Girl power

Further reassuring news from survey-land reaches me. According to the latest research, two girls is the best offspring combo to select when planning your family. Apparently, two girls are less likely to fight, and will play nicely together. Furthermore, two girls will help around the house, make limited noise, rarely ignore you, and are easy to reason with.

Sorry, but which two girls are we talking about here? The Misses P have unquestionably enriched my life in many, many ways since their respective births, nine and six years ago, but let me tell you, research folk, they do fight, don’t very often play nicely together, never help round the house, are in no way limited in the levels of noise they make, ignore me routinely, and are about as easy to reason with as a pig being coaxed out of shit.

Having said my piece on that, I must now tell you that two girls proved to be a wondrous piece of family planning on our part, even if for none of the reasons above. As a mum of girls, and – um - as a girl myself, I’m hopelessly biased about how great girls are. Girls can be dressed in pastel shades and flimsy fabrics; girls will watch Annie and High School Musical and The Railway Children with you; girls enjoy passive toys like tea-sets and Hama beads and baby dolls; and girls wrap grown men round their fingers in a manner you can only admire.

And ok, so girls grown up to be female teens. They will then take your make-up, text you to tell you they’re not coming down to dinner, watch execrable telly, participate in marathon bitch-fests via MSN, and bring home tattooed ne’r-do-wells for boyfriends.

Still, it's all kind of academic really, isn't it? You take what you're dealt by the x/y chromosome shuffle.You love 'em regardless.