Mea Culpa, Fred. Sincerely, Mary Catherine

My dad used to tell this story over and over...possibly to irritate my mother, and, quite possibly, to make me feel like an unwanted idiot. whatever, the case, I can see a lot more clearly now than I could years ago.
Mom wanted a girl in the worst way; in her pregnant certainty, she had even gone to the extreme of picking out a girl's name: Mary Catherine. Remember, this was in the days long before ultrasound could provide parents with the "inside scoop" as it were, on the gender of the as-yet-unborn progeny. They'd already filled out the male part of the All-american family: Fred was not quite two years old when Darrell Eugene emerged, no doubt to the shock and chagrin of my mother (all of this according to my dad, of course). So much for the "Father Knows Best" family construction.
To tell the truth, my mother always got upset when my dad told the story and had some sharp words for him. None of them, however, sounded like "JC! That's not true!" To me, the whole exchange sounded like, "Hey, he's right THERE! He's not supposed to know!" What probably was a contentious beginning really never got a respite. Now I know why the result was a great deal of conflict between siblings.
Researchers at the University of Ulster have just released the findings of their study in which they found that, undeniably, sisters were vital to a sense of happiness in a family! Having only male siblings was shown to lead to a great deal of distress while having at least one female child (and preferably more than one)led to a greater degree of feelings of openness and a willingness to discuss feelings. That certainly was not the case, as I recall it!
The study, conducted with 571 participants ages 17-25 showed a great deal of happiness followed when the children were girls or of different genders. Boys were typically known to internalize problems and showed very little tendency to discuss them with anyone. The discrepancy was even more pronounced in families of divorce. Fortunately, we did not have that dynamic to work through since JC and Martha made it past 50 years together.
I never thought it too strange that there were never any more children...perhaps Mom was just too disheartened...more likely, though, she was just too tired from refereeing all the fights, cooking hours on end trying to make economic ends meet on one salary, and going to school to talk to the principal about my behavior...endlessly! (I did learn how to bake and iron clothes, though.)
Thanks, Mom. Sorry, Fred.