Oh, No: It's a Girl!

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A change of pace. Interesting?

http://slate.msn.com/id/2089142/

And an update by the author:

 

What a travesty! I'm hoping for a dozen kids, and hopefully at least half of 'em will be girls. Not that it makes a great pick-up line: "Hey, baby, I want you to be the mother of my twelve daughters."

 

Only if you're a mormon, dude.

 

Better than that - I'm Presbyterian. I think the Beach Boys said it best:

The Meth'dist girls are hip, I really dig those robes they wear,
And the Lutheran girls, with the way they talk, they surely sound so doctrinaire,
Those Pentecostal daughters get their legalism right,
And the Baptist girls, with the way they dunk, they guarantee you'll see the light,
But I wish they all could be Presbyterian girls...

 

Yikes. I don't know whether to laugh or sucker punch ya.

That's funny. yada yada

Back on - this isn't all that surprising internationally, but here in the states it would surprise me. Cultures like China and especially certain areas of the middle east favor sons above all else. Some fathers will impregnate as many women as they have to to get a son. Some even kill the daughters at birth to avoid the "dishonor." Sick.

 

How dumb. I'm an only child and a girl, and both my parents were happy that I turned out that way. As Mark Twain said, "There are three types of lies: lies, damn lies and statistics."

On what planet did kids chant in the schoolyard "girls are good but boys are better"? Maybe in China. Or in 1902. I sure never heard such garbage.

 

Neriana, you must be smoking something -- such chants are on every playground in the world, with the genders switching places depending on the gender of the chanters.

I love my three daughters -- I sincerely hope that my possible / probable divorce didn't have anything to do with them, sub-consciously!

 

I believe that the, "lies, damn lies, statistics" isn't actually a Twain quote, though he often gets the credit. I think Twain used it and attributed the quote to Benjamin Disraeli, or so I've heard.

As far as the rest of it, I'd point out that the fact that a particular couple of parents had a female child and didn't get divorced in no way invalidates the study. Also, I can't believe that you never grew up knowing there is a 'battle of the sexes.' Or that girls/boys had cooties. Or however that battle was expressed. I don't think the school yard chant has to be taken literally - but I think it's metaphorically true.

Sure, statistics can be misleading. However, this was an apparent broad study of 3 million people. The facts are what the facts are. It's the interpretation of those facts that is potentially explosive. They are interesting to me in that there is a consistent apparent preference across cultural lines but that preference has large statistical differences. (4% vs 90% on the # of couples that would have a 4th child for example in US v China). Why? Increased earning power of females in the US? However, does the 'sticky' or 'glass' ceiling in the US might this explain a continuing preference in the US? Or...

Initially, you might think to discount a 5% difference. I thought, for example, that maybe there are just slightly more girls than boys but the ratio of female/male between ages 15-64 in the US is 1:1. And, the preference in the US, while smaller than elsewhere, is supported by the preference in the rest of the world.

The 'lies, damn lies' quote is a neat quote. But all too often it is used to simply ignore unpleasant truths.

 

What the "facts" prove is that there is an inherent biased against women in most cultures. That this prejudice is so wide spread is certainly alarming. I agree with most feminists that women are viewed as second class citizens - even here in the West where people are "supposed" to know better - and this article is one more step in proving that feminist thinkers are not all that wrong.

There is little to defend in such an article that has such a cheesy premise. Nevertheless, I have two daughters (one is only six weeks) whom I wouldn't trade for anything in the world. But this is a liberal, which means an enlightened, household. Maybe old Newt and Jessie Helms might not agree. So much for "family" values.

This IS Twian. Note: He makes no gender preference:

"The best minds will tell you that when a man has begotten a child he is morally bound to tenderly care for it, protect it from hunger, shield it from disease, clothe it, feed it, bear with its waywardness, lay no hand upon it save in kindness and for its own good, and never in any case inflict upon it a wanton cruelty."

You would think some would learn from that.

Twain again, on the "battle of the sexes:"

After all these years, I see that I was mistaken about Eve in the beginning; it is better to live outside the Garden with her than inside it without her....I should be sorry to have that voice fall silent and pass out of my life.
- "Adam's Diary"

[ October 15, 2003, 01:10: Message edited by: Chandos the Red ]

 

I think people may be interpreting, "People are less likely to get a divorce if they've a boy child than a girl child" and "it appears there is a preference for boy children" with "this is a good thing, rah rah boys."

I think the initial article say the preference appears real. Then it says, why? It doesn't arrive at a conclusion. It says things like: maybe boys are perceived as better economic providers, maybe people place stock in carrying on the family name, maybe they're more fun, maybe, maybe, maybe. No conclusion.

The second, follow up article says: maybe there is no preference for boys? Maybe instead boys are perceived as more dependent on wealth and parents stick together because boys are, in essence, perceived as more vulnerable to a divorce.

I really don't think this is just some nut case who is prejudiced. BTW, in the second article, he responds to those who asked him about his own preferences by saying he's quite happy with his daughter thanks for asking and he'd always wanted a daughter.

I really don't think it has to be a partisan issue.

[ October 15, 2003, 15:05: Message edited by: Laches ]

 

OMFG! EJECT, EJECT, EJECT!

Yeah. There's a whole slew of countries where fathers (gosh, and mothers too) bail out when it's a girl. Anthropology isn't all that vague on this topic, anytime they start looking at the base of cliffs in the Old World.

For this reason (and others that are so close as to be insignificant), I [-peep-] love it when I hear or see girls that have immigrated to America, and start to question (or reject) many of the aspects of their childhood training. Some call it "brain-washing", but that term usually makes baby Jesus cry and politicians are reluctant to use it. Either way, it takes a strong chick to do it, and it's fairly sexy in terms of attractiveness.

It's been so long, I forget. Is it Genesis or Exodus that had the "gang rape" thing in it?

 

Gang rape?!? No gang rape in the Bible. Maybe you're referring to the seduction of Jacob's daughter Dinah in Genesis 34; except in that instance, the seductor tried to marry his victim. The only "gang" element is that Dinah's thuggish brothers murdered her fiance and all his cronies. Lest you think this was considered legitimate payback, check out the generational penalty meted out in Genesis 49.

And what does that have to do with divorce being more likely in a family with girls instead of boys? Are you suggesting that gang rape (or any kind of rape) is somehow more acceptable in a patriarchial society - or that it has ever been considered more acceptable by ANY society? You don't need to be a feminist to be against rape - it's the sexist, patriarchal, ultra-chivalrous types who are most dead-set (literally) against it.

 

Genesis, Chapter 19, 8.

The pastor that tried to justify this to me got kicked between the legs. I would have done more to him but the police arrived...

 

I don't have time to contribute to this topic at this point, but I thought I'd inject a quick note on the "Biblical gang rape" -- there was a near miss in Genesis when Lot offered his virgin daughters to a crowd of ugly villains at his doors. It's in the 19th chapter, I believe.

 

Oh, I'm dumb - you're right, Shura, there's that ugly episode in Genesis 19. (There's a similar episode in Judges 19-20, but I'm quite sure that's the end of it.) I don't know why the pastor would try to justify it, since the Bible condemns it pret' clearly. The would-be perpetrators get executed (directly by God in Genesis 19, by their neighbors in Judges 20), and Lot's heartless disregard leads directly to the also-ugly episode at the end of Genesis 19, when his daughters conspire to commit incest with their louse of a father. Ick, ick, ick.

Interesting sidenote: a chapter earlier Abraham had extracted a promise that if ten righteous people could be found in Sodom, then the city would be spared - coincidentally, there were ten people in Lot's family. Given that the city does indeed get destroyed, implying that God Himself didn't think Lot passed the "righteousness test" with this horrid incident, I don't know why a pastor would want to play devil's advocate and support Lot.

Say what you will about the Bible, but it ain't no hagiography - if the people were scum, they're recorded as scum.

That said, this is COMPLETELY off-topic, unless someone wants to link this with the boy-girl divorce dichotomy. Sorry, Laches!

 

Couples having a girl child first and then trying again for a boy actually makes sense when you consider that it is still pretty common for a woman to take a man's name when they marry.

It doesn't mean that the couple is going to love a boy child any more than a girl child it just means that the last name is going to continue down the line.

 

Laches - This is an abraisve issue mostly because of the way in which women are viewed in some cultures. The figures from places in the East are disturbing. When I was in college I spent a lot of time in the literature program arguing with feminist/Marxist/multiculturalists. On the one hand they complained of the woman's plight in so called "Eurocentric cultures," while on the other, promoting other cultures that were far worse and more blatant in their view and treatment of women.

They were apologists for the kind of cultures that most on both sides of our political spectrum would find appalling. While the idea of multiculturalsim is deserving, I felt that an accurate rendering of a culture from all its social/reform aspects should be applied in a serious learning environment; and that if a critical eye should be applied to Westren societies, the same critical standards should in turn be applied to Eastern cultures as well. I was certain that there were critical, serious writers in other cultures who were seeking reform (just as there are in the West) and that they had been passed over in favor of works that "promoted" what was best of those cultures, coupled with the constant theme of oppression by the West.

For me, it went beyond just a matter of fairness, but that much of the important thematic material of contemporary literature is of a progressive/reformist nature. Needless to say, they did not agree.

On our topic, if I am reading the facts correctly, there is still an inherent bias against women in most cultures. Some appear worse than others. I included the Twian quote for obvious reasons and as an example of one American writer's approach to every parent's responsibility, regardless of the child's gender.

 

I hate those suckers, who are biased against women. The males just want us to be slaves.

Pfeh.

As for the Bible, that's the only book I'd burn if I had the chance.

My views on Christianity are like Shura's, although I haven't been kicking priests in their private areas.

Yes, I am a hard-core feminist and will not budge on that.

 

Y'know, if I didn't think it would get closed down as fast as the "One Word Story," I really would start an "Eze-Shura Wedding" thread over in CS...

 

Actually, I don't think about 13-14 year old girls in that way, Rallymama, although your concern and humor is much appreciated.

@Eze: No offense meant!

Alright, I shall say no more on this topic. I'm done.