Uniquely Eliana
A few weeks ago I alluded to an observation about how different my kids are at a very young age. Of course, I would expect that their personalities would be quite different, and indeed they are... there will be no other Eliana and there will be no other Berkeley. But what I didn't expect is the seemingly innate perception they hold of their own sexual identity, something I had heretofore believed was wholly learned from cultural influences (that is to say, a girl is taught to be a "girl", and a boy is taught to be a "boy", at least in the context of the environment in which that child is raised in).

Of course, cultural influences do have a tremendous impact on sexual identity and gender roles, influences which not only vary from nation to nation but from household to household. But if cultural influences can be independently isolated (i.e. presuming those influences are equivalent from child to child... like say, for example, two children raised in the same home), they simply cannot account for some of the behaviors I have observed in Eliana at a very early age, before any opportunity to reinforce gender roles and sexual identity presented itself.

One behavior Eliana seems to have brought with her is that of playing the role of a caregiver, specifically in the role of playing caregiver to a baby doll. Eliana's exposure to baby dolls was roughly at the same age as was Berkeley's exposure, and in similar circumstances... outside of our own home (we only got Eliana a baby doll to role play with once she showed a seemingly innate interest). It is quite curious to note that Berkeley has never shown even the slightest bit of interest in role playing as a caregiver (but I should note that Berkeley did go through a phase where he was quite interested in princesses, but that was more as the result of the influence of his [all girl] cousins than anything else). If the nurturing environment can be considered to be identical (or, if not, then extremely similar), wouldn't I expect Berkeley to have shown an interest in role playing as a caregiver also? I should think so.

The second behavior I have observed is not as compelling, but I think it deserves mention. Eliana has long been quite fond of playing "dress up", well before we even thought to encourage such a behavior. I'm quite sure that Eliana learned this behavior from watching her mother (I must emphasize that even before her first birthday she was wrapping clothing items around her neck and strutting about in an "I'm-so-pretty" type of walk). However, Berkeley exhibited no such tendency after watching his mother "dressing up" (as it were). All things being equal, then I would expect that Berkeley would have gone through his "dress-up" phase; but he never did. This is because (I believe) Eliana wasn't so much as "dressing up" as she was identifying with something her mother was doing; identifying with her as a woman, even if she was only a very little girl.

I realize that I have a pretty sparse dataset to work with, that my observations can be subjective, and that my presumptions may be false. But by own reckoning, these observations go a long way to confirming some of my own philosophical beliefs. Namely, that our lives didn't start here on this earth, but that we carry some stamp or imprint of our identities from a previous life.

The Failure of the Iraq Experiment
Dan has the goods on the failed Iraq experiment and where we should go from here.

(Update Wed Dec 21 09:19:01 PST 2005 // moved to new category)