by BabyCenter Guest Blogger posted in Pregnancy

By Jamie Lincow
The other day I was contributing to a long list of congratulatory responses for a friend who posted a picture of her new family of four. The proud big sister was holding her baby brother, and I was in awe of how happy and well-rested everyone looked just a few days after the new arrival. After I posted my comment, I skimmed some of the other congratulatory remarks until I came upon one that I still can?t stop thinking about. It read: "Congratulations. A rich man?s family!"
The other posts commented on how cute the baby is, how adorable the big sister looks, and how a new baby is a blessing, but this comment focused solely on the baby?s gender. Since a baby boy was born, and now the family has a child from each gender, they are deemed rich. For a moment after reading the comment, I had to stop myself from riding the rollercoaster of thoughts  tumbling through my head. I began to wonder why a family with a boy and a girl is seen to be richer than a family with children of the same gender, or even families with more than two children.
Regardless of its original intent, the saying does create a type of competition between families, leading you to feel that you are not as rich as those that have a son and a daughter. As a competitive person by nature, this notion lights a fire in me.  I had heard the saying before, but those words were never said to me after any of the births of my three sons.
Each one...