I am in the midst of bath time.  And, as you can plainly see, I’m not very attentive during bath time.  I usually leave bath time to the boys.  They enjoy swatting each other’s penises and I enjoy some time out.

But tonight my hubbie is cooking up some NOLA staples: roast beef po boys, homemade french fries w/ Cajun dipping sauce, and mint juleps.  (Yes, I know that mint juleps are really a Kentucky classic but we always enjoy them at a little piano bar in the French Quarter. Therefore, it’s New Orleans to us.)

So, tonight, bath time is left to me.  And, since my parents claimed that bath time meant pruned feet and a good book to them, it only makes sense that bath time should mean blogging space for me.

In many ways, it’s really quite refreshing.    Silas is content splashing in a 3X5 foot pen and I am here writing and sipping my mint julep and preventing him from drowning.  It’s almost a perfect set up.  Save for the fact that the toilet is not a very comfortable seat.

***It’s, maybe, fifteen minutes later.***

Bath time is over.

I was just pushed from the bed by my son.  He was asking for Daddy and Snuggle Time and when I climbed in the bed he said “No, Mommy, No Snuggle, Mommy, No” and then proceeded to push me until I left.

And they say that boys LOVE their mamas.

That has not been my experience.  Silas is a Daddy’s Boy to the very core.  Since the awful hour that my breasts stopped making milk, Silas has been a boy of boys.

***It’s, maybe, another fifteen minutes later.***

I was about to go on a long diatribe about genetics and society.  The whole nature versus nurture thing.  I was about to argue that my son, either by blueprint or by the fact that his mother just sucks or both, prefers boy time much more than he prefers mommy time.  I was going to talk about all the people that suggest that little boys have this clinging thing with their mothers and how that’s so great for the mom (I guess that’s the whole Freudian thing) and how my boy just does not.

Then, Silas asked for me and we read Marvin K. Mooney and Paul and I had our regular dispute over the correct pronunciation on the “you can go by camel in a bureau drawer” page.

So, while Silas is still, by far, a Daddy-preferer, I am not so heated up as to go on that same tirade.

And, I really don’t think that, as a mom, I suck.

Still, the whole nature versus nurture thing is an interesting question for a parent, especially when their child is young.  I often wonder why Silas is so fond of trains and trucks and tractors.  (I used to think that he was fond of trucks because he called them “fucks” and thought it was funny.  I was wrong.  He pronounces the word correctly now and, as far as I know, he doesn’t know what “fuck” actually means.  Although, he might know that it’s funny.  Thanks to everyone who laughed at him.)

I hear people all the time saying that boys just happen to love trucks and trains and tractors because they’re boys.  Sometimes, I, and I don’t know why exactly, nod as if I agree with them.  Sometimes, I even suggest, you know, verbally, that I understand what they are saying.

Well, let’s get one thing straight here, I’m a nurture girl.

I believe that a large part of our gender identification comes from our society and not from our hormones.

Don’t get me wrong.  I’m sure testosterone plays an incredible part in male aggression and sexual, um, prowess.  And, I know that women have “nurturing” chemicals released in their brains.  (You would not believe the physical withdrawal that I went through when I had to stop breastfeeding.)

Still, when it comes to Dora vs. Diego, I think it’s pure marketing.

We all (or rather some of us) like to believe that we are particularly sensitive to gender bias and that we would never ever subject our children to specific gender-bendering.  That we would give our child the same opportunities whether or not they are boy or girl.  That our sons would be welcome to Strawberry Shortcake and our daughters to, I don’t know, the World Wide Wrestling Federation.   (Do you remember that Christmas scandal, oh about twenty years ago, when a group of “commercial terrorists” exchanged the voice boxes in the Christmas Barbie and the latest G.I. Joe?)

Still, while I recently arrived at day care to find Silas dancing around the living room in a lacy wedding gown and fuzzy purple hat, I don’t think that his preference for all things with engines is an accident.  I think it comes from conditioning.  (I wanted to say it comes from our day care and just wash my hands of it, but I don’t think that’s possible.)

I have friends that claim that they have never, in any way, exposed their child to gender-specific conditioning.   But somehow, just somehow,  the girls love princesses and the boys love monster trucks.  I absolutely, in no way possible, buy that statement.    If you’ve brought your child to the store with you, you have exposed them.  Period.  End of story.

At the University of Florida (Go Gators!), I studied gender and linguistics.  We studied things like the effects of saying “his and her” versus “her and his” and the tendency for teeny-bopper girly magazines to write about females in the passive rather than in the active.  But, we also studied other languages in which there were no markers for gender (as in no “she” or “he”) and no marker for hierarchy (only “God”, “Animal”, and “Non-Animal” with all subcategories taking the same value).

The culture that surrounded these languages often found little to no gender superiority and often had what we would consider to be reversed gender roles (as in the women were the breadwinners and the men the housekeepers).    While that may not sway you, it was enough to sway me.  The linguistic and social analysis of these cultures gave me the “hard data” to back up what I already believed:  gender is a social and cultural construct and social and cultural constructs are largely inescapable.

We are all products.  You know like Kleenex or Tampax.

I want to say here and now that I had no intention of getting into this debate.  I wanted to write about muddling mint and sugar water but it seems that I have, somehow, and to a great extent, missed that literary boat.

***It’s about 24 hours later.***

Silas just pushed me from the bed again.  I’m trying not to take it personal.  Honestly, I’m just looking it as a chance for another break.

The po boys turned out well.  Somehow Paul didn’t know that Bragg’s Liquid Aminos is a lot like soy sauce (and yeah, he added a bit too much to the gravy) but still they were good.

So, I guess I should reflect on last night’s sociological or anthropological or linguistic or whatever rant.   I still believe that boys love trucks because they find out from other people that trucks love boys.

I also think, and I’m not sure how this fits into the debate, that Silas loves his daddy so much because his daddy has a “pee pee” (or as my friend’s toddler calls it a “vagina snake”).  Silas loves trucks so much because Daddy drives a truck therefore people with pee pees love trucks therefore Silas also loves trucks.    He also sees pictures of boys on boxes of toy trucks.  He also is, I’m sure, encouraged, however inadvertently, to play with trucks.  You know, because he is, as many people say “pure boy.”

I could be very, very wrong.

But, I’m not.

How could I be?

Still, if you’d like to challenge me to a duel, I’d be happy to go there.  I’m not even opposed to the idea that you might change my mind.  Maybe Silas doesn’t like me as much because I’m the heavy.  (Still nurture.)  Or because I’m not attentive at bath time.  (Still nurture.)  Or, because he is around women all day and a man’s voice is a certain comfort.  (Still, pretty much, but could be argued, nurture.)

Anyhow, I’d love to hear your thoughts.  I feel like this is a very odd sort-of post for me.  I’m usually not really very political and I don’t know where this came from.

But, yeah, thanks for listening.  Go nurture!