Guess what I brought home last week – a brand new bundle of sugar and spice and everything nice. That’s right, a pink and chubby little darling with the roar of a lion. I’m getting ready to pick my photo birth announcement for girls, today’s equivalent of shouting from the rooftops, and I have a dilemma. Do I go for the traditional pink designs, the colorful funky designs or the “I’m not pigeonholing my child as a girl” colors.
I want her to feel like she’s soft and feminine, but I also want her to be strong and able to stand up for what she wants. There are so many dimensions to being a woman today that I feel it is important to guide my daughter to an amazing life. What I can’t figure out is why I think that choosing the right photo birth announcements design will hold the key to her future, but there it is, the elephant in the room as I scroll through my choices. Underneath everything is the fact that we are programmed to see pink for girls and blue for boys and what is wrong with that in the end? I like a girly girl look and whether she chooses that for herself or not, I want the whole world to see her that way.
Does this happen to anyone else? The doubts flooding in of whether you will be up to the responsibility of motherhood or whether you will just scar your child for life by making the wrong choice of color in their photo birth announcements. I have decided that I’m just being silly and I have decided to go with pink. She’s a girl and everyone who sees her photo will surely smile when they see her outlined by the pink and white zebra design that I choose. Okay so I decided to go with the soft pink tempered with by a modern design. She’ll be soft, cuddly and tres chic and I will be pondering other important issues like where she’ll go to college!
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
You’re not alone. I too question my mothering skills when I am picking out the outfit my daughter will wear for the day or even when I am buying new clothes… should I buy her the shorts in pink camo print or the real camo colors? DOes she have too much pink in her wardrobe? (If so, is that necessarily a bad thing?) In the end (as I think you may have already concluded on your own), it is not the trivial things that shape our children but rather the substantial things like love and support that give our children the foundation to be the amazing people we want (hope) them to be.
Hey Clara, Its interesting that all it takes for you to call into question your own mothering technique is picking out the wrong outfit for your daughter. I usually just wrap my children in animal fur i shave off from the farm animals each week. it keeps them warm and if they get too hot they just take off the fur in layers. You know what they always say. Once you wear fur you’ll never go burrrrrrr!
I don’t know if the photo announcement will define that many qualities – one never knows what their child will aspire to. I think something that is trendy for the time so that when your daughter sees the photo card it will be a flashback in time.
I agree with Ariel. Something that captures the time. It will be a nice little flash back!
Why is this person writing a blog if they just had a baby? I figured they would be more busy than that. Oh well…I guess everyone has it differently.
Are you for real!? What is a “…pigeonholing my child as a girl” color? Maybe you can find a “gender confusing” color for the announcements.