quote:Originally posted by quidscribis: What happens, then, if you end up having all girls or all boys?
There was a family on my street growing up that had 7 boys before they had a girl.
My friend has 7 girls and one boy (although he was born 6th). Another has four sisters and no brothers. Two are the only girls in a houseful of boys (7 and 8 brothers, respectively).
One of my favorite bits of contemporary Jewish music is a song about a guy with 5 daughters, no sons, and how happy he is.
My point being, it is in our hands to try. It is in His hands to determine what we get -- in terms of gender, intelligence, abilities, and a whole host of other things.
Anyway, there is at least one opinion that says the obligation is two children of any gender.
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Now I feel like a slacker for only having five daughters and one son.
Although my son was #3, and I really wasn't trying to get "a brother for Todd" like so many people seemed to think I was.
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I have three sisters older than me. My father insisted that I be called "David" regardless of whether I came out a boy or a girl.
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quote:Originally posted by Nighthawk: I have three sisters older than me. My father insisted that I be called "David" regardless of whether I came out a boy or a girl.
Funny, my mom tells me they called me Taylor all 9 months I was in the womb, because they knew I was going to be a boy.
To this day I insist they called me Taylor because its a unisexual name, had I been a girl they would have fed me that same story.
Its one of lifes ironies. We live in a world where many men want sons and yet its all up to the man to produce the chromosome needed, and yet we cannot control it.
Man its double irony. You want something, its up to you do something to aquire it, you can't conciously do it, but it must be done.
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I have a friend who is has been sick since childhood with scleroderma. She's on extremely strong medication to control it - really, it's low dose chemotherapy, at least that's how she explained it to me - and at least one of her meds causes extreme birth defects. If she wants to have her own kids, she'd have to go off the medicine and wait a full six months before trying to get pregnant.
She got married in March of this year and she and her husband want to start a family. Now, she met said husband only a year ago this Labor Day; she married him within 9 months. All through their engagement and courtship, she talked excitedly about having a family, and how she had no problem adopting or using one of her sisters as a surrogate mother (even then, she' dhave to go off the drugs for six months).
But now, her husband is so resolute about the idea that they must have their own children and she must bear them. He wants to go off her meds for the six months, then try to get pregnant - she doesn't even know if she can - and then have her go nine months without the drugs.
I just don't understand it. He's putting her life in completely undue, unnecessary risk (and she's going along with it, but that's another story). While it's possible (though unlikely) she could go off the meds and not have an immediate health problems, scleroderma is something of a degenerative disease. If she stops controlling it even for one second her life span will get shorter.
This type of thing I just really, really don't understand, especially when there are so many unwanted children in the world.
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I don't get that either... They could at least get a surrogate or something if it will cost her... 15 months of agony.
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It's worse than that... she'd be so much worse after all those months of non-treatment and some of that would be permanent. He can ask her to bear the child or he can ask her to rear the child. He can't expect her to be able to do both, her body won't take it. Of course her body might be quite disabled within a few years even if they DO adopt.
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I want to look at my child and marvel and what my significant other and I have created. The two of us having the ability to do what humans do best, to join together and make something that is a part of each other. I want to have a connection with my son or daughter like my mother has with me. We are endlessly amused with our similiarities. We have the same laugh, same smile and sometimes even say the same things at the same time. Those experiences have created a bond that we, as biological mother and daughter, can share.
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quote:We have the same laugh, same smile and sometimes even say the same things at the same time.
I know adoptive families of which these things are true, as well. I wonder how much of our behavior is learned, how much is genetic, and whether learning can compensate for genetic differences in some families.
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Sometimes, when I think about how awesome I am, it makes me realize that it would be a crime against humanity not to pass on these sweet genes I have.
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