If you’ve ever stayed in a room with a windowsill, you might know about pairs of pigeons.

They make ungodly noises, cover everything in crap, and aren’t exactly welcome house guests across the world.

A pigeon pair, on the other hand, is much sought after. If you’re still playing catch up – as I was when I started writing this – a pigeon pair is “a boy and girl as twins, or as the only children in a family”.

So having two kids, a boy and a girl – yeah, that’s it.

To those without children, myself included, who gives a rat’s arse. Parents around the world, however, will probably be able to tell you that it’s quite a big deal.

To begin with why it’s called a pigeon pair, as we promised in the headline, here’s Parent24:

Where does that expression even come from? “Pigeon pair”. It sounds absurd. It comes, apparently, from an old folk belief that pigeons sit on two eggs at a time, and that the hatchlings are a male and female apiece. With further online wordy exploration, it appears that the term applies strictly to a set of twins  – one male and one female, but in recent years it has been loosened to apply to male and female siblings.

While pregnant, we bumped into friends of ours who were expecting around the same time as us. They gleefully informed us that they were expecting the second half of their perfect pigeon pair. I didn’t have the heart to tell them that it doesn’t count if the girl is born first, then the boy. The son is supposed to be born first, so he can protect his little sister, and so that she can date his older friends.

So that she can date his older friends? How very convenient, and what a nightmare for the older brother.

Of course, like with everything these days, the term has become the grounds of much contestation. Here’s a piece on Stuff, titled “A pigeon pair: Why is having one boy and one girl seen as the pinnacle of parenthood?”:

You see, having one of each is the ultimate goal (apparently). Two of a kind is sort of OK, but obviously not as satisfying as a pigeon pair. Three of a kind is a disaster and the parents must be living a half-life of disappointment and deprivation because they’ve failed to produce an even distribution of children.

It’s a bizarre thing when people are so invested in the make-up of your family. Even strangers in the supermarket queue have opinions about the genders of your kids, like it affects them in some way.

People actually turn up to visit mothers in hospital and pass on their condolences over the third son or daughter. “I’m so sorry” or “maybe next time” or even “you must be so disappointed”. Don’t even get me started on the reactions to the fourth or fifth of a kind…

It’s one of the great levellers in society: you get what you get and you don’t get upset. It doesn’t matter who you are or how talented you may be, it’s a total lucky dip.

Things get far more heated on Mama Mia, because Mama ain’t happy:

What bugs me about it is that people think I would care. That I would welcome my second child with extra joy because he was a boy. That somehow I would want him more and love him more, just because of what was between his legs. That I would feel self-satisfied, as if my job as a mother was complete.

There’s so much more ahead for me and my children, so much more that I’m looking forward to and so much more that I fear. But not one time have I smugly thought, “Well, at least I’ve got my boy and my girl.”

When it comes down to what parenthood is all about, the true joys and the true sorrows, gender doesn’t enter into it.

So don’t insult me by congratulating me on a pigeon pair. Just congratulate me on having two kids.

You want to know what I think? You probably don’t care, and neither do I.

Happy pigeon pairing or not pigeon pairing, breeders.