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Recently in Salon Mothers Who Think

Singing the pink blues
Why do makers of toys and computer games still practice segregation?
By Margot Mifflin
[12/13/99]

Poo rules!
For some seemingly inexplicable reason, No. 2 is No. 1 with Japanese kids.
By Brennan Conaway
[12/13/99]

He ain't heavy
He's my dry cleaner's cousin's son.
By Lisa Zeidner
[12/10/99]

She loves me, she loves me not
In an exhaustive -- and exhausting -- book on motherhood, anthropologist Sara Blaffer Hrdy breaks some big news: There is no such thing as maternal instinct.
By Susan Caba
[12/09/99]

Sophie's choice
A Canadian court will decide whether Sophie Brassard must give her children a drug cocktail or lose them to a foster home.
By Alyson Mead
[12/08/99]

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I'd grown up in an extended family chock-full of girly-girls. We went to art exhibits, sobbed at old movies, sang show tunes, struggled with math, curled up with good books, dished over spoonfuls of raw cookie dough and shopped as strenuously as finances would allow.

Although my lovely, beleaguered father adored sporting events, I didn't inherit his enthusiasm; masculine elements in our household just couldn't take root amid the constant tidal wave of estrogen.

But my yin did at last embrace my long-lost yang when I fell in love with my husband. David hails from Minnesota, where men can be deported for nonlinear thinking. He grew up in a family of such avid sports fans that they installed a basketball court inside the house.

His mother and two sisters never succumbed to a single mood swing; his father was quoted in a magazine as saying he had never experienced a doubt about anything in his entire life. To this day, my in-laws prefer to travel in a pack, speak as if projecting across an astrodome and classify everything in numerical terms, as in: "I'm only feeling 75 percent today!" or "I give the Cobb salad a 9.5!"

Considering David's and my different backgrounds, one question looms in the minds of our friends and families: Will our son Jack, now 2, be a Macho Boy or a Sensitive Boy?

Jack loves trucks, but he prefers cats to dogs. He's not much of a swimmer or climber, but he can hurl his toy cell phone from across the room and bonk you square in the face every time. He likes french fries and Coke, but he's also fond of black beans and soymilk. He's got long, golden locks to rival any Junior Miss, but he's also a neighborhood heartthrob; according to the father of one smitten girl, "Jack's the Jan Michael Vincent of the toddler set, pre-drug problem."

Several weeks ago, however, Jack's Sensitive Boy moved into the lead, edging out Macho Boy.

After returning from a play date at his friend Nevin's house, Jack looked up at me with big moony eyes and said, "I want Nevin's baby." Nevin's "baby" was a newborn-size doll. Nevin could have cared less about the doll, but Jack had spent the entire morning examining the toy infant's behind and exclaiming: "Baby has poo-poo in the diaper!"

Now back at home, Jack was in the throes of severe baby-doll withdrawal. His little chest heaved. Tears streamed down his cheeks. He grabbed onto my legs with the desperation of a man lost in the desert without his sippy cup, shrieking in escalating decibels:

"I want Nevin's baby! I want Nevin's baby! I want Nevin's baby!"

There was only one thing to do: Haul ass to Toys 'R' Us.

Being the mother of a son, this was my first foray into doll shopping. My initial quandary -- boy doll or girl doll? -- quickly became moot as I browsed the baby-doll aisle. The shelves sagged with "Baby Jennies" and "Baby Susies," but nary a "Baby Billy." The packaging showed only little girls diapering, bathing, feeding, grooming and strolling their female babies. Here was subliminal marketing at its most sexist.

Apparently, not one toy manufacturer believed that some boys might want to nurture; in fact, they seemed to be saying that this trivial matter of being sensitive to others' needs was strictly a girl's domain. The more I stared at the plethora of pink-packaged dolls, the more I realized I'd need to compensate for society's antiquated gender typecasting.

Then I glimpsed her. She looked longingly at me from inside a beat-up box collecting dust at the back of a shelf. She came equipped with a computer chip and a heart-shaped screen on her chest that signaled whether she was hungry, sick, sleepy, wet or in need of a hug.

She also came with a bottle, diaper, medicine dropper and what I would soon learn was a disarmingly lifelike cry. And because she'd been price-slashed from $32.95 to $9.99, I knew she was meant to be ours.

Next page | My husband was also moved, but in a different way