Stuart Brazell had already given birth to two boys when she convinced her husband to try for a third baby—certain that this time she’d finally have the daughter she’d always dreamed of.
Brazell envisioned the little girl so vividly that during sound baths, she imagined them running together through a lavender field.
But when she learned she was expecting another son, the Los Angeles mom was devastated.
“I just sobbed and sobbed and sobbed,” Brazell recalled.
She filmed her emotional reaction and later shared it on TikTok, joining other parents publicly documenting their disappointment when the gender-reveal confetti turns blue.
Three years later, she adores her boys, now 8, 6 and 3. Her youngest, she told The Post, is “the best thing that’s ever happened to her” and even has an uncanny resemblance to the daughter she once dreamed of.
“But I’ll never get the opportunity and privilege to raise a daughter and have that special bond I had with my mother,” she admitted, even as she felt blessed to conceive naturally in her 40s.
“I will forever mourn not having a daughter. I think about it daily. Multiple times a day. I cry about it regularly.”
Brazell’s complicated feelings are part of a larger conversation about “gender disappointment,” increasingly playing out at elaborate baby reveals that send expectant parents into tears — and their reactions rack up millions of views on TikTok.
Once considered the coveted family heir and the one to carry the family name, baby boys are getting a decidedly less warm reception in some corners of modern parenthood.
Amid fraught conversations about masculinity, gender roles and the challenges of raising sons, research suggests the age-old preference for boys may be losing its grip.
Until 2011, research consistently found that when asked, most people preferred to have a son. But a 2018 Cornell University study suggested that the longstanding preference for boys was declining.
“It’s being driven by a social-media and media generated narrative about toxic masculinity that’s become pervasive and self-perpetuating, but that’s really not grounded in biological fact,” Heidi Murkoff, author of “What to Expect When You’re Expecting,” told The Post.
Yet the numbers are increasingly looking pink.
A 2025 Gallup International survey of nearly 45,000 people across 44 countries found that 19% of women preferred a daughter, compared with just 12% who wanted a son — though roughly two-thirds had no preference.
The preference has even surfaced in adoption decisions, where studies showed prospective parents favoring girls so strongly that the preference equated to a $16,000 difference in adoption costs.
And some fertility doctors say they’re seeing it firsthand.
Dr. Brian Levine, of CCRM Fertility of New York, told The Post he’s anecdotally observed an increase in patients seeking daughters through IVF.
“Much of this uptick in my practice has been driven by international patients traveling to the U.S. for their fertility care because sex selection is highly restricted globally for non-medical reasons,” Levine said.
For Ruthy Jungreis, a mother of four daughters, the apparent reversal is striking.
When she was having children, friends and relatives would practically offer condolences whenever she welcomed another girl, reassuring her that a son would eventually come along.
But Jungreis, who never had a boy, told the Post she wouldn’t have it any other way.
Her four daughters grew up sharing the same interests, from movies to family vacations, and remain incredibly close — a bond she believes might have looked different had she raised sons.
Her daughter Gayil Jungreis, 29, of New York City, has an even stronger opinion and admitted to having gender disappointment when she found her first was a son.
“Parents need at least one daughter, but I don’t think they ‘need’ a son,” she told The Post.
Gayil, who grew up with three sisters, believes daughters are the glue that holds families together — particularly as children grow up, marry and start families of their own.
“In general, girls keep a family close and together,” she said, adding that she believes daughters make relationships with grandchildren and in-laws easier to navigate.
For some mothers, the longing for a daughter isn’t simply about raising a little girl — it’s about the lifelong relationship they imagine sharing with her.
But is the baby-boy backlash really as widespread as social media makes it seem?
Murkoff isn’t convinced.
Among What to Expect’s community of roughly 15 million expecting and new moms, candid conversations about gender disappointment are common — but Murkoff told The Post she hasn’t seen a discernible anti-boy skew.
“Much more often, any disappointment is over parents discovering that they’re expecting another baby of the same gender — the 3rd boy, or the 4th girl,” she explained. “Or the disappointment of older kids who had their hearts set on a baby sister, only to bite into a blue cupcake. Cue the tears.”
“I’m more concerned that media is fueling negative perceptions that aren’t based in reality,” she continued. “Every boy is different, and every girl is different. Birth order has an influence, so does personality.”
But understanding gender disappointment may require looking beyond the initial reaction.
“Gender disappointment isn’t really about the baby being a boy or a girl. It’s about letting go of a future you’ve pictured for yourself,” Giulia P. Davis, a licensed marriage and family therapist, told The Post.
Murkoff also cautions against making presumptions that women and girls are better than men and boys.
“Yes, men aren’t born to be nurturing, but neither are women — that’s a combination of nurture, but also nature.
“Expecting and new fathers experience a surge in estrogen and a drop of testosterone — they produce oxytocin, just as moms do, when snuggling skin to skin with their babies. That’s nature at work — for me, that’s a much more powerful influence than any male-bashing social media narratives.”
For Bret Green, a 39-year-old Nashville dad raising a young son and daughter, the growing negativity surrounding boys misses an important opportunity.
He understands why women who’ve had difficult experiences with men might feel apprehensive about raising sons. But rather than fearing what their boys might become, he believes parents have a chance to shape a better generation of men.
“Recently I have seen more women showing their disappointment when it’s a boy,” Green told The Post. “I see having a son as an opportunity to course correct,” Green told The Post. “My son can be one of the good ones. That’s my responsibility and my wife’s responsibility.”
Brazell feels that responsibility, too — even if raising three rambunctious boys sometimes resembles a nightly wrestling match.
They’ve accidentally broken her nose and even damaged her surgically corrected eyesight.
But beneath the roughhousing, she insists, her boys are “so full of love.”
“I do think its interesting that now that people are preferring girls, or this idea that girls are easier to raise,” she said, adding that she thinks people may find girls more convenient.
“They’re too loud, theyre too much. It’s a bigger challenge to raise fine young gentlemen. That’s a challenge to you to bring wonderful men into this world.”
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