I Thought I Had Gender Roles Figured Out. Then I Had a Son.

In a moment of tween desperation, I asked my mom whether I could try out for cheerleading. It was the late 90s and the girls at cheer camp seemed to have cracked some secret code to girlhood: their hair was always perfectly styled; their lips impeccably glossy. If I could just don that pleated skirt, I was sure their power would rub off on me and I’d stop being the middle school weirdo.

“Girls shouldn’t cheer for boys,” my mom replied, “they should cheer for themselves.” Cryptic, vaguely feminist sayings like this occasionally sprang from her mouth, despite her staunch Complementarian beliefs (Complementarianism is the belief that men and women hold separate but equal roles in church and family life and that these roles are prescribed by God).

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On the one hand, Mom would insist that all women had a divine calling to marriage, motherhood, and subservience to men. Then she’d turn around and spout off a defiant little opinion that hinted at her own internal conflict.

I never became a cheerleader. Instead, I grew into a youth group superstar and then a know-it-all Christian college freshman. There I decided that it made no sense that I by dint of my femaleness was assumed to know less about faith than some random dude. I rejected my parents’ complementarianism and became an egalitarian and a—gasp! —feminist.

And yet, the sexism of my upbringing hadn’t left me. I still believed marriage and motherhood were my ultimate calling and doubted my ability to get by without the guidance of either my father or a husband. The truth was, I’d never been taught to cheer for myself or believe myself capable of big things.

Still, I imagined myself one day raising a fierce feminist daughter who would grow up to achieve great things.

And then I had two sons.

Boys were not entirely foreign to me—I had two younger brothers whom I’d spent a large chunk of my childhood mothering. But I wanted to do things differently. When my first son, A, was born, I bought him gender neutral clothes and toys—blocks and balls and a doll he’d occasionally poke in the eye. I was going to raise him to be a sensitive little feminist.

Then one Christmas, a family member received a set of Dollar Store plastic samurai swords and A, then 18 months old, shrieked, grabbed one, and immediately began chasing people around the house, whacking and stabbing them. Even as I laughed at the spectacle, I couldn’t believe his tiny bloodlust. He didn’t watch TV; he’d never even seen a sword before. How did he know what it was for before he was even potty trained?!?!?

Until A was born, I’d always thought of gender as something that was, largely, culturally programmed. But the sword incident, coupled with his fascination with vehicles, left me questioning this assumption. There was something innate to this small human that loudly insisted I AM A BOY!!!!!

If masculinity is a spectrum, A has always been on the extreme end. In our liberal Seattle neighborhood, where plenty of little boys are painting their nails and belting songs from Frozen, there was my little warrior, dressed in head-to-toe camo, toting a Nerf gun to the park longer than he was tall, while I follow along behind, cringing and hoping my neighbors didn’t think I was in the NRA.