Men's Group
Related: About this forumGender based selection in the US now favors girls
How To Buy a Daughter
Choosing the sex of your baby has become a multimillion-dollar industry.
Megan Simpson always expected that she would be a mother to a daughter.
She had grown up in a family of four sisters. She liked sewing, baking, and doing hair and makeup. She hoped one day to share these interests with a little girl whom she could dress in pink.
Simpson, a labor and delivery nurse at a hospital north of Toronto, was surprised when her first child, born in 2002, was a boy. That’s okay, she thought. The next one will be a girl.
Except it wasn’t. Two years later, she gave birth to another boy.
Desperate for a baby girl, Simpson and her husband drove four hours to a fertility clinic in Michigan. Gender selection is illegal in Canada, which is why the couple turned to the United States. They paid $800 for a procedure that sorts sperm based on the assumption that sperm carrying a Y chromosome swim faster in a protein solution than sperm with an X chromosome do.
Advertisement
Simpson was inseminated with the slower sperm that same day. Fifteen weeks later, she asked a colleague at the hospital to sneak in an after-hours ultrasound. The results felt like a brick landing on her stomach: another boy.
“I lay in bed and cried for weeks,” said Simpson, now 36, whose name has been changed to protect her privacy. She took a job in the operating room so she would no longer have to work with women who were giving birth to girls.
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2012/09/sex_selection_in_babies_through_pgd_americans_are_paying_to_have_daughters_rather_than_sons_.single.html
-----------------------------------------------------
It's interesting that this practice has caught on here when it is usually associated with China or India. And that now it favors girls.
Personally I find the motivation for gender based selection to be unnerving but I am unwilling to put any limits on a person's reproductive choices.
/No agenda here. I just thought this was interesting, related to men's issues in some way, and thought people might enjoy reading the article.
//I really hope the boy referenced in this article never finds out that by "choosing" to be male he sent his mom in to a depression lasting many weeks. That can't be good for his self-esteem.
= new reply since forum marked as read
Highlight:
NoneDon't highlight anything
5 newestHighlight 5 most recent replies
lumberjack_jeff
(33,224 posts)q) Why would anyone select a child's gender knowing full well that the child will face a lifetime of disadvantage, predjudice, bias and minority status?
a) they don't. In the US, parents select a child's gender knowing that it will give her an advantage.
http://www.in-gender.com/XYU/Gender-Preference/
4th law of robotics
(6,801 posts)to continue to assert that one would have to assume A) mothers are unaware of the world they are bringing their child in to or B) they want their child to be placed at a significant disadvantage and suffer for it.
I don't think it'd be easy to support either of those claims.
It would be like using the fact that black babies are generally considered less desirable when it comes to adoption (not my opinion, just based on adoption statistics) as proof that blacks are privileged. They're unwanted, of course that means they have it good!
Pterodactyl
(1,687 posts)This practice turns procreation into a process that serves the desires of the parents and does not respect that children come out how they come out.
And don't get me started on using abortion for sex selection.
ProudToBeBlueInRhody
(16,399 posts)....the idea is anecdotal, as mentioned in the article, because "How to have a daughter" is searched 3X more than "How to have a boy".
Each gender likely connects more with having a child of their own sex. I think most men would say they want at least one son. But they are unlikely to go on the internet and search about it. Just my feeling. I'm sure there are couples who feel motivated to have a boy if they have a daughter. I know a former co-worker who had three girls, finally got a boy, and then got his balls snipped.
There's a larger problem here, and it reveals the selfish nature of what having a child has become. They have to be this gender....be blonde....have green eyes. We've raised a materialistic generation, and now it's spread to their kids, choosing them like they would the color of a car.
4th law of robotics
(6,801 posts)that would necessarily skew towards girls.
You have single women choosing to become pregnant.
You really don't have guys getting pregnant. Regardless of their marital status.
Pterodactyl
(1,687 posts)Parents will pick all sorts of things if technology improves - sex, skin color, gay or straight, and so on. It's an affront to human dignity. Let humans be humans and you should love whatever you get equally.
Warren DeMontague
(80,708 posts)imagination of sci-fi authors, I can tell you that I don't see it being a particularly big "danger".
Sex selection is a big deal in China because of a combination of a one-child policy that veers towards totalitarianism, AND a society that strongly values boys over girls.
I just don't think most people, most would-be parents in this country, are going to give that much of a shit. Most people who can physiologically accomplish it, enjoy very much making their kids the old fashioned way, believe you me. Most parents want a baby who is healthy. Period. With our kids, I had a strong feeling about their genders before they were born. Not a preference, but a feeling. Can't explain it, but I was always right.
And there are certain genetic issues that it would absolutely be beneficial to be able to address; things like Huntington's, for instance. Genetic diseases that can kill.
I'm not worried about science and technology leading down a dangerous path in these regards. I think generalizations about these millions of parents who would love to order a custom baby at the drive thru are silly; maybe I'm isolated from most of America, but I don't think that is how most people actually operate.
I think most people will continue to have kids the way they always had.
lumberjack_jeff
(33,224 posts)Presumably mothers in South Korea and China prefer sons.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/03/110314132244.htm
ProudToBeBlueInRhody
(16,399 posts)....that is due to a longtime societal/government imposition on families not to have female children. A woman's opinion/desire over there means far less than it does here. This article is about the issue in the US, not anywhere else.
lumberjack_jeff
(33,224 posts)You propose that it's because women have a preference for girls.
Unless someone can show me how chinese women are compelled to abort the girls they'd otherwise prefer in deference to government or social mandate, I don't think that this argument has merit.
Given the choice, parents choose the traits that they believe will enable their children to thrive in the prevailing culture. In China/South Korea, parents believe, with some justification, that it is better to be a boy, and a system of stereotypes about girls/women has grown to rationalize away the injustice of this paradigm.
On it's own, the preceding paragraph is uncontroversial. Until you observe that the reverse is true in the US.
ProudToBeBlueInRhody
(16,399 posts)....when the Chinese culture frowned upon daughters as opposed to sons, to the point infanticide of females was common? Hundreds of years of social conditioning is still doing it's job.
I also find it silly that you think the average American has figured out what you have that being a girl in America is somehow overly beneficial.
lumberjack_jeff
(33,224 posts)That's why they're still electing to have sons.
You are entitled to think it's silly but if a US couple is going to a fertility specialist to choose the sex of their child, 80% of the time they're intending to have a girl. It is impossible to reconcile this with the belief that being born female makes you an oppressed minority.
ProudToBeBlueInRhody
(16,399 posts)....I believe going to a fertility clinic is often initiated by the woman as opposed to the man. Plus, as someone pointed out, single professional mothers would go there....it lends to my belief that the dominant parent favors their own gender for whatever reason. Again, I've spoken and actually seen a lot of men who want a son and are more likely to give in to the push to keep having kids just to have one....they just won't push to go to a fertility clinic to make it more likely.
In China, where daughters are frowned upon for whatever reason and the young girls who were seen as "disappointments" grew up to be women who have the same hang-ups, obviously they will have less of an influence.
4th law of robotics
(6,801 posts)you are limited to one child. The gender doesn't matter.
People prefer sons so they get rid of the daughters.
ProudToBeBlueInRhody
(16,399 posts)....it's a situation that leads to a rather obvious conclusion as to why the choice of boys over girls is made in that country.
4th law of robotics
(6,801 posts)Here girls are apparently more valued for mainly social reasons it would seem (although I have heard some people claim they want girls because they're cheaper).
Obviously the pressure here is lower since we don't have a one child policy. If we did I would guess we'd have a comparable gender imbalance but towards females.
Which in both cases the parents are making inherently selfish choices that when done on a mass scale mean their children will suffer (greater competition for mates means the majority gender will necessarily have to be less choosy if they're to find anyone at all). Girls will be highly prized in China very soon. Boys here one day.
Warren DeMontague
(80,708 posts)I don't think most people, or most parents, are like that. At all.
ProudToBeBlueInRhody
(16,399 posts)Doesn't have to be most.
Warren DeMontague
(80,708 posts)I think the promise of being able to eliminate debilitating genetic diseases is much more relevant.
Warren Stupidity
(48,181 posts)
ElboRuum
(4,717 posts)Me watching that movie: Cautionary Tale.
Apparently others watching that movie: Wooo! When can I get me some of that?
