For one women it seems, the biological work of mothering continues even well after menopause:
A woman said to be 70 years of age has given birth to twins in India’s northern Uttar Pradesh state after taking IVF treatment… The couple were so desperate for a male heir that they spent their life savings and took out a bank loan for IVF.
Omkari Panwar already has two daughters and is a grandmother to five children. “We already have two girls but we wanted a boy so that he could have taken care of our property. This boy and girl are God’s greatest gift to us,” Omkari said. [Link]
That’s right – she got pregnant at age 70 so she could produce a male heir! This boy isn’t even going to be able to take care of its parents in their old age, they’re already there. The sole reason for his conception was so that he could inherit the property.
While I shake my head in confusion at this (why do you care who inherits after you’re dead – you’re dead, right?), is the average American any better? It turns out that they have a strong preference for female children when they adopt:
… there are about 105 boys for every 100 girls in the general population of biological children under the age of 18. Adopted children … [however, have] 89 boys for every 100 girls. What’s more, adopted children under the age of 6 constitute a group where there only are 85 boys for every 100 girls…. the sex ratio of adopted children goes still further off-kilter if you look only at international adoptions… Girls make up about 64 percent of all children adopted by Americans outside the United States. That’s a mere 56 boys for every hundred girls. [Link]
When adopting abroad, Americans have a 2:1 preference for girls over boys. And that’s not a matter of supply, it’s purely demand:
It doesn’t matter if they’re adopting from China, where girls far outnumber boys; from Russia, where the numbers are about even; or from Cambodia, where there is typically a glut of orphan boys and a paucity of girls. Everywhere, demand tends to favor the feminine. [Link]
There are good reasons to tsk over the desi preference for boy children. Should we do the same when it comes to the American preference for girl children when adopting?
There are good reasons to tsk over the desi preference for boy children. Should we do the same when it comes to the American preference for girl children when adopting?
no, because the problem isn’t the act of preference for one sex or another in and of itself, but the social consequences which flow from and it and the means. whether you accept abortion rights or not, most people have issues with sex-selective abortions, which is a major way that sex preferences play out in much of asia. additionally, the malnutrition and neglect of females resulting in higher mortality is problematic. so it isn’t the sex preference so much as the societal context and the indicators which this entails.
and, to be frank, the problems which might arise from a surplus of males differs from those that arise from a surplus of females. young men are violent and the major root of instability on a macro and micro level in most societies. when men marry their testosterone levels actually drop and they tend to calm down. though normal sex ratio is 105 to 100, at the age of 30 there are more females than males. some of this is due to male physiology; weaker immune system and sex-linked diseases, but some of this is just the fact that there are a lot of stupid dudes who win the darwin awards and kill themselves being jackasses. but in any case, the sex ratio imbalance, combined with the fact that high status older men engage in serial monogamy and marry younger women means that men in their 20s in most modern societies face a tight “supply” market in terms of women their age to partner up with. as you skew the sex ratio the theory goes that “bare branches” become more atavistic in their behavior.
of course all the arguments above are utilitarian on the level of sex preferences themselves proximately. i’m actually generally inclined toward a default stance that parents should get to choose how their children should turn out, sex, looks, proclivities, etc. the question is not “why,” but “why not?” i think that though the naturalistic fallacy is mostly problematic, when it comes to equal sex ratios in many species it has something to teach us as to the proper order of things.
btw, south korea is now shifting toward girls as well… (japan did about 15 years ago)
btw, there is a fair amount of literature about the trivers-willard effect among low status peoples, and here boys are often mistreated or malnourished and have far higher mortality rates. so in this case the preference is really bad and morally objectionable in the way that it plays out.
When adopting from places like China or India, there’s already a surplus of unwanted girls so I don’t think it’s a problem. But that’s an issue of demand and not of supply. I don’t understand why adopting families favor girls so heavily – any ideas?
I know a friend (female) who has only sisters and NO COUSINS. And to keep their family name (a not so common one), her husband let her keep her last name, and even the children have their mother’s last name. WHY COULDNT THEY WORK OUT SOMETHINK LIKE THAT? It seriously make me SICK to see the male preference in India. If they are taking IVF treatment i would expect the couple to be well to do and educated, yet still their ideas reflect backward thinking. I know of a couple who died in my dad’s tiny village in India, they had only daughters and they had not written a will, so all the villagers and the authorities decided upon giving the inheritance to their nephew, simply because he is male. The daughters and their families were even in needy situations. But these are the kind of people who never went to school, were never taught ethics, and never left their 20 mile radius area. They are excused. The Panwars are not.
A few months ago here in Vancouver a punjabi father killed his 2 year old daughter cause she was his third daughter and he had no son. It turned out that he could not get a visa for his wife to cross the border and find out the sex of his baby. I also wonder if he get crap from the men in his community from having no sons and it caused him to go over the edge.
Right across the border in United States is Blaine, Washington and there is a clinic there that is for punjabi women to find out the sex of there baby earlier then they can in Canada where they have to wait 24 weeks so they go just across the border.
The “why not†question for me will always be hard to swallow. On one hand, if the parents get what they want there would be a lot of female children that would not be mistreated or frankly dumped on the side of the street or ashram.
However the attitude would still be the same. Letting families get what they want does not shift change of thought. Plus you get some really messed blokes out there when they are lavished with so much attention. Sort of goes beyond mummy’s boy. Glad my folks favour my sister!
the motivations are the key difference–wanting a male child implies a better capacity to earn and take care of parents and ‘carry on’ the family. While preference for girls while adopting is more of an emotional decision, with no real economic motivations [unless it costs lesser to adopt girls?]. no?
I think the decision of Americans to adopt primary girls has to do with a practicality – young men are simply more aggressive, and combining this with attachment issues that plague adopted children, you might just get a recipe for disaster.
I think so. Since there is shortage of girls in most of Asia, for reasons pointed out in previous comments, aren’t we adding more to the problems that comes with a surplus of males in those countries? It is quite possible that by adopting, Americans are saving these girls from future abuse though. It is hard to say what the future will be, but I suspect that a huge shortage of adult women might lead to raising their status a lot, I sure hope so.
This quote surprised me, because when this story ran on NDTV about a week ago, there was a huge hue and cry because the parents balked at the daughter’s appearance, saying they paid all this money because they only wanted a son, which led to a lot of debate on TV about IVF and up to what age women should be permitted to avail of it.
Very interesting. Filmiholic – have you seen any links on the web to the earlier quotes?
I swear I was waiting for this story to be broken as a hoax. There are just so many elements to this that seem untrue but lets assume that this is true. Ethics aside as I get older and become more sensitive to the role of a woman (shyt no one told me getting married would unearth so many feminist issues in my life) I rather see someone bring a child into this world that they want than a child that isn’t just unwanted but unloved and worse abused or killed.
I come from a family of 13 girls and 3 boys (on my mother’s side that I’m close to) and it isn’t a surprise that all the girls kick ass. They really do and most of them are in India. I married into a family of all boys, 8 of them in the whole circle. No girls. Yeah quite a transition. On the positive side I get treated like a goddess and something rare and as if I’d break and I’m fragile and on the negative side most people had no idea girls could open their mouth and state their business and get what they want.
My mother always raised me to believe I was somehow superior (yes yes I’m rolling my eyes too) but she herself was so superior in so many ways so I had such a fantastic example. She was the epitome of feminism so I had some very solid foundation in self value and a little fucked up view of the world because of course I believed everyone was equal for a long long time.
I didn’t really understand the whole dirty business of “boys are different” from girls till my mother died without leaving a will and inheritence issues came up and everyone and their grandmother got involved. Every single person involved in the bullshit was educated. This concept of boys are better is so deeply mired into the psyche of our culture it’s going to take a few hundred years to get out of it.
Simpling having a penis seems to be good enough criteria for most people. And it’s a painful reality for a lot of people even today and even in the most educated of societies. In the Indian context our roles are so clearly defined for us as man and woman that when you start breaking out of the norm and addressing those roles differently you are bound to experience resistence. Shit I get it in 2008 in the United States so I believe in being patient with India. It will get better over time.
I think son preference was common everywhere, just more sociopathic in some places. It was back in mid-20th c. (where did it go?), but the American playwrite Edward Albee dealt with the subject of adoption in western, or at any rate American culture. His opinion was that people adopted girls more often because the adoptive parents still had some subterranean hope of producing a male heir to carry on the name, inherit, give them more status, more possibility that their offspring would be some sort of genius achiever, etc. A boy was just more serious business. This really how some people look on it. One depressing statistic that I have read is that couples with sons are less likely to divorce than couples with only daughters. This sort of mentality is not unique to the “east.” Daughters in England didn’t inherit either until laws were changed in the mid-19th century. This was a major theme in Austen’s works, where a son-less man’s nephew rather than his daughters, would inherit his property. It seems to me (though I have no firm evidence) that girl adoptees are way more likely than boys to be interested in their biological roots and seek them out eventually. That may or may not be a problem for the parents, depending on their own ideas.
From people I’ve spoken to that have adopted young girls from either East or South Asia, the impression that I got was that their preference was a direct response to the current mentality and preference for boys. As a poster said earlier, it does have something to do with the large number of “unwanted” girls.
However, I should add that adopting a brown baby is apparently A LOT cheaper than adopting a baby from say…Europe. There could be economic reasons as well..
That was a different story, Filmiholic.
this is a fascinating topic for me ever since i read of a study that found that:
“Women living with a male partner are more likely to give birth to boys than women who live alone” (Link – http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn6551-boy-babies-less-likely-for-single-mothers.html)
there appears to be a hidden environmentally influenced mechanism which impacts the gender ratio of births … so what is going on?
on a personal note, i would love to know because i’m one of two brothers, and my brother has three boys … my mom is just dying for a grand-daughter, and when my sister in law had my last nephew, my dad didn’t have the heart to immediately tell her that it was another boy… now it’s on me to make that grand-daughter a reality, hehe
If this is well after her menopause, she must have had an egg donor so the twins aren’t biologically hers?? To have to breastfeed two kids at age 70 totally insane!
They don’t look all that rich and unless IVF is dirt cheap in India, the boy is going to inherit bupkes.
Maybe people adopting read about stories of unwanted girl children in places like India and China. They want to rescue such kids. Also in many Western countries, it is the girl who is closer and takes care of her parents. I’ve talked to an American, Irish and Israeli friend and they all tell me this.
There are good reasons to tsk over the desi preference for boy children. Should we do the same when it comes to the American preference for girl children when adopting?
Am I the only one who sees possibilities in this differential preference across countries?
This was a major theme in Austen’s works, where a son-less man’s nephew rather than his daughters, would inherit his property.
just a note, the ethnographic literature has shown that in early modern & medieval europeans you see higher male infant mortality rate among he poor and higher female among the rich. classic trivers-willard. austen’s work is focused on the gentry and lower nobility, so that short of tendency is not surprising.
there appears to be a hidden environmentally influenced mechanism which impacts the gender ratio of births … so what is going on?
just google trivers-willard. there are lots. there are even weird chemical matrices which selectively favor male or female sperm (there is a different in weight between an X and Y sperm cuz the latter chromosome is much smaller).
Mail-order brides?
22 · Smart Arbitrage or Russian Roulette? said
Dude!
I was simply thinking of cross border adoption agencies… on both sides. There is an abundance of little boys up for adoption in western countries…
Sugi, no, it was this very same couple, not the British one.
Ennis, here’s the video link. When you get to minute 1:50, that’s where the story goes into they parents feeling “cheated.”
One other interesting thing about this IVF business, NDTV did a 1/2 hour report a few months back on one clinic in Jalandar that has had great success at IVF, for women of all ages, and as memory serves, they had at least one woman (possibly more) who was not within the usual 20s to 30s to early 40s range for childbearing.
In case it’s of interest, here’s a clip of discussion with an IVF specialist, which aired at the time of the news breaking on the birth of the twins to the 70-year-old mother.
“austen’s work is focused on the gentry and lower nobility, so that short of tendency is not surprising.”
True. Still, no Austen Papa, however exasperated, actually applies the family silverware to his progeny with murderous intent. Had any done that, we’d have a whole different desk-set of classics.
Since there was no socially sanctioned infanticide in Christian Europe, I did not really know what to make of this. Perhaps the statistics were just not accurate. In India, there are differences of region as we all know. Girls were more numerous than boys in Bengal throughout the 20th century.
Ok. Mail-order grooms too. Why not?
There is no proof that this woman is actually 70 years old.
Wait…They spent their life savings producing an heir? Am I the only one to note the irony here?
young men are simply more aggressive, and combining this with attachment issues that plague adopted children, you might just get a recipe for disaster.
Are you suggesting males have an inherent, genetic proclivity towards being aggressive?
I thought it was common knowledge that young men on the whole are more aggressive, more reckless, since testosterone stimulates such behaviours. In females the hormonal causes of such behaviours are more complex to my best of knowledge, I believe there are some studies that even show estrogen levels to be correlated to aggressive behaviours as well. But, I haven’t researched it thoroughly enough to posit more than careful hypotheses.
I thought it was common knowledge that young men on the whole are more aggressive, more reckless, since testosterone stimulates such behaviours.
So you are saying it’s inherent, but there are studies that say you are completely wrong.
Most of male-aggressive behavior ususally manifests out of attempting to demonstrate value to women (and is internalized through early childhood into adolescence) because women naturally respond to men who thrive on competition & the ability to “defeat” other men in terms of “social value.”
From your own article:
Thus, sex hormones play an important role in translating social contexts and events – via the frontal lobes, amygdala, hypothalamus, and gonads – into social behaviors such as intermale aggression. The “hypothalamic–pituitary–gonadal axis†described by biologists – illustrated on the right side of Figure 3.8 – is embedded in a feedback loop mediated by social relationships on the left side of the figure. Higher testosterone makes individual males stronger and more aggressive towards those already targeted for aggression (those at lower levels in a status hierarchy), though testosterone levels do not directly affect the status hierarchy itself, as we have seen. The right-hand feedback loop, internal to the body, is a self-regulating (negative feedback) loop typical of biological organisms. The left-hand loop, however, tends to be a positive loop (though strongly influenced by external forces) because males who rise in status by winning fights have higher testosterone levels, which make them both stronger and more aggressive towards underlings, in turn making them win fights and boost testosterone.56
I shan’t discuss this further here, since it is off-topic. I can’t search peer-reviewed articles from science magazines outside of Uni, so unfortunately I can’t provide you with links to articles either.
Also from my own article:
“Men’s fluctuating short-term testosterone levels respond to competitive situations, such as a tennis or wrestling match, a chess game, or a competitive task in a psychology laboratory [or reponse from females]. Levels rise in preparation for the competition, and then go up afterwards in winners, and down in losers. This effect does not depend on direct aggression. It applies to any changes in an individual’s perceived status in a social hierarchy”
so testosterone is a response to a situation, not the cause, the entire thesis of the excerpt is that common people have the causality flipped.
which you’ve exactly reiterated here:
“Thus, sex hormones play an important role in translating social contexts and events “
the sex hormones are receptors, not generators.
And it’s my view the social contexts that are most prominently effecting the male aggression are the response elicted by women given certain behaviors.
individual’s perceived status in a social hierarchy
And social hierarchy is just a codeword for “one’s ability to attract and get positive feedback from women”
All of men’s problematic characteristics can be blamed on women as Mr. HMF here so articulately demonstrates.
So true! Since only women arose through the biological process of evolution, only their behaviors are natural and purely genetically determined. Men, having escaped the sledgehammer of biological evolution, have been condemned to purely socialized responses to biological manipulation by women.
34 · HMF said
Yawn. Men evolved to respond women in a positive feedback loop. If they didn’t respond to positive attraction signals of women they would not get the opportunity to reproduce, hence not pass on their own genes to the next generation. My points about evolutionary biology and selection pressure seem to whizz right past your head. I suggest you open a science textbook. Also can you give me a scholar link of your article, it is unclear where this study is from.
Since only women arose through the biological process of evolution, only their behaviors are natural and purely genetically determined
No, dipshit. I never said that, although I find it strikingly imbalanced that women can parade all over 5th avenue saying things like “without men, we’d be happy, fat and hairy” implying all the beautification they undergo (and unhappiness) is due to male pressure and male causes, where as men are instantly born as ruffians, bent on destroying the world (which if true by the way, would make women complete idiots for socializing with us at all)
How come women can play the “we do it for them” card but we can’t?
Since there was no socially sanctioned infanticide in Christian Europe, I did not really know what to make of this.
actually, “orphanages” in much of europe had mortality rates so high that there was a 1 out of 20 chance that an infant consigned to their mercies would reach the age of 5. so it wasn’t socially sanctioned, but this was a way for people to offload their responsibilities of the extra mouth which would almost certainly lead to death. e.g., here’s from the wiki on j-j. rosseau: After this, he returned to Paris, where he befriended and lived with Thérèse Levasseur, a semi-literate seamstress who, according to Rousseau, bore him five children, though this number may not be accurate. Soon after birth, the children were deposited at an orphanage. As the mortality rate for orphanage children was very high, most of them likely perished. When Rousseau became known as a theorist of education and child-rearing, his abandonment of his children was used by enemies, including Voltaire, to attack him. In his defense, Rousseau explained he would have been a poor father and that the children would have a better life at the foundling home.
Yawn. Men evolved to respond women in a positive feedback loop. If they didn’t respond to positive attraction signals of women they would not get the opportunity to reproduce, hence not pass on their own genes to the next generation.
ok, but it’s the aggressive behavior that triggers those positive attraction signals (not necessarily physical, but those that indicate success at competition in whatever sphere you’d like to take, on the play ground, on the sports field, on wall street, whatever)
Is that chip on your shoulder socialized or genetic? Or are you demonstrating your aggressive behavior “for them”?
I agree. Far too much of the discourse about power and social norms in our society is mediated by women.
I cannot help but concur with you because I am only a beta to your alpha-commentary, HMF.
HMF asked
followed by
I cannot help but concur with you because I am only a beta to your alpha-commentary, HMF.
ok, then stfu.
44 · HMF said
So…uh…who are you trying to impress with this here aggression now, buddy? (I think Meena likes you!!! Keep at it holmes.)
Hey Hey HEY
I think everybody needs a time out here. And possibly some naps. Can we just lower the testosterone level a wee bit?
So…uh…who are you trying to impress with this here aggression now, buddy?
nobody really, it just stands to reason if someone agrees with you, they’d cease posting sarcastic messages? unless the agreement in and of itself was sarcastic, which in case, he should state his true position so a debate can actually take place.
Ssssh Harbeer…dontcha see I’m part of that big Feminist conspiracy to seduce all men by preying on their evolutionary weaknesses, THEN make them their slaves 🙂
I meant OUR slaves of course. Unless we want to get into really dicey area which I’m sure the Interns won’t approve of 🙂 🙂
THEN make them their slaves
Umm, some comedic advice, actually get the joke correct.