Loco Parentis: Minority Report

I WANTED A boy.

I’ve admitted as much to my daughter Marcy, my firstborn. When I was pregnant with her, I longed to give my husband Doug a son, hand him that down payment on the future: Here! Your line goes on! Oh, sure, I said what every prospective mother does: I don’t care, so long as it’s healthy. But I harbored hopes of a dynasty. And when our ob-gyn announced, at the moment of delivery, “It’s a girl,” I was disappointed. Any fool can be a girl. I knew; I had two sisters, but only one brother. Boys were special. Boys were heirs. Kingdoms foundered for the lack of them. Okay, maybe I read too much historical fiction at an early age. But kingdoms still do — look at the fuss in Japan until Princess Kiko finally came through with a son.

Lucky for Marcy, she was a charmer, and won me over. By the time her brother came along three years later, we were happily buying Barbie dolls, watching Cinderella, gossiping about what had happened at daycare, bonding over chocolate-covered strawberries.

Even after Jake leveled our household out census-wise — two males, two females — Marcy and I seemed to be in charge. Doug works lunatic hours, and since Marcy is the oldest, she trumped Jake when it was just the kids and me. She claimed the front seat in the car, and radio control. TV time? She ruled the remote. (It didn’t hurt that she liked what I liked.) “Just wait,” I consoled Jake, “until she goes to college. You’ll get to be in charge then.”

The future is now. By the time this appears in print, Marcy will be gone, off for four years at her new college. (We’ll just call it Dicklenburg.) Jake will be in the front seat with me, tuning in headbanger rock and hungry for revenge. I’m about to become the last woman standing, a lone voice raised against public farting and Bruce Willis movies and dirty socks strewn all over the place. And the prospect of becoming a household minority has got me thinking about what gender means to the guys in my life.

THE GOAL OF CHILD-REARING is to get your kids to do what they don’t want to do. This is the essence of civilization. Nobody really wants to vacuum. Nobody wants to pay taxes. But there’s dog hair all over the living room rug, and the war in Iraq must go on. So: If you can get your kids to vacuum, chances are they’ll someday do their part in funding the military-industrial complex, tra-la.

We’re halfway to that goal. I can get Marcy to vacuum, and she does a good job of it. I can get Jake to vacuum, but he doesn’t do a good job. He’s piss-poor, in fact, at this and any other household task he’s assigned: lawn-mowing, trash-emptying, you name it. He’s disengaged. He doesn’t give a damn. And while I tried for years to think otherwise, I now believe it’s because he’s male.

Men are the baseline, the norm. Anything else (women, gays, children) is deviation. Guys don’t sit around thinking about this; it’s just something they know from birth. The way they experience life, the way they feel (or don’t), is the right way. I like a clean bathroom? Phht. Crazy neurotic female. I feel I should visit my aged father once a week? Go ahead, nutcase; a few times a year is enough for Doug to go see his folks. I know where the (choose one) dog license paperwork/calamine lotion/YMCA card is? Well, no wonder — there’s plenty of room in my empty little head for such minutiae, whereas the male brain is preoccupied with more vital matters (such as who else to add to the stupid-joke e-mail list). As Jake forges into manhood, he’s showing the full monty when it comes to taking responsibility.

For instance: I get home from work late, in the dark, turn the front-door key, and step inside. He’s sitting at his computer. The floor lamp beside the door, I can’t help but notice, is blindingly bright. It’s blindingly bright because it’s missing its glass globe. “Hi, hon,” I say to Jake. “What happened to the globe on the lamp?”

“I broke it,” he says gruffly.

“You broke it? How?”

“I forgot to take a key to football practice, so I had to climb in the window. And I knocked the lamp over somehow, and it broke.”

“That lamp belonged to your great-grandmother,” I say as mildly as I can.

“Why don’t you try to make me feel worse than I already do?” he asks, showing no sign whatsoever of remorse.

“You could have been more careful coming through the window.”

“I was careful,” he shoots back. “I took out the screen. I moved the fan. I even moved the freaking plants.”

“Or you could have remembered your key in the first place.”

He turns to grimace at me. “What-ever.”

I’ll never find a replacement globe for that lamp. I move further into the living room, see the midden of dirty socks and granola bar wrappers and cast-off shoes and empty water bottles surrounding his computer desk. “And you could pick up after yourself instead of making this house into a pigsty!” I say, gathering steam.

“Those two things — the lamp and picking up my stuff — have nothing to do with one another,” my son announces, in a tone of infuriating blandness.

“Of course they do! It’s all about taking responsibility for yourself.”

“You’re just angry with me for breaking the lamp, so now you’re trying to make me feel guilty for anything you can. It’s totally illogical.”

Jesus. I’ve spawned Mr. Spock. “What’s totally illogical is you thinking the entire house exists as a giant trash can for you to leave your gum wrappers and soda cans and — ” I’m still going, but he’s clapped on his headphones and isn’t listening. And you know what? He won. He totally called me. I was mad about the lamp, and I was grabbing for ways to guilt him, and there wasn’t any connection between the lamp and his socks.

But Marcy would have seen the connection — would have intuited it, felt it. Hers is a girl mind, and it works just like mine. Having her in the household has been more than backup for buying the floral-print couch; she comprehends that there’s an order to the universe and an order to the living room — and a link between the two.

“Somebody set the table, please!” I call from the kitchen at suppertime.

“I already swept the porch and vacuumed,” says Marcy, who’s watching TV from the sofa. “It’s your turn, Jake.”

“I’m busy,” says Jake, slaying computer aliens in some galaxy far, far away.

“I already did my chores! It isn’t fair!” Marcy screeches.

Jake doesn’t move.

What do I do? Dig in? Tell Jake to get up off his lazy butt and set the table?

Too late. Marcy flounces into the kitchen, seething but resigned. It’s our lot in life to serve them. We are deviants. They’re the norm.

---