Cross-post: baby it's you

Cross-posted at the ex-expat.

In principle I should be for parents being able to select the gender of their baby at the pre-implantation stage of IVF programmes on the basis that I am firmly of the pro-choice camp. Moreover the selection is being done at a point where the embryo is at the very early stages of development so it should make me feel far more comfortable about it than a gendered abortion. The example used in the Herald of a family that already had three boys and was desperately after a girl in principle is fine example of people exercising their individual choice and after all, one extra girl to our society wouldn't make a difference. But what if everyone wanted girls, or for that matter a boys? Having spent a number of years in places where gendered abortions do take place this development does bring up an interesting questions of what happens when individual choices clash with societal ones.

Let us look at China and Korea. Sons are highly valued in these countries because not only are sons traditionally the ones that support their parents in their old age, but also because the parents also get get a daughter-in-law to cook and clean for them after their sons get married. Which is all fine in theory except someone needs to have a daughter in order for someone else to have a daughter-in-law. Except in these countries people usually have only one child whether government mandated (China) or economically in the case of South Korea, thus onus then goes on couples to produce a son.

And so they have. I taught at a boys' school and it was interesting that most of my students were either the eldest and only boy or had an older sibling or younger brother, very rarely did they have any younger sisters. And my impressions gives way to statistics. Women around the world usually give birth to 105 or 106 boys for every 100 girls. Slightly more boys are born because more of them die in childhood and as young men through disease and doing silly things (take a look at the Darwin awards and notice how few women grace the halls of fame). But according to China's latest census, there were 117 boys born for every 100 girls in 2000, up from 114 in 1990. During the 1990s South Korea's proportion was 117 boys per 100 girls the rate has since declined reflecting the country's rapid economic transformation which has made people less economically dependent on the traditional patriarchal family unit. However the effects of the gendered generation are likely to have profound effects on Korean, and for that matter Asian, society for many years to come.

Because of the shortage of women, Korea and to a lesser extent China, has taken to importing brides from poorer countries because there are not enough women to go around. In Korea at least, the problem is most acute in rural areas where what few the women those areas are drawn into the city on the promise of a far better lifestyle than a farmer's wife can offer. Thus Korean men are flying to Vietnam, the Philippines, and Uzbekistan to find wives. It isn't always happy endings, spousal abuse and culture shock often result in these women leaving their husbands not long after the marriage.

Aside from the more odious aspects of human trafficking that have resulted from gendered abortion there are security implications as well. Large numbers of men with little job prospects and thus little chance of forming a family could be disposed to turn to violence, whether individually or more problematically organized, will have effects on the stability of a nation's society.

But what effect of an absence of men? Given that that sex selection in favour of baby girls appears to be rare or non-existent, we don't actually know the answer. I'm sure on the surface most heterosexual men would love to live in a society where they had their choice of women, though I'm not sure that they would necessarily like the idea of their sons not having the opportunity to engage in the childhood adventures like they did with their childhood boy friends because so few are born nor would they seek to deny that opportunity for their daughters either.

And there in lies the rub.

What effect do all those individual choices have upon on us both individually and as a society?All things being equal, the sum of the individual choices will not alter the gender make-up of our society. Thus the problem I have with this development isn't necessarily that parents will be making a choice as to the gender of their baby, but they will be doing so in a society which values one gender over another. Perhaps an avenue that pro-life advocates may want to mull over when talking about abortion, as aside from contraception having a society in which pregnancy and parenthood is valued and supported would likely encourage more women to choose the baby option than banning the practice altogether. But I am quickly digressing from my point.

Has New Zealand reached the point where both genders are valued equally? I'm not sure. However the likely prohibitive costs involved in the procedure (unless it is government-funded) mean that few New Zealanders will actually be able to exercise it.