Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Don't skew things up

I recently read an article in the paper which talked about how men have to pay high dowries to the girl's family in China to get married. Why? Because there simply aren't enough girls. I think India is heading there too.

This means that really bad things could happen. I talked about PGD in a previous article and I could go on forever about the evils of sex selective abortions and the 'girl child' stigma. Although I can see conditions changing, there is still a deep rooted preference for male children in the conservative Indian psyche. There are very few families who don't wish for at least one boy.

I think people should come to grips with the fact that a skewed sex ratio is NOT going to help them. In the best case scenario:

Do you want to end up paying dowry for your son? (Because society is stupid like that, and this might sound like sweet revenge to most girls and their families.)
Do you want to make your son wait on a queue of several years in the marriage mart to glimpse a girl who might just consider him?

In the worst:

Do you want to promote social violence and human trafficking?

And that's just the tip of the ice berg. Think about it.

0 comments: