A small rant today.
I don’t believe in preferring one gender over another, but many cultures do this, and it’s mainly the baby girls that get killed, aborted, abandoned and unloved as a result.
Having a baby boy or a girl is 50/50 chance, and when parents start trying to choose to ONLY have boys, you end up with the problem that I believe they are facing in China and India — that there are too many boys and not enough girls, which means they have to fight as they get older, to find a wife to start a family with.
(Pretty sure that’s a baby boy under that butcher’s table, although all in pink, I could be wrong.)
I also read somewhere that polygamy polyandry* is starting to become a thing now in India where the brothers will essentially take one woman as their wife, and share her because there simply aren’t enough women to go around, to to speak.
Yep. The kids become cousins who are also step-brothers or step-sisters.
This is why many doctors in those countries refuse to tell the parents if they see a boy or a girl, because they are afraid the parents will abort a perfectly healthy child if it’s a girl.
My main beef with families and parents who try to choose the gender, is that they’ll not only believe all kinds of crap, but they’ll believe the WRONG crap.
*Thanks Adina!
MY AUNT AND HER DISAPPOINTMENTS
My aunt had a baby girl as her firstborn, and when she was pregnant with her second, she spent a boatload of money on people who claimed to be able to see if she had a boy or a girl inside of her.
(This was way back when, before ultrasounds even existed. A baby’s gender was a surprise.)
She prayed every day, paid lots of money, went through (stupid) religious rituals, all while being soothed by this soothsayer that she DEFINITELY had a boy inside of her.
When my poor cousin was born, my aunt had a fit.
A GIRL?!?
She lost it.
What’s worse is that her husband’s family, who had also been primed and expecting to see a baby boy as her second child, started throwing temper tantrums and having fits that it ended up being a girl.
Can you believe that?
To my aunt’s credit, she “cut off” that side of her family because they would be so angry that she didn’t give birth to a boy, and never spoke to them again, even though she was the one who was probably the most disappointed, alongside her husband.
My cousin probably grew up with these emotional scars to some extent, but luckily, they love her very much, which I am sure, helped.
THE SICK THING ABOUT ALL OF THIS?
… is that it isn’t even really the woman that determines whether the baby is a boy or a girl. It isn’t her “fault”, so to speak.
IT’S THE GUY’S DOING!
He’s the one with his sperm that determines whether the baby turns out to be a boy or a girl in the 11th week!
All I can think about throughout all of this, is that in those cultures where they actually beat the woman for having given birth to a girl instead of a boy, is that they should be giving the flogging to her husband instead.
Blame the man, not the woman, for having “given” a boy to her to grow inside. It isn’t the woman’s “fault” at all, seeing as she’s just really the one who spent 9 months feeling ill, and incubating the child.
Update: I am being facetious saying the above.
Yes I understand that not any guy has any control over what happens either, but there are actual husbands out there who beat their wives for not having given them a son.
Can we at least acknowledge the irony in doing so?
Why are we still perpetuating this ridiculous notion in today’s modern society and age (especially in North America), if we were to state a clear preference for a boy or a girl early on?
The child would just feel like they already came out of the gate at a disadvantage and are not as loved as if they had different body parts.
Anyway, this ridiculous practice of whether parents should prefer a boy or a girl has been on my mind on and off, because people kept asking if I want a boy or a girl, and I couldn’t care less.
I wanted a healthy baby.
