Thursday 19 June 2008

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.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

You might as well make many of those points about migration - frontier societies often had a huge excess of men, and corresponding social issues. The current NZ situation seems to indicate a shortage of men in their 30s, because they spend longer on their OEs, although since so many countries report a shortage of men in that age group, perhaps they just don't answer surveys as much as other groups do. Yet we don't restrict male emigration. I don't know what we do with respect to gender and immigration.

There used to be sex (and other) selection issues with adoption back in the day when the supply exceeded demand. I think it was Anne Else who did a history of it, and pointed out that Maori boys were the ones chosen last. Based on that, I don't think you can necessarily assume a male preference in NZ society.

Stephanie said...

Trouble,
I agree with your point on immigration which is why I haven't come out against this development because I think its logical extension of being pro-choice. But having seen the negative effects of this sort of technology it does make me rather uncomfortable so I do think that makes promoting and achieving gender equality all the more important.

As for your point about New Zealand society, I think the jury is out. As you pointed out some communities may have a traditional bias towards girls (not sure haven't done any reading on it), but there are also communities that have a strong bias for boys.

Deborah said...

I've got a post on gender selective abortion brewing...

but in the meantime, if there is a gender preference in our society, it seems to be for girls. At least, that's the evidence from donor insemination, where more receiving parents say they would prefer a girl. However there could be something going on there with receiving fathers being more comfortable rearing a girl who was conceived using another man's sperm rather than a boy.

As it turns out, the gender ratio for donor sperm babies is about 40% female, 60% male. That's because insemination is usually timed for the day of ovulation, when the odds of conceiving a boy are higher, c/f the day before or the day after ovulation, when the odds of conceiving a girl are higher. I'm not quite sure why....

Stephanie said...

Deborah, I think that insemination gender bias is because of the body temprature thing.

Also gender basis can change. I forgot to add that these days in South Korea one daughter and one son in that order is gaining favour because the girl can look after the 'little prince.'

Julie said...

V interesting post t e-e, I often feel a little torn about this, especially in the last year. We did not find out the gender before Wriggly burst onto the scene, and thus throughout my pregnancy i ended up in many conversations with people about their own experiences and preferences. One person disclosed to me the depression they felt when they found out during the pregnancy that they were having a boy - they'd already had 3. Another person told me that they decided not to have another baby at all, because they didn't think they could cope with three girls, and they already had two. I don't think in either case (or in many of the others I could mention) the individuals involved were giving in to a societal bias for or against either gender, it was just what they wanted for their own family.

Not so for the gentleman at the petrol station who, when I told him I didn't know if I was having a boy or a girl, stated that everyone wanted to have a boy. I was so stunned I couldn't reply. Which gave him an opportunity to explain that his wife had "given him" a girl first, but their second child was a boy so that was ok. Zoiks!!

Anonymous said...

My understanding is that male sperm swim faster but don't live as long as female sperm so the closer to ovulation you are the more likely you are to conveive a boy. Of course being closer to ovulation makes it more likely to conceive full-stop so it makes sense to do AI around ovulation even if it does make a boy more likey.

Anonymous said...

Despite being vehemently pro-choice, this really bothers me. I don't believe we live in a society that equally values both sexes, and it seems to me that if it became common, being able to choose our childrens' sex might actually worsen that inequality in terms of the expectations we hold for each sex.

In all the discussion I've heard so far, I've been frustrated by the conflation of sex and gender. Parents would not be choosing the gender of their child, they would be choosing the sex.
While sex is biological, gender identity is largely environmental. Many studies have shown that it develops gradually, in line with the examples modelled by parents and peers throughout childhood and adolescence. Studies have also shown that those who identify as masculine have higher self esteem than those who identify as feminine (because of the values we attach to masculine vs. feminine traits), and that the sizable minority who identify as androgynous (that is, with both masculine and feminine traits), are less likely to be affected by depression, anxiety and other psychological and developmental problems throughout life, since they feel less pressure to conform to societal expectations.

As a society, we're just so obsessed with imposing arbitrary definitions of "maleness" and "femaleness" on one another. There's so much pressure to behave in a gender-appropriate fashion, according to those arbitrary definitions. How much worse will it be for children who were chosen specifically for their sex?

Environment is important here - feeling that one's internal gender doesn't conform to the expectations in the environment is one of the major negative influences on gender development. Choosing the sex of our children doesn't just mean choosing their biological traits, but all the attendant personality traits we attach to that sex. Do we really want to set up a situation in which children owe their parents a certain set of behaviours in return for being born?

The idea bothers me considerably, but since many (most?) members of society still subscribe to the masculine/feminine dichotomy as if it's immutable, I doubt it's going to be seen as problematic. I think it is.

Lucia Maria said...

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.

That digression is something I have been thinking and writing about for years. Unfortunately, a year's worth of my writings is lost due to Sir Humphreys disappearing into nothingness, but nonetheless, that is a huge area that can't be summarised in just one blog comment. I'm glad you brought it up, though!

Joshua said...

It's about time too. I'm actually a little jealous of New Zealanders right now.

People already have a lot of choice over whether to have kids, when to have kids and how many kids to have. So I don't see the difference if we allow them to choose what kind of kid to have.

The government has no business meddling in reproduction - that freedom (no, that right) should be left to the individual. To have the government mandate how you are to have children seems to close to eugenics to me, so I'll choose choice any day.

Lucia Maria said...

Here we go. Stage 1: Authentic Feminism in History