When I was growing up, the gender-based envy was always centered around the penis. At least in my family - with a dad, 2 brothers and 3 boy cousins - penis envy was all the rage.
But something happened today that made me think that my kids were different. Maybe it’s their generation…or maybe this tendency was always there, but the penises were keeping it quiet.
Make no mistake, there simply aren’t enough penises in this house to keep this under wraps.
My kids were playing with their horses this morning and talking about how the horses were their babies in their bellies. After months of this game, my wife finally laid it out for my 3 year-old daughter, “Actually, your baby lives in a special place right below your belly, it’s called your uterus.”
“Me too! I have a baby in my uterus!” said my son, all of 2.5.
“Well, actually…” Patti began, “girls have uteruses, boys don’t.”
He immediately protested, and I shouted down from upstairs, “You have a prostate - it’s really cool.”
“NO! I don’t want a proterate! I have a uterus, too!” He demanded.
Sophie, our sweet, sweet girl said, “I’ll share my uterus with you, Jackie.”
But, he wasn’t having it. “I want my own.”
We totally succumbed. Uterus’ are pretty cool, brilliant in fact. So, we told him he could have one… and they ran off together to grow their horse family… from the belly down.
Fantastic image courtesty of Caveman 92223
Funny! My high school mascot was the Rams, and one year the seniors had sweatshirts made with a similar design to that Dodge Ram, and oh, the jokes did follow. Paging Dr. Freud, class of 1994…
In a way I can’t quite explain, I am proud of your son for insisting that he wants his *own* uterus..!
This line, BTW, absolutely killed me: “You have a prostate - it’s really cool.”
Who WOULDN’T want a uterus? I mean, seriously, we can grow BABIES in them - they’re the coolest machines in the world
Love that Sophie offered to share her uterus with her brother. And not in an incest-y way.
And on the other hand, as a loving and active-in-raising father of five, still married 39 years later, I’ve been present at 5 births, and never ever envied your half of the world. It didn’t even take the first birth to get me there, either; pregnancy alone, the fact that you endure it all from your motherly heads all the way down through your swollen ankles, was enough. I’ve been through another generation of five pregnancies now between daughters and daughters in law, and I’m still stunned at what you put up with. I’m sure that if it were up to fathers, the human race would have died out millions of years ago.
Ah, but would the kid have still had such envy if the fine print regarding….how shall we say this….certain lunar cycle aspects of things had been explained? Truth in advertising for the young lad, I say!
Cute story! I can relate. My boys, 3 and 5, are always nursing their stuffed animals.
Ah uteruses (or is it uteri?) rock! I’m soooo lovin’ that he wants his own! And I love the pic! Thanks.
Laughing at: “Uterus Envy « This Mommy Gig” ( [link to post] )
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OMG! Dying!!! This is an excerpt from my book–I TOTALLY agree with the ram thing!
“While procreative sex doesn’t exactly feel like a chore, it definitely feels…purposeful. First there’s this: The entire time we’re doing the deed, I’m thinking about my internal organs. I can picture that damned diagram that’s featured in every woman’s health book or article, the “female anatomy” illustration that vaguely resembles a ram’s head. There’s the urethra, there’s the cervix, there are the fallopian tubes. Wonder where the little ovum is right now. What’s she doing? Does she have any idea she is about to be attacked by a mob of eager sperm? I actually feel kind of bad for her. If you have never thought about how seriously weird the reproduction process is, I urge you not to start while you are having sex and trying to make a baby. It isn’t exactly the stuff of erotica…”
LOLing about “uterus envy” [link to post]
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Tonight at dinner, shortly after our toddler son’s grandfather flew in from Chicago for a short visit (due to our daughter’s birth last week), Beckett raised up out of his chari leaned atop the dinner table, peered down the table to his grandfather, and pronounced with a great deal of authority:
“Grammpa no have boobies.”
Needless to say, our son owned the moment in a way that only a child’s innocent truth-telling can.