but, like two BNFs that friend each other just to know what the other is up to, they never stopped exchanging letters and discussing things Oh god, oh god, what has this culture come to. Being compared to BNFs. He'd roll in his grave. And I'm rolling, too. On the floor, laughing.
The child is a boy, it's referred to as 'der Knabe' early in the poem. There never is, or was, a doubt about the boy's sex in German minds. That interpretation strikes me as rather off the roof, since boys especially were not considered belonging with their mothers, but being out and learning the 'man things' in the world. But really, apart from being a rabid Goethe fangirl, I know nothing, so don't mind me.