Then I saw the incontrovertible proof on the sonogram (or what they said was incontrovertible proof to me, it looked indistinguishable from, say, a nose) and I suddenly realized I had wanted a girl-desperately, passionately-all along. My husband, Steven, is nearly a decade older than I am. A few years before my daughter was born, I had read about some British guy who'd discovered that two-thirds of couples in which the husband was five or more years older than the wife had a boy as their first child.

And that was the problem: What if, after all that, I was not up to the challenge myself ? What if I couldn't raise the ideal daughter? With a boy, I figured, I would be off the hook.Īnd truly, I thought having a son was a done deal. I had spouted off about it everywhere from The New York Times to the Los Angeles Times, from the Today show to FOX TV. I was supposed to be an expert on girls' behavior. While my friends, especially those who'd already had sons, braced themselves against disappointment should the delivery room doc announce, 'It's a boy,' I felt like the perpetual backseat driver who freezes when handed the wheel. Yet, when I finally got pregnant myself, I was terrified at the thought of having a daughter. Here is my dirty little secret: as a journalist, I have spent nearly two decades writing about girls, thinking about girls, talking about how girls should be raised. Excerpted with permission by Harper Collins. From the book Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture by Peggy Orenstein.

Cinderella ate my daughter book