Best Thing Being A Mum Of Boys

When I had my third son, the condolences I received were overwhelming.

Oh don’t worry. He arrived perfectly healthy, Ten tiny fingers, ten tiny toes and all that jazz.

But the outpouring of sympathy and pity bestowed on me after the arrival of this perfect healthy baby was quite something. And very much needed apparently; if you believed what random women told me.

He was a he, you see. A boy. A third boy. Another one. How awful.

The women (and yes it was almost always women) approached me in supermarkets, on the beach, in car parks, once, quite memorably, in a swimming pool. As they clocked that my third baby was in fact, male… and their eyes darted to the seven year old and four year old boys usually kicking the crap out of each other within a meter of me, the full horror of my situation dawned on them. They all pulled a strikingly similar facial expression filled with faux concern and approached with a tilted head and a conciliatory tone.

I used to enjoy guessing what their opening gambit would be. It was always one of the following three, which I’ve helpfully listed not in terms of frequency, but of sheer rudeness:

In third place: “ Three boys!? You’ve got your hands full. You must be exhausted/demented/mental!”

In second place: “Three boys!? Oh you poor woman. Are you going to keep trying until you get a girl?”

And stealing the top spot was: “Three boys!? Oh god I’m so sad for you. That is such a shame. My daughter is my best friend, and you’ll never have that.”

That one was often delivered, quite shockingly, by women I knew. Family members, work colleagues, friends. All desperate to tell me how bleak, and how lonely my daughter-free future would be.

If it wasn’t so crass and cruel, it would be funny. And in truth; I can laugh at it all these years on (my baby is now seven). But at the time, those words stung. Their pity and sympathy really burned, because they were so earnest that a large part of me actually believed this absolute drivel they were spouting.

Well they were wrong, and so was I.

Gendering our children is national sport isn’t it? Girls are more thoughtful, boys are more fun. Girls are more creative, boys are more sporty. I’m not a fan of saying that one gender of child is any certain thing. It’s rubbish. We are all of us humans, the big ones and the little ones; a wonderful mishmash of good stuff and not so good stuff and all the personality traits you could shake a stick at.

I can therefore only tell you about my personal experience of being a ‘Boy Mum’. (And yes, I might draw some wildly generalised comparisons to my friends who have girls. But I’m not saying that’s all girls and all boys. I’m saying it’s my boys, and my friends’ girls.)

So far, amidst all the muck and madness and mayhem, raising boys has been the most gorgeous, joyful parenting experience I could ever imagine. Here’s why…

● The love between me and my boys is an uncomplicated love. Lots of my friends who have girls seem to experience a bit of a push-pull in the love department. There’s a fair amount of mind-reading has to go on and they tell me they often feel like they’re getting it wrong. With my boys there really is very little complication or miscommunication. They seem to know intrinsically that I love the bones of them, that everything I do, I do for them. We have always found saying how we feel about each other very easy. Even now the teenage years have landed, there’s never an issue around saying ‘I love you Mam’, or ‘I’ve missed you’ or ‘Can I have cuddle?’

● Ah yes; cuddles. With my boys, physical affection is abundant. The seven year old wants to hold my hand, stroke my face and sleep in my bed with me every night. The 11 year old is much more of a lean-his-head-against-my-shoulder kinda guy. The soon to be 14 year old has, after a couple of years of being a bit more attached physically, recently rediscovered his love of a cuddle and he quite often will snuggle up on the sofa with me.

When I talk to my Mum-of-girls friends, there seems to be much less of that physical affection going on. Perhaps because girls mature more quickly and want to be more independent of their parents at an earlier age. I remember wanting to feel very grown up from about the age of 11, and of course that meant pulling away slightly from my parents physically. My friend who has two boys and two girls (very clever of her) says girls are cats; aloof and self-sufficient, whilst boys are dogs; faithful to the end.

● The humour. My boys are funny. Like, they’re an absolute hoot; the funniest people I know. Now I am not going to ascribe that to the fact that they are male. HELL NO. They get that from their Mother thank you very much…

But in all seriousness, there’s something about the three boy dynamic which just makes for comedy gold. For a lot of years the humour resided firmly in the toilet, with most of the jokes revolving around willies and bums and poo. But luckily as they’re growing I can see a new, more subtle, dry wit emerging and I’m here for it.

● The lack of teenage traumas. Now I am going to make a wild generalisation here about teenaged girls… but having been a teenage girl myself I feel I’ve earned the right: Teenage girls can be DRAMATIC can’t they?

God I remember some of my dramas and they were Oscar-worthy. My brother? None. He mainly mooched about in his bedroom, came out to play football at the weekend, and the most trouble he caused was trailing mud across the carpets. Again; witnessing what my mates with daughters are going through these days makes me breath a sigh of relief. The hormones are raaaaging for those girls, and with it comes bullying, cattiness, social media addiction, issues with food and body image. I’m not saying all teenage boys are just sailing through adolescence without any of those issues, but the poor girls are bearing the brunt of it for sure.

● I love the footy. Genuinely. Never thought I’d see the day. I was a very girly-girl growing up. Lived for singing, dancing, gymnastics, shopping and doing makeovers with my friends.

Yet here I am, every weekend (and most nights during the week unfortunately) standing on the sidelines, shouting for them to look for space, release the ball and shoooot (much to my sons’ deep embarrassment). And genuinely loving the beautiful game. So much that I watch Match of the Day when they’re not even here. Who’d have thought it eh? Being a boy Mam has pushed me out of my comfort zone in that way, and in so many other ways too. And I’m so grateful every day for that. Even on the days I’m stood in the lashing rain in sub-zero temperatures watching them get beat 7-0.

// Sarah Lawton