Why Emily Ratajkowski Doesn’t Want to Know the Gender of Her Baby

Emily Ratajkowski is pregnant!

The 29-year-old actress and model announced the news that she and husband Sebastian Bear-McClard, whom she secretly married at City Hall in New York City in 2018, were expecting a baby in a recently published essay—but she’s in no rush to find out her baby’s sex.

“When my husband and I tell friends that I’m pregnant, their first question after ‘Congratulations’ is almost always ‘Do you know what you want?’ We like to respond that we won’t know the gender until our child is 18 and that they’ll let us know then,” she writes in her essay for Vogue.

She continues, “Everyone laughs at this. There is a truth to our line, though, one that hints at possibilities that are much more complex than whatever genitalia our child might be born with: the truth that we ultimately have no idea who—rather than what—is growing inside my belly. Who will this person be? What kind of person will we become parents to? How will they change our lives and who we are? This is a wondrous and terrifying concept, one that renders us both helpless and humbled.”

She continues to say that, while she understands that much of societal and life experiences become gendered, she doesn’t believe we should push any preconceptions based around gender onto babies.

“I want to be a parent who allows my child to show themself to me. And yet I realize that while I may hope my child can determine their own place in the world, they will, no matter what, be faced with the undeniable constraints and constructions of gender before they can speak or, hell, even be born,” Ratajkowski writes, continuing to explain that she doesn’t have “any false notions of control” over whether she will have a boy or a girl. “I’m completely and undeniably helpless when it comes to almost everything surrounding my pregnancy: how my body will change, who my child will be. But I’m surprisingly unbothered. Instead of feeling afraid, I feel a new sense of peace. I’m already learning from this person inside my body. I’m full of wonder.”

Congrats to the growing family!