He's found his grandson deeply asleep. He could not hold the tear, he screamed “Welcome, dear” and kissed him on the forehead. But all of a sudden, the grandmother, who had stood up looking at the newborn, lost her smile and quickly dried her eyes. Amazed, he raised his head from the crib and asked me, in a hesitant tone: “But he’s a boy, isn’t he?”

It seems a custom of the past, but today it is a concern to know what the sex of the little one will become pregnant and who comes on the road immediately; today it is to keep the family waiting for it to win the wager. It is a pity, but I wonder if responsibility goes beyond pure knowledge, I doubt that before children enter the world we will not educate them in one way or another. Maybe the picture of the future is represented by ultrasound.

I am aware that it is not legitimate to say that we are on the same starting point as we were fifty years ago. The trail of those striving to make the present more prosperous is worthy. I think they have managed to knock on the door of the conscience of many. For example, some of us no longer write in the birth register if the newborn is a man or a woman; we just describe the genitals. It is nothing more than a shy gesture for diversity, I know, a simple detail that has been labelled “current modernity” by a buddy about to retire. At least, I believed that.

Well thought out, it's curious to see how facts tell us, how they silence our discourse. The truth is, I remember recently being shut down, just as I asked a mom who was inside the belly, and I got a neutral name in response. It was then that, without any hesitation, an echo crossed my heart: “And what is then?” Here's the modern midwife, almost dressed in her cap.

Maybe we ask ourselves too many questions that children have to answer. Because if the knowledge of what newborns bring in their legs could alter my professional activity, I could at least support that echo inside of me. But it's absurd. It is absurd to judge whether children are boys or girls. And it hurts me, of course, not to be able to abandon that need that has become a mere habit.

I'd like to do it, as the newborn's grandmother has done, sighing without heaviness. Her eyes were filled with joy: "No, worry. At the hospital we use a sheet that is on par and that's why we've put your granddaughter in a pink color," she said. He has easily escaped from trouble. I, on the other hand, have felt depressed by a feeling that I have nothing clear about. Lost in trying to overcome borders, again drowned by surprise.