While all parents wish for a happy, healthy baby, for some, there is an undeniable preference, subconscious or otherwise, when it comes to the gender of the child.

Those preferences were highlighted in a 2018 study by Finnish and American scientists in which 347 women and 423 men took part in an experiment to gauge their subconscious preferences.

Participants were shown rapid-fire images of baby boys and girls, which they had to categorize using a series of subtly positive or negative adjectives.

The results revealed that while men only slightly preferred having sons, it was women who had a strong preference for girls with the researchers concluding that the latter was due to females having less access to “social resources” compared with males.

Perhaps that’s why the woman posting to Reddit as abcdefu0009 was so overjoyed to learn both of the twins she is currently carrying are girls at a recent gender reveal party - and why her husband reacted with such obvious disappointment.

According to the post, which has been upvoted 3,500 times while garnering over 10,000 upvotes in the comments, the couple already have a 15-month old son. Eager to mark the arrival of his two new siblings, they held a gender reveal party involving all of their close friends and family.

The plan was to pull two party poppers releasing colored confetti that would tell them the twins’ genders with blue representing male and pink female. However, when the time came to find out, the woman said her husband was “visibly disappointed” to discover he was having two daughters.

“My husband really wanted at least one boy, he even started picking out toys and names,” she wrote. Worse still, several of their guests noticed his reaction and went over to “comfort him” and remind him “he should just be grateful.”

“I honestly got second-hand embarrassment that my husband needed to be comforted in front of everyone because he’s going to be having healthy girls,” the expectant mom said.

Even after attempts were made to cheer him up, she said her husband was “still very upset.” Eventually, once the party was over, she decided to confront him over his reaction, reminding him he “already has a son” and accusing him of “embarrassing” them by acting like a child.

With the two still at odds, the woman turned to the internet for support.

For Reddit users like DogsReadingCrapBooks, the couple only had themselves to blame. “This is why you shouldn’t do gender (sex) reveals when you have a preference,” they wrote. “It’s best to find out in private. So you can process without a lot of people present who’s gonna witness all your reactions.”

Tuckerf14, meanwhile, was baffled by the dad’s response, writing: “I mean I get the disappointment and stuff but he literally already has a son. He literally already got the gender he wanted.”

Milkmanrichie commented: “Imagine being a teenage girl watching your gender reveal, and your dad is actively disappointed that you are a girl” while boreonthefleur said: “He’s allowed to feel disappointed but come ON be an adult and reign in it. "

However, others like bradtoughy sought to defend the dad’s reaction on some level. “If given the option between two things, human nature dictates we will prefer one over the other,” they said. “That doesn’t mean we can’t or won’t love if we get the other option…everyone has a preference.”

Newsweek has reached out to abcdefu0009 for comment.