Burying the Lead
A research article published in this week's Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences has a finding on sex selection that has startled some in the media: American couples of Chinese, Korean, and Indian heritage are unusually likely to have a boy if they already have girls. This suggests that these families have a son-preference leading them to select the sex of their second or third child to ensure that it is male. While the American media have frequently reported on sex selection and shifting sex ratios abroad, this seems to be the first empirical evidence that the practice and its consequences do not simply happen "over there."
The authors do not speculate which sex selection techniques couples are using. But the article and its coverage play into a popular yet problematic framing: son-preference and sex selection are posed only as demographic problems where choosing too many boys means that there won't be enough girls to marry them when they grow up. This fixation with sex ratios obscures the human stories behind these selection technologies, where women are often treated brutally for not delivering boys and unwanted female children are sometimes cruelly neglected. For a more comprehensive perspective on the social conditions surrounding sex selection, check out this online journal written by Sunita Puri based upon her extensive research into the lives affected by sex selection.
