If anyone was wondering what exactly it takes to transform female infanticide from the morally judgmental, ethically reprehensible “evils of sex selection” into a kinder, gentler “medical tourism for designer babies,” this week — somewhere between the crossed wires of the Associated Press and the pages of the Philadelphia Inquirer — we had the answer printed for us in black-and-white typeface on crisp, clean newsprint:
$20,000
:::Insert eyeroll here::: That the lubricating effects of money and status and class manage to somehow soften the harsh edges of an issue that seems decidedly black-and-white when put in the cultural context of India’s rural, uneducated poor but not in the face of the planet’s sweetly smiling, gray-hued financiers doesn’t really surprise me.
That the Philadelphia Inquirer ran “India tries to stop sex selection: Caught on tape, doctors accused of accepting cash to perform illegal abortions of female fetuses” the same week the AP titled its subtly sympathetic and ultimately more forgiving “It’s a Boy! If you want a boy...” doesn’t completely surprise me either though I wonder (amidst the obvious irony and class lines and socio-economic disparities at play) what exactly the difference is between
A pregnant woman, sitting in a doctor’s office, explained that she was carrying a girl. She already had two girls, she said, and didn’t want a third. That’s why she was seeking an abortion.
and
Some people spend $50,000 to $70,000 for a BMW car and think nothing of it, but this is a life that’s going to be with us forever,” said Robert, an Australian who asked that his last name not be used to protect the family’s privacy.He and his wife, Joanna, have two boys. Now they want a girl.
But you wonder sometimes, when you read stories about fertility clinics and mad scientists who defend consumer eugenics on the premise that “The Chinese like boys. Canadians like girls. Every country is different,” if George Orwell and Aldous Huxley knew what was coming.
Well, everything else has been commercialized and capitalized..why not life?!
But you wonder sometimes, when you read stories about fertility clinics and mad scientists who defend consumer eugenics on the premise that “The Chinese like boys. Canadians like girls. Every country is different,” if George Orwell and Aldous Huxley knew what was coming.
yeah, choice is great isn’t it? except when it isn’t….
anyway, what does orwell have to do with this? consumer eugenics is devolution of power from big brother, not the control of your own choices by an outside agent. anyway, the convenient framing of “rural uneducated poor” vs. the wealthy white west is false, it is the “wealthy” states like punjab and gujarat where sex selection is the biggest problem. higher SES tends to correlate with son preference in india. but hey, who cares? there are nice glib cliches about north vs. south that need to be repeated….
This makes me wonder if there has been any research to correlate sex ratios in different regions and communities with prevalence of dowry and inheritance inequality. Only those with some wealth would worry about losing it as part of dowry and having sons to keep the assets in the family. Those who have nothing to lose or bestow would care less.
This makes me wonder if there has been any research to correlate sex ratios in different regions and communities with prevalence of dowry and inheritance inequality. Only those with some wealth would worry about losing it as part of dowry and having sons to keep the assets in the family. Those who have nothing to lose or bestow would care less.
yes. there has. i believe the issue is like so:
1) monogamous + wealthy inequality = dowry 2) polygynous + wealth inequality = bride price
the issue is that in the former context high SES males are at a premium, and the families with daughters “compete” over them since there is scarcity. in the latter situation high SES males “purchase” wives to bolster their status and to engage in display. here there is no scarcity of males for families with daughters because even if she can’t be the first or second wife of a high SES male, she has a decent shot as a 3rd or 4th wife, etc. since north indian hindu society is characterized by normative monogamy there is a high status male shortage and so dowry is normative. in contrast most muslim societies practice bride price because polygyny is often accept for males (or was traditionally) and males wanted to accrue as many brides as possible (divorce allowed one to go beyond the 4 maximum pretty easily in a lifetime).
also, there has been a tendency observed for high SES in a society to prefer males and low SES females. this seems an extrapolation of the trivers-willard effect, when a mother has lots of resources she can invest to create a ‘super-child’ she will prefer a male because males have a ‘big payoff.’ on the other hand, when a mother has few resources daughters are a ‘sure thing.’ recently this has been documented in animals, deer under stress seem to birth females and very healthy deer seem to birth males, etc. among humans, the graves of european aristocracy seem biased toward daughters, but the serfs on their manors tended to bury sons! among the masai today there is a male bias, but their lower status client folk tend to have a female bias. the key is that daughters of the people can marry masai men, but sons can not marry masai women, so daughters are a better bet for social advancement. but, the key is not to listen to what the client people say, they aver the same son-preference as the masai! but, the reality is that somehow it is the male children who suffer malnourishment….
(see mother nature sarah hrdy, why sex matters bobbi s. lowe)
razib:
george orwell = orwellian = Manipulation of language for political ends. Most significantly by introducing to words meanings in opposition to their denotative meanings.
if softening infanticide isn’t manipulation of language, i’m not sure what is.
Razib,
Son Preference and Sex Composition of Children: Evidence from India [Abstract]While the effect of son preference on sex composition is undetectable at the national level, this paper provides empirical evidence from India that son preference has two pronounced and predictable effects on the sex composition of children ever born at the family level. First, data from India show that smaller families have a significantly higher proportion of sons than larger families. Second, couples that are socially and economically disadvantaged and couples from the northern region of India not only want a higher proportion of sons, but also attain a higher proportion of sons, if the effects of family size are controlled.
The cover story on the right-wing Canadian Magazine The Western standard was about sex-selective abortions among Chinese-Canadians and Indo-Canadians. It looked at sex-ratios among newborns in Richmond and Surrey BC and Brampton Ontario. I’ve read summaries, but not the article itself — anyone seen it?
As a right-wing mag, I would guess the purpose of the article was to show the awfulness of abortion by linking it to patriarchal and misogynistic practices of non-white immigrants, thereby scaring white liberals. (Better, I think, to focus on misogyny itself)
Razib — why is there dowry among north indian muslims then? And Bangladeshis too, I think.
razib:
This is true, in part. But it doesn’t provide conclusive evidence that Socio Economic Status correlates with female infanticide. The division as you point out is a north/south division. So it’s not just the wealthy states of Punjab, Gujarat, Haryana which compose North India, but also poor ones like Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, which also have quite low female child ratios. On the other side of the divide, states in the east and south of India tend to have male-female child ratios comparable to advanced industrial nations! For more information, check out “Missing Females”, Population and Development Review.
My point being that the fault line is clearly regional with northern and western states showing clear signs of natal inequality where as southern and eastern states seem quite progressive in this regard. Given that states in the north-western and south-eastern regions can be wealthy, poor, fast growing or slow growing, I don’t think there’s an immediate economic connection with regard to female infanticide.
I would put more emphasis on broader cultural and social patterns, without exactly dismissing the economic side.
This discusion reminds me of Rush Limbaugh’s comment that if we were able to tell “prior to birth that a baby is going to be gay…the gay community would do the fastest 180 and become pro-life faster than anybody you’ve ever seen.”
It’s so easy to see when others are imposing their morality on us, so hard to see whem we are imposing our morality on them.
Razib — why is there dowry among north indian muslims then? And Bangladeshis too, I think.
i’ve never heard of this. documentation? (my understanding from my parents is that some couples do brideprice, but most do nothing) i suppose you can ‘explain’ north indian muslims as elite emulation.
I would put more emphasis on broader cultural and social patterns, without exactly dismissing the economic side.
i think here you have a case of necessary & sufficient conditions interlocking.
And Conservatives would do the fastest 180 and become pro-choice!
It’s funny what people will do to control other’s lives.
M. Nam
And Conservatives would do the fastest 180 and become pro-choice!
no. i’m not pro-life, but i’ve seen pro-life literature,they don’t believe this at all. the big issue with most american “pro-life” people in that they often correlate with belligerant pro-war pro-death penalty types. but, the roman catholic church and the hard core of right to life which began right after roe vs. wade is not like this, they are ‘seamless garment’ types in general (evangelical protestants took a few years to join the pro-life movement, and in fact, you can find stuff in christianity today cautiously supporting abortion rights from the late 1960s. remember, ronald reagan signed and abortion decriminalization bill in california as gov. in the 1960s).
Razib wrote: i’ve never heard of this. documentation?
The “Banglapedia” (a wonderful site!) entry on dowry is here. It notes that B-desh passed the Dowry Prohibition Act in 1980, but is pessimistic on such laws actually having any effect on the social fabric of B-desh.
Combined with the high rise in population, very low GDP growth, and poor social security services, these factors reduce the possibility of dowry being eliminated from the [Bangladeshi] society in the near or even the distant future
And here an article by the Asian Legal Resource Centre on the problem of dowry-murder in B-desh). B-desh acid attacks (sometimes dowry related) and other violence against women sometimes makies the western press as well.
Anecdotally, my family member who married (pre-1971) to bangla-speakers had dowry. Dowry is the norm among UP and Bihari Muslims (technicaly, ‘jehez’ — a woman’s property when entering marriage.).
Sidenote–I was once horrified to discover that adoption rates in the U.S. have remained constant over the last few many years. In economic/inflationary terms, that means they’ve effectively gone down. What’s gone up? Triplet births, symptomatic of IVF. Yikes.
Hi,
Re “The Evil of sex selection.” We’ve deliberated over this issue for quite some time as we are releasing a book that deals with just this issue as it is presented in China.
I am trying to make this post as non-commercial as possible while toting the courage of our author, Talia Carner, to take this skeleton of social closet and dance with it in the open with her new novel, China Doll. She faces infanticide head on, with no reticent or restraint that seems to characterize our government these days–and more so the mammoth corporations trying to set foot in the vast new promising market. Carner’s novel is an explosive story whose underline premise is that if the pop singer on a concert tour in China doesn’t save the baby thrust into her arms, the infant will surely find her death in the dumping ground of a Chinese orphanage.
I would like to invite your readers to study more about GENDERCIDE in China (where baby girls are singled out for death) by delving into the background articles on the author’s website. Some articles show gruesome photographs, but they tell the story of indifference to human life. Some of these articles have long disappeared from the internet–except on her website.
I hesitate to give further details and be accused of trying to sell you the book, (which, truthfully, I think is great), so for those of you really interested, just Google on and you’ll discover a world of not just “designer” babies, but of the cry of the million missing girls in China each year.