhere, regardless of education level.

Child gender preferences often result in very high parental expectations, and if you don’t meet them, you may not be able to come to terms with your gender identity throughout your life.

The late Endre Czeizel, a well-known geneticist active in the media, was bombarded by couples with questions about how they could influence the gender of their future child. Today, hundreds of articles recommend techniques to increase the chances of having a baby of the gender the parents want.

“Drink coffee twenty minutes before making love and you will have a son”, “Reduce your caloric intake and you will have a daughter”. I could go on and on about all kinds of ideas about timing and different positions during sexual intercourse. Why have there been so many articles on this topic? Because the demand for them is high. In the Western world, concerned parents often think that if they had a child of their preferred gender, it might be easier for them to have a good relationship with him and control his behavior. “Boys are wild and aggressive. I don’t think I would feel strong enough to control my child if I had a boy,” says one of the future mothers, from which it can be concluded that it is not really the child’s gender, but the feeling of parental incompetence is causing the problem. “I wouldn’t be a good mother to a boy, but I would be a good mother to a girl.” This feeling has already been described in English-speaking countries as “gender disappointment”. A plethora of research articles and forums address this topic, while professionals strive to help parents accept their children’s gender through psychotherapy, supportive conversations, and providing needed information.

It is worth mentioning the therapeutic method developed in the mid-1990s by two great Hungarian psychoanalysts: Dr. Jeno Raffai and Dr. György Hidas. The essence of their analysis of the mother-child bond is that it begins before birth (in the “prenatal space”). In the case of children subjected to prenatal bond analysis, there are fewer complications and the future mother-child relationship is more harmonious. Raffai and his colleagues believe that it is important to address our earliest social experiences because everything that happens in adulthood – how we treat others in relationships, friendships, the workplace or on the street – comes from our childhood. At the same time, first experiences are passed down through several generations, so what happens to our children will even affect our grandchildren.

The book was published on May 15 by Agora Publishing House.

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