This article left me feeling how great it is to live in America where I do not have to chose between a girl or boy when pregnant. I have been aware of the one child policy of China and understand that it is necessary due to the resources that are available but the underlying message is, "You must chose to have a boy" since all inheritance goes to the son.--hence the starting of female infanticide. Now many countries in Asia and India are facing a shortage of women to marry and are resorting to importing new women from other countries as potential wives. I was glad to read about the PNDT Act which outlaws Doctors by using ultra-sound to abort a female foetus, creating genocide. The culture and social norms of India and Asia places such a strain on women to produce a boy heir, even though men determine the sex of the child. I do agree with the article about materialism and the desire to have what you want which drives home the desire to pick a boy, since per the article girls are deemed expendable and a hassle. I wonder if the U.S. was a one child society, would we do the same thing?
I had no idea about the China and India unwants of a girl. It is funny how in some countries men do not want a girl, even though they are the ones that determine the sex of the child. This article brought to my attention about the relax of America in the pregnancy stage when determining the sex of the fetus.
I find the one child policy really interesting to read about. I remember a few years ago Time did a piece on this (http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1912861,00.html). This article talked about the shortages in workers as well as future problems about a shortage of children to take care of elderly problems. There were rumors a few years ago that this policy was going to come to an end but according to the Time article the government said they were at least ten years from removing this policy.
The article “But What If it’s a Girl” presented some other really interesting information. They talked about how technology is being used to help parents plan on only having boys. While, the doctors are not supposed to tell the parents the sex of the baby they have been caught doing just that. This has caused a decline in the number of girls being born each year. People often place such a high value on having boys to carry on the family name; however, I think it is interesting that if there are not enough girls to marry the boys they can end up having a son who never marries and has children (which would still end the family line).
I thought this article was very interesting. While I was aware of some infanticide, I had no idea the extent of it. The statistics given were shocking because it showed a definitive downward trend on the ratio of girls to boys.
The repercussions suggested by the author in the long run were also very surprising. He speculates that not having enough women will result in an excess of single men because there are not enough women for them. The potential result of this is an increased lawlessness and perhaps even increased rape and violence toward women.
Although small, one of the most interesting things in the article is the fact that it is illegal in India to tell a woman if her baby is going to be a boy or a girl
I think it's pretty lame how girl are unwanted in the family. if they keep killing all the girls, then who is going to give birth to boys?. I know it's their culture and all that, but don't they see that women can also operate like a man. If i understand well most of them in those countries are killers in liberty. Now with the availability of ultra sound they manage to kill the baby quicker. so that means before the ultra sound became famous they were killing new born babies voluntarily, I don't understand how a women can through pregnancy dealing with all that she has to deal with, and then kill her new born baby. to me they are pretty courageous.
Being a girl, I find it very hurtful that girls are unwanted in other countries. What confuses me is if girls are unwanted then how will boys be brought into this world. I do not believe in abortion and find it wrong to find out the sex of a child and if its a girl abort it. Women do so much beneficial things for society. I understand this is their culture and their norms, but I just don't agree with it. It has to be extremely hard for the women, since they are pressured into having boys. The hard part is that you can not control what the sex of the child will be. I am so thankful I live in America and girls are wanted and raised by their own families.
While painful to read such horrific murder to unwanted girls, I too find myself thankful to live in a country where sex of the fetus is not as important. Yes, boys will carry on the family name and maintain family inheritance in some countries, girls could so as well if the culture and social attitudes changed to an acceptable practice. While there is so much stigma attached to having girls, I agree with the author that such shortages will cause an increase in rape and/or crime. If they continue to kill off unwanted females, then who will be left to have the "sons"? I certainly do not see any man bearing a uterus to have a child (although not possible in most biologic aspects)! There are so many people throughout the world who are unable to have children of their own......put the child up for adoption. Yes, I know that this will all stem down to either Pro Choice or Pro Life but do not murder a harmless gentle fetus who has no control over their chromosomes. If having a son is so important within your technological savy country, why not extract DNA and chromosomes and create your own "son" to prevent an unwanted girl? I am completely disgusted with their acts based on personal experience however it is their culture, which in my opinion, needs to be changed.
I think we can all agree that we are blessed to live in a country where it doesn't matter if someone has a boy or a girl. It was horrible to read about women in some cultures getting abortion because its a girl. Although they want to carry on the family name, there has to be women for the men to marry. I found the article very interesting because I never thought about the shortage of women. The author brought up an interesting point that without women, the men would result in violence. Also, without women, their sons could not marry and the family line would stop. Overall, I enjoyed the article.
After reading this article, I have realized how lucky I am and America is as a country. I would be disgusted if America had the norms that these other countries have about the sex of babies. No one woman can control whether she is having a boy or a girl, and it is not fair, (in my opinion) to just abort the baby if it's not a boy. I understand the norm is to have the boy carry on the family name, but if girls are not being born, these future women will not be able to produce more boys for this to happen. This seems pretty stupid to me and ridiculous to abort a baby based off of its' gender.
Although I found the article to be very interesting, I was not ready for how shocking the statistics really are. The number of girls being born each year in Asia is dwindling significantly as each year passes. Furthermore, it saddens me that there are many girls who never got the chance to live just because their parents wanted a boy. That girl could have been a doctor, or a politician, or someone who would have contributed to society. But since they were not allowed to be born, we will never know how great they could have been. However, growing up as an American citizen I realize that I may be being naive to the culture in Asia in which males and females are not considered to be equal. In their culture, it probably makes sense to abort the baby they don't want, while here in America it can be seen as cruel.
As an American, this type of situation is something I don't have to deal with. We accept girls and boys in our families with no cultural preference for either. I think it's common for people to want to have a son and daughter now. The saddest part about this article is that rather than males becoming less preferred as the nations develops, the female to male ratio has grown smaller as the years have gone by. With such an easy-going abortion policy, there is no hesitation for the parents to think about the life they are ending. To them, it's not as drastic of a decision because they think about what they don't want to happen, while we think about aborting a fetus as what that person could be in life.
Exactly like everyone else who read and commented this article by all means broke my heart, and I am thankful to live in a culture where gender differences, even discrepancies, can be celebrated. My main response, other than disgust and fear is several questions: Do the societies ridding themselves of a female population have any foresight to the survival of their nation, as well as the family name they desire their beloved sons to pass on, without females? Have males stood up and demanded women be allowed to live yet so they can freely marry or sustain relationships? Will that/can that ever happen? Can we expect a rise in incest, rape, and homosexuality simply due to a lack of sexual partners?
It is hard for me to imagine a situation like this! In America, it's hard to think people would do this to females. I don't understand why they still have not realized the worth of females. It also shocked me how harsh the men become when there is a shortage of women. I never would have thought about other effects of female infanticide.
The female infanticide issue in these countries is so alarming! How terrifying it must be to be a female, and to be ashamed of giving birth to a baby girl when the MALE IS THE ONE WHO CHOOSES THE SEX! The girl/boy ratio is already at a ridiculous rate, but what are they going to do when it gets much worse? Reverse their practice and start aborting males to even it out? Practice polygyny? I feel very sorry for the women over there who have so much pressure on them, and hope that they start seriously changing their practices in those countries. This is just another reason why I am so thankful to be an American, and to get to experience they great amount of freedom that we have!
I think this is just sad that people over in India would abort a child just because it is a girl. I feel bad for this country due to the lack of heritage or new culture they are trying to implement by killing baby girls. I just see a downfall on this new "fad" they are doing by the lack of increasing rate of population. Not many children will be born and the birth rates will soon go down. In the end, I feel that this culture and country needs to stop this madness and accept baby girls.
This article is extremely disturbing. It is awful to think that girls are so unwanted they are aborted. While I understand that boys are the ones that carry on family names and property, girls should not be such a problem where they are one hundred percent unwanted. Women should be more important due to the fact that they are the only ones that can produce a son. It is great that acts are being created to prevent this from happening, but they must be enforced in order to receive a positive outcome. I just hope they can continue to try and stop this horrific epidemic and change the way women are viewed.
It is unbelievable that this culture hates female children so much. I can not believe that girls are such an inconvience to parents, considering women are the ones who produce more children. Their countries would be in total chaos without women to reproduce. I know that even in America, women used to be lower on the totum pole than men but women were never seen as a disappointment just for being born females. It is hard to understand a culture like this because there are so many successful and important women in our culture.
Its kinda hard to believe that practices like this exist. I do this to my child. Someone or many people need to step up and change things. They cant continue doing this. It will ultimately end up hurting them when they have a harder time trying to have kids and there aren't any women around to have them. And at that point, there could possibly be more rapes being committed.
What we really caught my attention with this article were the seeming contradictions set forth by those societies. Governments enforce the one-child rule and society follows a patriarchal inheritance system and they don't understand why people are killing off their daughters. Maybe if society didn't make males so much more valuable than females in a social sense (inheritance, names, profession) than women could be seen as equals. But until they give women more individual freedom and agency, they won't be able to see the good she can contribute. It's amazing to me how easily a woman's contributions like child-bearing and rearing go unnoticed as necessary as they are for survival. One line I found particularly interesting was when the author states, "Pressured by the government to keep their families small, and by society to produce boys, Indian women turn to modern technology to ensure that they got their treasured boys." The government tells women they need small families and society tells them they needs boys so naturally then people feel they cannot waste valuable family slots with girls. It seems something as engrained as male superiority will take years for a reestablishment of gender equilibrium, if it's possible at all.
Many people are mentioning how much some other cultures “hate” women, when I really it seems like a male child is seen as more valuable or useful. The statistics really stuck out in my mind as surprising because I thought the ration of girls to boys would stay right around equal. This shows that if a country has a high enough importance on a single gender, they will do what they can to achieve their goal. The punishments handed out by governments for these families with too many children/of one gender, seem to be immoral, and against some kind of human law of rights.
As Americans who debate over the issue of abortion, we could really ask ourselves, if it's wrong to abort a child because it's a girl, what makes it okay to abort a child because it's a child? But I think the main issue is the general view of girls in India as, in a sense, less valuable than boys. In America, we also talk about women having a disadvantage to men in society. To what extent would view of girl babies need to be changed in order to cease these practices?
This article left me feeling how great it is to live in America where I do not have to chose between a girl or boy when pregnant. I have been aware of the one child policy of China and understand that it is necessary due to the resources that are available but the underlying message is, "You must chose to have a boy" since all inheritance goes to the son.--hence the starting of female infanticide. Now many countries in Asia and India are facing a shortage of women to marry and are resorting to importing new women from other countries as potential wives. I was glad to read about the PNDT Act which outlaws Doctors by using ultra-sound to abort a female foetus, creating genocide. The culture and social norms of India and Asia places such a strain on women to produce a boy heir, even though men determine the sex of the child. I do agree with the article about materialism and the desire to have what you want which drives home the desire to pick a boy, since per the article girls are deemed expendable and a hassle. I wonder if the U.S. was a one child society, would we do the same thing?
ReplyDeleteI had no idea about the China and India unwants of a girl. It is funny how in some countries men do not want a girl, even though they are the ones that determine the sex of the child. This article brought to my attention about the relax of America in the pregnancy stage when determining the sex of the fetus.
ReplyDeleteI find the one child policy really interesting to read about. I remember a few years ago Time did a piece on this (http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1912861,00.html). This article talked about the shortages in workers as well as future problems about a shortage of children to take care of elderly problems. There were rumors a few years ago that this policy was going to come to an end but according to the Time article the government said they were at least ten years from removing this policy.
ReplyDeleteThe article “But What If it’s a Girl” presented some other really interesting information. They talked about how technology is being used to help parents plan on only having boys. While, the doctors are not supposed to tell the parents the sex of the baby they have been caught doing just that. This has caused a decline in the number of girls being born each year. People often place such a high value on having boys to carry on the family name; however, I think it is interesting that if there are not enough girls to marry the boys they can end up having a son who never marries and has children (which would still end the family line).
I thought this article was very interesting. While I was aware of some infanticide, I had no idea the extent of it. The statistics given were shocking because it showed a definitive downward trend on the ratio of girls to boys.
ReplyDeleteThe repercussions suggested by the author in the long run were also very surprising. He speculates that not having enough women will result in an excess of single men because there are not enough women for them. The potential result of this is an increased lawlessness and perhaps even increased rape and violence toward women.
Although small, one of the most interesting things in the article is the fact that it is illegal in India to tell a woman if her baby is going to be a boy or a girl
I think it's pretty lame how girl are unwanted in the family. if they keep killing all the girls, then who is going to give birth to boys?. I know it's their culture and all that, but don't they see that women can also operate like a man. If i understand well most of them in those countries are killers in liberty. Now with the availability of ultra sound they manage to kill the baby quicker. so that means before the ultra sound became famous they were killing new born babies voluntarily, I don't understand how a women can through pregnancy dealing with all that she has to deal with, and then kill her new born baby. to me they are pretty courageous.
ReplyDeleteBeing a girl, I find it very hurtful that girls are unwanted in other countries. What confuses me is if girls are unwanted then how will boys be brought into this world. I do not believe in abortion and find it wrong to find out the sex of a child and if its a girl abort it. Women do so much beneficial things for society. I understand this is their culture and their norms, but I just don't agree with it. It has to be extremely hard for the women, since they are pressured into having boys. The hard part is that you can not control what the sex of the child will be. I am so thankful I live in America and girls are wanted and raised by their own families.
ReplyDeleteWhile painful to read such horrific murder to unwanted girls, I too find myself thankful to live in a country where sex of the fetus is not as important. Yes, boys will carry on the family name and maintain family inheritance in some countries, girls could so as well if the culture and social attitudes changed to an acceptable practice. While there is so much stigma attached to having girls, I agree with the author that such shortages will cause an increase in rape and/or crime. If they continue to kill off unwanted females, then who will be left to have the "sons"? I certainly do not see any man bearing a uterus to have a child (although not possible in most biologic aspects)! There are so many people throughout the world who are unable to have children of their own......put the child up for adoption. Yes, I know that this will all stem down to either Pro Choice or Pro Life but do not murder a harmless gentle fetus who has no control over their chromosomes. If having a son is so important within your technological savy country, why not extract DNA and chromosomes and create your own "son" to prevent an unwanted girl? I am completely disgusted with their acts based on personal experience however it is their culture, which in my opinion, needs to be changed.
ReplyDeleteI think we can all agree that we are blessed to live in a country where it doesn't matter if someone has a boy or a girl. It was horrible to read about women in some cultures getting abortion because its a girl. Although they want to carry on the family name, there has to be women for the men to marry. I found the article very interesting because I never thought about the shortage of women. The author brought up an interesting point that without women, the men would result in violence. Also, without women, their sons could not marry and the family line would stop. Overall, I enjoyed the article.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading this article, I have realized how lucky I am and America is as a country. I would be disgusted if America had the norms that these other countries have about the sex of babies. No one woman can control whether she is having a boy or a girl, and it is not fair, (in my opinion) to just abort the baby if it's not a boy. I understand the norm is to have the boy carry on the family name, but if girls are not being born, these future women will not be able to produce more boys for this to happen. This seems pretty stupid to me and ridiculous to abort a baby based off of its' gender.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I found the article to be very interesting, I was not ready for how shocking the statistics really are. The number of girls being born each year in Asia is dwindling significantly as each year passes. Furthermore, it saddens me that there are many girls who never got the chance to live just because their parents wanted a boy. That girl could have been a doctor, or a politician, or someone who would have contributed to society. But since they were not allowed to be born, we will never know how great they could have been. However, growing up as an American citizen I realize that I may be being naive to the culture in Asia in which males and females are not considered to be equal. In their culture, it probably makes sense to abort the baby they don't want, while here in America it can be seen as cruel.
ReplyDeleteAs an American, this type of situation is something I don't have to deal with. We accept girls and boys in our families with no cultural preference for either. I think it's common for people to want to have a son and daughter now. The saddest part about this article is that rather than males becoming less preferred as the nations develops, the female to male ratio has grown smaller as the years have gone by. With such an easy-going abortion policy, there is no hesitation for the parents to think about the life they are ending. To them, it's not as drastic of a decision because they think about what they don't want to happen, while we think about aborting a fetus as what that person could be in life.
ReplyDeleteExactly like everyone else who read and commented this article by all means broke my heart, and I am thankful to live in a culture where gender differences, even discrepancies, can be celebrated. My main response, other than disgust and fear is several questions: Do the societies ridding themselves of a female population have any foresight to the survival of their nation, as well as the family name they desire their beloved sons to pass on, without females? Have males stood up and demanded women be allowed to live yet so they can freely marry or sustain relationships? Will that/can that ever happen? Can we expect a rise in incest, rape, and homosexuality simply due to a lack of sexual partners?
ReplyDeleteIt is hard for me to imagine a situation like this! In America, it's hard to think people would do this to females. I don't understand why they still have not realized the worth of females. It also shocked me how harsh the men become when there is a shortage of women. I never would have thought about other effects of female infanticide.
ReplyDeleteThe female infanticide issue in these countries is so alarming! How terrifying it must be to be a female, and to be ashamed of giving birth to a baby girl when the MALE IS THE ONE WHO CHOOSES THE SEX! The girl/boy ratio is already at a ridiculous rate, but what are they going to do when it gets much worse? Reverse their practice and start aborting males to even it out? Practice polygyny? I feel very sorry for the women over there who have so much pressure on them, and hope that they start seriously changing their practices in those countries. This is just another reason why I am so thankful to be an American, and to get to experience they great amount of freedom that we have!
ReplyDeleteI think this is just sad that people over in India would abort a child just because it is a girl. I feel bad for this country due to the lack of heritage or new culture they are trying to implement by killing baby girls. I just see a downfall on this new "fad" they are doing by the lack of increasing rate of population. Not many children will be born and the birth rates will soon go down. In the end, I feel that this culture and country needs to stop this madness and accept baby girls.
ReplyDeleteThis article is extremely disturbing. It is awful to think that girls are so unwanted they are aborted. While I understand that boys are the ones that carry on family names and property, girls should not be such a problem where they are one hundred percent unwanted. Women should be more important due to the fact that they are the only ones that can produce a son. It is great that acts are being created to prevent this from happening, but they must be enforced in order to receive a positive outcome. I just hope they can continue to try and stop this horrific epidemic and change the way women are viewed.
ReplyDeleteIt is unbelievable that this culture hates female children so much. I can not believe that girls are such an inconvience to parents, considering women are the ones who produce more children. Their countries would be in total chaos without women to reproduce. I know that even in America, women used to be lower on the totum pole than men but women were never seen as a disappointment just for being born females. It is hard to understand a culture like this because there are so many successful and important women in our culture.
ReplyDeleteIts kinda hard to believe that practices like this exist. I do this to my child. Someone or many people need to step up and change things. They cant continue doing this. It will ultimately end up hurting them when they have a harder time trying to have kids and there aren't any women around to have them. And at that point, there could possibly be more rapes being committed.
ReplyDeleteWhat we really caught my attention with this article were the seeming contradictions set forth by those societies. Governments enforce the one-child rule and society follows a patriarchal inheritance system and they don't understand why people are killing off their daughters. Maybe if society didn't make males so much more valuable than females in a social sense (inheritance, names, profession) than women could be seen as equals. But until they give women more individual freedom and agency, they won't be able to see the good she can contribute. It's amazing to me how easily a woman's contributions like child-bearing and rearing go unnoticed as necessary as they are for survival. One line I found particularly interesting was when the author states, "Pressured by the government to keep their families small, and by society to produce boys, Indian women turn to modern technology to ensure that they got their treasured boys." The government tells women they need small families and society tells them they needs boys so naturally then people feel they cannot waste valuable family slots with girls. It seems something as engrained as male superiority will take years for a reestablishment of gender equilibrium, if it's possible at all.
ReplyDeleteMany people are mentioning how much some other cultures “hate” women, when I really it seems like a male child is seen as more valuable or useful. The statistics really stuck out in my mind as surprising because I thought the ration of girls to boys would stay right around equal. This shows that if a country has a high enough importance on a single gender, they will do what they can to achieve their goal. The punishments handed out by governments for these families with too many children/of one gender, seem to be immoral, and against some kind of human law of rights.
ReplyDeleteAs Americans who debate over the issue of abortion, we could really ask ourselves, if it's wrong to abort a child because it's a girl, what makes it okay to abort a child because it's a child? But I think the main issue is the general view of girls in India as, in a sense, less valuable than boys. In America, we also talk about women having a disadvantage to men in society. To what extent would view of girl babies need to be changed in order to cease these practices?
ReplyDelete