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Home › Articles › Gender Selection and Family Dynamics › Boy or Girl

Boy or Girl

Should You Choose the Sex of Your Child?

By Virginia Gilbert

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Although the degree of preference for male infants in these cultures seems chilling, it's sadly understandable given the economic conditions that favor boys. In countries such as India, Southeast Asia, Egypt and Pakistan, sons are often needed to earn wages for the family. Sons may receive a large dowry when they marry. And they provide financial support for aging parents. Daughters, on the other hand, are expensive: Parents must raise funds to purchase a dowry for them.

Girls in patriarchal societies may face grim futures, as implied by the following adage: "Even the beams of the house shed tears when a girl is born." Depending on the country, girls are less likely to attend school than boys. In Southeast Asia, for example, more boys than girls are vaccinated against childhood diseases. According to a recent Demographic and Health Survey (DHS), discrimination in medical care in Pakistan, Egypt, India and Bangladesh accounts for a skewed female mortality rate: Girls ages 1 to 4 are almost two-thirds more likely to die than boys. If they do survive childhood, women in Bangladesh, Cameroon, India and Senegal face another hardship. The DHS determined that it is more common for married women in these countries to get divorced if they "fail" to produce a boy.

Medical Issues
For women who carry one of the 350-plus X-linked disorders (diseases that only male children inherit) such as hemophilia, Duchenne muscular dystrophy and X-linked hydrocephalus, gender selection is the closest thing to a guarantee for a healthy baby. In approximately 10 percent of the couples using the Microsort technique, the woman is a known carrier of an X-linked disorder and is undergoing sex selection to prevent passing on the disease to a male child.


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