Then, as now, the parents really wanted a son. It was ancient Athens, so maybe they needed a son to carry on the family name or to inherit their estate. Maybe their farm needed labor. Maybe they already had several daughters.

But when Diogenes, the philosopher, heard how hard they were praying for the gender of their unborn child, he shook his head,

“But shouldn’t you be more concerned with what sort of man he will turn out to be?”

While Diogenes almost certainly had some retrograde opinions on gender and life, he is exactly right here. Who or what children are born matters very little compared to what kind of person they end up being.

Our job as parents is not to design a perfect little family with perfect little children in the exact right gender ratio. Our job is not to raise kids at all. Our job is to raise adults. We don’t have boys or girls anymore than a frog has tadpoles and pollywogs—not permanently anyway.

The point is to develop our kids into mature, functioning adults, into full-grown, thriving, virtuous human beings. That’s what we’re doing here. So let’s do it right…and focus on the right things.

—This newsletter is brought to you by ​Sundays for Dogs​.

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