Apparently girls are better

When we had the last scan in January the doctor told us that Bod (baby number 4) was a girl. We’d had a thing in our family that Joel and I needed a boy so we’d be even, but that of course we’d be very happy with any kind of baby. Expressing this to the doctor at the time, he said we should be totally happy that we’re having another girl, because (so the saying goes) if you have a girl she’ll bring you a plate of food or a glass of water, but if you have a boy all you’ll get is a kick.

At first we told this to others thinking it was mostly ironic with a grain of truth, but given the number of times our Greek friends have said pretty much exactly the same thing since, I’m now thinking that it is spoken as absolute truth without a hint of irony! Just this morning our neighbour said the same thing to me, and elaborated with illustrations from her own family (one boy, one girl, now both grown up and both thoroughly nice people) and from her mother’s home town, Sparta, where ‘only the boys are children’ – i.e. the girls are expected to pull their weight from the off but the boys are princes. Houses are passed down always to the boys, the girls leave home with nothing.

It’s another illustration of just how ‘eastern’ Greece is.

Here’s another one, while we’re on the subject – we’ve spoken to a couple of older students this week about possibly joining us on some kind of fledgling Relay scheme. Both are positive initially, though we’ll see what comes of it. One, however, said something that you’d never hear in the UK. ‘My parents will be supportive [that you might hear] but the rest of my family might not be [i.e. uncles, grandparents etc].’

So what you might ask? Well, which graduating students in England would consider the opinion of grandparents as decisive in such decision-making?

It's not that this is either a good thing or a bad thing, though it might be one or the other, but that it just makes the whole process of influencing the decision-making of students more complicated and definitely slower. (We make no apologies for that part of our work! I needed influencing when I was a student - and still do - and it's no controversy that Athenian students also need influencing for the gospel. The influence of the extended family, however, is so much more significant than northern Europeans are used to.

Implications for us? It reminds us of the value of close family, because we are not islands. It reminds me of the need to become wise as I grow older so that I can be of good influence on my nephews and nieces and grandchildren, as well as my own four children - the alternative that I will be of no influence or actually bad influence.

(And that's the subject for another post - how much help do we get in our churches regarding our growing old? Almost all of us will do it and are doing it already, but how many of us will do it well?)

Other implications: we need more patience for it takes longer for people to change their minds or make up their minds. We need to see people not as individuals but parts of a wider network. And we also need to see how the gospel should critique (not criticise) the extended family culture, because the students we work with are still to be held accountable in the end for their choices and opportunities and effectiveness and productivity in their knowledge of Christ.