New York Times Frames Sex Selection As “Culturally Asian”
By Guest Contributor Lisa, originally published at Sociological Images
A recent New York Times article broke the story that a preference for boy children is leading to an unlikely preponderance of boy babies among Chinese-Americans and, to a lesser but still notable extent, Korean- and Indian-Americans.
Explaining the trend, Roberts writes:
In those families, if the first child was a girl, it was more likely that a second child would be a boy, according to recent studies of census data. If the first two children were girls, it was even more likely that a third child would be male.
Demographers say the statistical deviation among Asian-American families is significant, and they believe it reflects not only a preference for male children, but a growing tendency for these families to embrace sex-selection techniques, like in vitro fertilization and sperm sorting, or abortion.
The article explains the preference for boy children as “cultural,” as if Chinese, Indian, and Korean cultures, alone, expressed a desire to have at least one boy child. Since white and black Americans do not show an unlikely disproportion of boy children, the implication is that a preference for boys is not a cultural trait of the U.S.
Actually, it is: In 1997 a Gallup poll found that 35 percent of people preferred a boy and 23 percent preferred a girl (the remainder had no preference). In 2007 another Gallup poll found that 37 percent of people preferred a boy, while 28 percent preferred a girl.
I bring up this data not to trivialize the preference for boys that we see in the U.S. and around the world, but to call into question the easy assumption that the data presented by the New York Times represents something uniquely “Asian.”
Instead of emphasizing the difference between “them” and “us,” it might be interesting to try to think why, given our similarities, we only see such a striking disproportionality in some groups.
Some of the explanation for this might be cultural (e.g., it might be more socially acceptable to take measures to ensure a boy-child among some groups), but some might also be institutional. It occurred to me that only economically privileged groups have the money to take advantage of sex selection technology (or even abortion, as that can be costly too). Sex selection, the article explains, “cost[s] $15,000 or more.” Chinese, Korean, and Indian Asians are among the more economically privileged “minority” groups in the U.S.
Instead of demonizing racial/ethnic groups, and without suggesting that all groups have the same level of preference for boys, I propose a more interesting conversation: “What enables some groups to act on a preference for boys, and not others?”
By the way, on a discursive note, sex selection is called “family balancing” by some clinics. What an excellent example of re-framing!
Carmen Van Kerckhove is co-founder and president of
Rob Schmidt wrote:
You’ve summarized the data a bit loosely, Lisa. Here it is in more detail:
http://www.hi-ho.ne.jp/taku77/refer/valupoll.htm
When asked to say which gender they would prefer if they could have just one child, a majority of adults in half of the countries surveyed say that gender does not matter. Among respondents for whom gender does matter, the preference tends to be for a boy over a girl by a moderate margin.
This preference for a male child is particularly strong in Thailand and India, where boys are favored over girls by double-digit margins and the percentage of people saying they have no preference is quite low. In Thailand, 44% would want a boy, 27% a girl — yielding a 17% preference for boys, with only 29% expressing no preference. In India there is a 13 percentage point preference for a boy, 40% to 27%.
In the U.S. 42% of those surveyed have no preference, but among those who do, boys are favored by a 12 point margin, 35% to 23%.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/07/06/health/webmd/main3024744.shtml
People in the U.S. show a slight baby gender preference for having a boy instead of a girl if they were only able to have one child.
That’s according to a new Gallup poll on baby gender preferences.
The telephone poll, conducted in June, included about 1,000 U.S. adults. They were asked: “Suppose you could only have one child. Would you prefer that it be a boy or a girl?”
Here are the participants’ baby gender preferences:
* Boy: 37%
* Girl: 28%
* Either/doesn’t matter: 26%
* Not sure/no opinion: 9%
The “either/doesn’t matter” choice wasn’t mentioned as an option by the pollsters. But more than a quarter of the participants expressed that view anyway.
Posted 02 Jul 2009 at 9:07 am ¶
Abu Sinan wrote:
This is an interesting issue. I think they went back to places like China and India to see how it works there.
I have heard reports about China where it is thought that the lack of females might actually cause such unrest that it could destabilise the society there.
In India the abortion or killing of newborn females has caused such a shortage of females that there is a major issue in some areas of India of kidnapping women for marriage.
I think almost ALL societies prize males or females, I think the difference is the extent to which they are willing to go to assure they have a male.
In the Middle East boys are prized, but abortion is illegal and completely unacceptable culturally, as is infanticide.
Personally, as a father of two boys, we wanted a female both times!
Posted 02 Jul 2009 at 9:41 am ¶
Slush wrote:
I’m just plain confused. Preferences aside, I thought that there was a slight tendency for women to be born more often than men, for somewhat unclear reasons (or maybe only unclear to me). Aren’t women 51% of the world population or whatever?
But that chart in New York State shows every group having more than 100 boys born for every 100 girls. (Of third and fourth born children, but that should still apply the same way.)
Does that mean that in fact everyone is selecting for boys? And if only some have the economic ability to be choosy, then they must be choosing boys at a pretty high rate to skew the total statistic like that. It seems like a pretty sick expression of misogyny to me.
Posted 02 Jul 2009 at 10:11 am ¶
Shana wrote:
“Chinese, Korean, and Indian Asians are among the more economically privileged “minority” groups in the U.S.”
This concerns me. Let’s be careful to not perpetuate the myth that Asians are wealthy. $15, 000 is a lot of money, even for middle-class folks. Rather than compare Asians to African Americans, it makes more sense to compare Asians to whites. While it’s true that a few Asian-American groups have poverty rates comparable or below whites (Indians, Japanese), most Asian-Americans are much more likely to be poor than whites. 15.5% of Koreans are living in poverty, compared to 9.4% of whites (and 1/4 of blacks). The real question is, are any economically privilleged whites acting on their gender preference for boys? If not, why? Why are some Asian-Americans?
Data: http://www.asian-nation.org/demographics.shtml
Posted 02 Jul 2009 at 10:17 am ¶
atlasien wrote:
I’d say the answer to the question ““What enables some groups to act on a preference for boys, and not others?” is religion, inasmuch as religion can be separated from culture.
Korea and China are neighbor-cultures with some very similar attitudes when it comes to family and morality.
But about 75% of Korean-Americans are Christian, compared to 25% of Chinese-Americans. I think that explains a lot of the difference in the statistics above. As far as I can tell, most strains of Christianity put a strong emphasis on leaving certain reproductive matters “up to God” and sex selection usually falls into that category.
Posted 02 Jul 2009 at 10:30 am ¶
atlasien wrote:
@Slush:
In natural reproduction, there are slightly less boys born because the Y chromosome is more subject to defects that lead to the male embryo not to be viable. That’s why there are 51% women.
When it comes to the article, the high rate of boys versus girls can be skewed at the top end because of a variety of different factors. Groups like Chinese-Americans are incredibly spread out on the wealth scale (more wealthier, but also more in poverty).
On the wealthy end of the spectrum, families have very low birth rates because women are postponing childbirth for long periods of time. When they start having children, they’re more likely to need reproductive technology to overcome age-related infertility.
I haven’t been able to find a really big and reliable study yet but according to at least one study, some forms of IVF are more likely to produce boys than girls (link here):
That’s one scientific reason that has nothing to do with culture or religion. But I don’t think it’s the only factor. Expensive sex-selection methods (sperm sorting, PGD) mentioned in the article also come into play.
Posted 02 Jul 2009 at 10:43 am ¶
Zahra wrote:
OK, this makes me mad. I grew up in a very white community and saw the preference for boys warp the lives of many of my female friends.
In my hometown I saw dramatically skewed preferring of brothers over sisters in families of Italian, Ecuadorian, German, Polish, Irish and other descent (including a family from the South who (I later realized) had some black ancestry and was actively passing for white–blue contacts, hair relaxation & dyeing, breast reduction surgery, the works). I have a friend whose Chinese grandmother’s preferrence for grandsons has caused her a lot of pain, but this is a point of connection between our cultures, not a difference!
I am, as a white person, very very tired of sexism and misogyny being projected outward. This shit is real. We–all of us–need to clean up our own backyards. It is damaging and embittering for any women to grow up in an environment where they are not valued or held to a dramatically different double standard.
And I have to question the idea that sexual selection necessarily involves an expensive process. Most families I know–and some of them actively talked about doing it to have a son–just kept having kids until they had a boy or the bank ran out. I think the parents who planned to have 2 kids, but end up with two girls and their little brother, are much more common than you think.
This is, frankly, the norm where I grew up–the boy is usually the youngest one.
Posted 02 Jul 2009 at 11:11 am ¶
Logan wrote:
I know in Ancient China there was a preference for boys over girls (if you take a look at the language, the word for Grand-Daughter means Outside Grand Child, because the grand daughter would go to another family, and thus wouldn’t be a real member of the family; as explained to me by my Chinese tutor). I know that with the results of the former 1 child policy from the Communist party, which led to a strong preference for boys, has led to a severe gender gap as well in China, such that there’s right now a significant disproportion of men and women in the country, which is trying to be rectified before it becomes an issue which could bring the country down (there already is an underground market on women being kidnapped and sold as sex slaves, and prostitution, while not rampant, is rather prevalent at least in Beijing).
At least in my experiences, there is a cultural preference for boys over girls in China. I’m not sure if that completely explains the study or the trends, but it does exist.
What I find really interesting though, is that there is a large jump from the 70s to today in the ratio of boys to girls among Chinese families in America. If it were a more distinct cultural issue, it should be a reverse trend, with it being higher, and then lowering as time goes on (this is based on the assumption that there are fewer first generation immigrant families in the US due to immigration quotas, and that there were more in the 70s; I could very well be mistaken with this). I’m also interested in what the ratios would be depending on the generation of being in the US, as well as where inter-racial/multi-racial children would fall in these categories.
Posted 02 Jul 2009 at 11:17 am ¶
K wrote:
@atlasien:
Actually, it’s the other way around. There are slightly more boys born each year than girls, somewhere along the lines of 105-107 boys born for every 100 girls.
More boys, however, die in their first year than girls.
Posted 02 Jul 2009 at 11:17 am ¶
Iggles wrote:
I think sex selection is disgusting. You have what you have. It’s sickening how some couples would abort babies if it’s a girl. There is no need for “family balancing”. Your child is your child, whether it is female or male.
Posted 02 Jul 2009 at 11:18 am ¶
atlasien wrote:
@K: Oops… my memory was wrong on that, I should have researched it first.
Posted 02 Jul 2009 at 11:26 am ¶
WestIndianArchie wrote:
“It occurred to me that only economically privileged groups have the money to take advantage of sex selection technology ”
Infanticide in China is pretty well discussed. So even if you can’t afford ultra sounds and abortion clinics…
http://www.gendercide.org/case_infanticide.html
Posted 02 Jul 2009 at 1:26 pm ¶
atlasien wrote:
I don’t think infanticide in China is appropriate to discuss here, unless it’s about how infanticide in China is used to fuel racist fear and hatred of Chinese-Americans. There’s plenty of that, in fact it’s really prominent in the Christian end of the Chinese adoption community.
This article is about Chinese-Americans… not policies of the Chinese government and how they affect Chinese living in China.
Many recent Chinese-Americans emigrated to America in the first place to escape the one-child policy. So that makes it even more inappropriate to blame Chinese-Americans for infanticide.
Posted 02 Jul 2009 at 1:45 pm ¶
Aishtamid wrote:
@Abu Sinan – Gender imbalance has become a problem in China, which has among if not the most lopsided gender ratio in the world. There are actually a few villages today that have no young women, which definitely causes unrest among young men.
Posted 02 Jul 2009 at 2:45 pm ¶
Anonymous wrote:
As a South Asian I can say there is a very strong difference in the way girls and boys are raised and treated. Although my parents did not say such things, members of the community would often tell me that a first child should be a boy. Even girls would tell me this.
I went to the wedding of a Harvard/Yale graduate bride and the Hindu priest gave a lecture on the sadness of the death of the family’s name. The bride was one of four sisters)!!
Up until a few years ago, if you were a woman entering India, customs would have a special line for the name of your husband, and if unmarried, your father. It is believed that daughters are burdens because they need to be protected and then married off suitably. I am a middle-aged woman, and Indian men say” what do you know, you’re girl..”. or that someone needs my father’s permission to talk to me (say about business).
The men and women don’t even socialize in the same rooms at diner parties. These people have been in this country for 40 years and are economically and professionally successful but are they ignorant.
Women are supposed to hold reigns of power privately, behind closed doors. For example, by nagging or making purchasing decisions. It is sad.Many of those born here continue the tradition. They get arranged marriages and play out the same gender roles as their parents. Yuck.
Maybe it is better if parents who would resent a girl do’t have one. I know some very angry girls.
Posted 02 Jul 2009 at 3:41 pm ¶
Pickly wrote:
@ all the male to female ratio posts:
Females also tendo t have longer life expectancies than males (from what I’ve heard), and I think i remember also hearing that this difference results in more females (since more males are born slightly, but females live longer.)
As for the article in general, in addition to the other points raised, might there be social pressures that would make one group more likely to actually use technology to pick genders compared ot another one (Even if the particular people involved had the same desires for a particular gender.)?
Posted 02 Jul 2009 at 3:45 pm ¶
Sobia wrote:
@ Anonymous #15:
“The men and women don’t even socialize in the same rooms at diner parties. These people have been in this country for 40 years and are economically and professionally successful but are they ignorant.
Women are supposed to hold reigns of power privately, behind closed doors. For example, by nagging or making purchasing decisions. It is sad.Many of those born here continue the tradition. They get arranged marriages and play out the same gender roles as their parents. Yuck.
Maybe it is better if parents who would resent a girl do’t have one. I know some very angry girls.”
As a fellow South Asian I find these comments a little offensive.
I know in South Asian cultures overall boys are prized over girls. That is not something I deny. However, first, this is not unanimous. I know people who have daughters only and, yes although they do stress out over issues of dowry that the system, thanks to capitalism and materialism (not South Asian culture itself), has made more and more difficult and expensive, they do not bemoan their female children. They love them and respect them whole heartedly as they would a son/sons.
Additionally, your comment about men and women splitting off at gatherings – well that happens with my White, non-South Asian, friends gathering as well. Should I assume that to mean they also prefer male children over female children? I think not. I’ve seen this happening at South Asian parties all the time but have never thought of it as an indication of how misogynistic our culture is. There are other legitimate examples, but I’m sorry, this is not one of them.
Posted 02 Jul 2009 at 4:07 pm ¶
Kaonashi wrote:
Maybe it is better if parents who would resent a girl do’t have one. I know some very angry girls
I have to agree. There’s too many unwanted and discarded children in the world already (as well as people having more children simply because they have to have that elusive boy or girl). If someone wants to pick the sex of their child, it’s none of my business.
Then again, if such a practice was commonplace 30+ years ago, more than likely I wouldn’t be here. My mom wanted a boy; instead she ended up with 3 girls (with me being the youngest).
What’s really insulting is how the NYT racialized this. Asians are not the only people with gender preferences BY FAR.
Posted 02 Jul 2009 at 4:23 pm ¶
GueraLola wrote:
I know of cases were people who were not Asian wanting boys over girls. I recalling reading in school in Athens they would leave infant girls at the outskirts. Once walking down the street I overheard a women talking how having a grandson was a blessing, while having a granddaughter was more trouble.
@Zahra I feel the same way too. Friend grandmother preferred boys over boys which left her daughters very angry towards her.
Posted 02 Jul 2009 at 6:59 pm ¶
KatinPhilly wrote:
Abu Sinan – abortion is in fact legal in many Arab countries, although severly restricted in most cases (with the exception of Tunisia). And this doesn’t prevent women from getting often very unsafe, unsanitary abortions, or finding ingenious ways around those restrictions. It is a huge public health problem.
And yes, I call bullshit that preference for boys is something only found in “other” cultures. I have seen plenty of it even among my feminist friends and colleagues.
Posted 02 Jul 2009 at 10:41 pm ¶
TN wrote:
15. Anonymous wrote:
Maybe it is better if parents who would resent a girl do’t have one. I know some very angry girls.
hmmm angry girls… sounds like me and my two younger sisters… my mother is now stuck with her one and only son who is unemployed, doesn’t help with housework or even talk to her… she waits on him hand and foot because he’s a male while all us girls have moved out of home because she was basically driving us three girls mental with her demands of our virginity/purity, marriage, religious faith etc.
Posted 02 Jul 2009 at 11:23 pm ¶
karak wrote:
I’d say religious notions of morality play a big part– many white and black Americans are American Protestant Christians in either culture, belief, or both, and there are strong taboos against interfering in birth or “God’s Will” that aren’t reflected in a lot of the faiths practiced in East Asia and India.
In most cultures, boys are used to pass on a name or a bloodline. Most white/black Americans have been in the US for a while and have alternate male bloodlines. “I have all girls, but my brother’s sons will be Martins and the family name lives on!” Since many immigrants have to leave behind their families, they might be invested in making sure they have a male heir to preserve their bloodline and culture.
That was actually a big concern of my ex-boyfriend’s Vietnamese family. They wanted him to have a boy so that the family name would exist in the US. Generalizing that experience to all Asians, however, might be a little reaching.
Posted 02 Jul 2009 at 11:37 pm ¶
Joseph wrote:
For me the question here is, why focus on the East in the first place? If, as many have noted, a cultural preference for male children is a widespread impulse, then why project it only on to eastern cultures? I am increasingly suspicious of polling data that is derived from attention to only one racial or ethnic population (as in the demonization of African Americans following Prop 8). I think we always have to ask: what is gained by controlling for race/ethnicity?
By framing sex selection as “culturally Asian” NYT does two things 1) passively promotes the idea that Western cultures = “Civilization” when contrasted with Eastern backwardness and 2) ignores similar phenomena in the West–however unconsciously–safeguarding more local expressions of misogyny.
@KatinPhilly
“I call bullshit that preference for boys is something only found in “other” cultures. I have seen plenty of it even among my feminist friends and colleagues.”
Cosign on this. I perceive a general reticence to discuss the bioethics of reproductive technologies in the West. This is understandable, given the relentless attack on reproductive freedoms women endure… but it prevents a real discussion about the fact that the strong preference for biological children that underlies reproductive technologies like IVF often results in male children. So, while manipulating the particulars of the birthing process via IVF is configured as a feminist gesture–it is also a passive (and sometimes intentional) exercise in sex selection. If exercising reproductive choice to the fullest extent that science and personal finances allow often defaults to boys, then why aren’t we discussing that instead of relying on centuries old prejudices against eastern cultures?
I want to be clear that I am not intending this comment as a judgment of IVF or the women who employ it–some of whom are good friends of mine. But I think we need to make the point that the preference for male children cannot be discussed only in terms of the”other”.
Posted 03 Jul 2009 at 12:10 pm ¶
Mike wrote:
I wrote a recent blog on this issue. In part, I quoted from a section titled “Son Preference” in the excellent, useful and very readable book by Joni Seager titled “The Penguin Atlas of Women in the World.” It shows that in China, the number of girls born per 100 boys was 94 in 1970, 88 in 1990, and 84 in 2005. In South Korea, the numbers were 93 in 1983, 87 in 1994, and 91 in 1999.
The “missing girls” (i.e., the discrepancy between the number of girls and women in the population and the number that would be expected if there were no discrimination) are 30 million in China; 23 million in India; 3.1 million in Pakistan; 1.6 million in Bangalesh; 600,000 in Egypt; 600,000 in Turkey; 200,000 in Nepal; and 40 million in the rest of the world.
Moreover, although the lowering of birth rates in many parts of the world is to be commended, smaller families may mean that “the pressure to have sons accelerates” and that “increasing affluence magnifies perceptions of the greater worth of boys.”
Lisa, I thought this sentence in the article you linked to was very interesting: “Men were more likely than women to prefer boys, but women didn’t show a similar preference for girls.” Just another indication that when overwhelmingly strong patriarchal systems exist in a country, there is more pressure for a “preference” for boys to actually result in more boys.
Posted 03 Jul 2009 at 4:02 pm ¶
Minotaar wrote:
““Chinese, Korean, and Indian Asians are among the more economically privileged “minority” groups in the U.S.”
I find this sentence so despicable. Asians as a whole had greater median net worth than whites. However, the structure of the sentence suggests that Asians still are less privileged than whites. Why is the author unable to write sentences that are true?
Posted 03 Jul 2009 at 6:31 pm ¶
Joy wrote:
@Karak
On my mom’s side the family name will not continue (except from some more distant relatives) and on my dad’s side only my brother will carry on the family name. My (4) girl cousins and I joke that one of us will marry an Anderson to take the pressure off my brother. 
Even Americans still have concern over bloodlines. The “alternate” isn’t always there.
Many of my friends joke that we want a boy because girls are more trouble, but the minute a friend has a baby, no matter what it is, that baby becomes the most important person…ever.
Is this article trying to say that’s not a universal phenomenon? I find that hard to believe.
Posted 05 Jul 2009 at 9:32 pm ¶
Anonymous wrote:
Chinese prefer boys because there is an old saying that if there is no boy, when the father pass away, there will be no son to’send’ him to heaven. The other reason is if there is no boy, the family’s first name will be dis-continued in the family tree. So most Chinese would prefer boys but this kind of things are decided by God.
My first kid was a daughter and my wife was hoping for a second girl but it turns out a boy! And one more thing, there is also a trivia where if you have a boy and a girl, the Chinese character of the son combined with the daughter will form ‘good’ word in Chinese. So for Chinese, having one boy and one girl is ‘good’. Chinese refer the boy as the dragon and the daughter a phoenix.
Posted 11 Jul 2009 at 12:52 am ¶