Should you choose your children's sex?

By L.E. Nugroho

BANDUNG (JP): People have always been interested in the sex of their offspring. There has always been a bias towards male offspring -- to prove the "virility" of men, perpetuate family names, work the land, fight in armies and clans, and other reasons. Great kingdoms were thrown into chaos simply because a queen -- or a whole series of them -- did not produce a male heir. Countless numbers of wives, at all levels of society, were cast out or even killed because they "failed" to produce the sons their husbands required.

No doubt some ancient practitioners of sex selection were also killed -- when their attempts and their concoctions failed to produce the desired result. If they tried to influence conceptions, there was often someone in authority standing by to accuse them of "meddling in the Lord's work." Yet couples would continue to plead with them, demanding their help. Then, if they failed, it wasn't the Lord's wrath they had to look out for but the wrath of a disappointed husband, distraught wife, or a whole family clan. They were damned if they did and damned if they didn't.

You might have read Dr. Landrum B. Shettles' book, How to Choose the Sex of Your Baby.

"Is it really possible to choose the sex of our baby?" Thousand of couples have asked Dr. Shettles this question. While no method is completely foolproof, Dr. Shettles shows you how to raise the chances of having a child of the sex you want from the traditional 50 percent to at least 75 percent if you follow his methods. In fact, some researchers have reported success rates of around 90 percent.

While there are many parents, prospective parents, doctors, and researchers who share the conviction that "sex selection" technology can help produce happier families and healthier societies, there are many important issues related to this sex selection. First, there is the crucial question: Even if we can select the sex of our children, should we? Is it moral? How do the various religions feel about it? What do the bioethicists say? What are the psychological implications -- for the child as well as the parents? Is it really going to benefit society or will it create new dangers, producing, as a few have warned, a superabundance of males, with an attendant increase of such "male vices" as violence, rape and war? Are there certain types of people who should avoid sex selection? Are there medical reasons for using it?

There are a number of differing views concerning the social and psychological effects of sex selection. Let's examine a few. The apocalyptic fears that were voiced about sex selection in the past have now been pretty thoroughly discounted. Dr. Amitai Etzioni, a professor of sociology at Columbia University, USA, for example, once suggested that sex selection might lead to "an over-production of boys" and that this male imbalance would "very likely affect most aspects of social life." If sex selection were to become widespread, he predicted, the results might include anything from the downfall of the two-party system to an enormous rise in male homosexuality, prostitution, and violence, all because of an overabundance of males and a shortage of females.

Inaccurate

Will people stop having girls? The basic problem with such prognostications is that they are based on the unproved assumption that, given the choice, parents will overwhelmingly choose to have boys and only rarely girls. The best studies indicate that this assumption is inaccurate. It is true that a majority of couples want their firstborn to be a son, but thereafter most want the second child to be a daughter -- to balance and thus complete the family. In some developing countries the desire for sons is admittedly stronger, but it is precisely in those countries that sex selection is least likely to be widely used, due to illiteracy and poverty.

Some commentators who opposed to sex selection have pointed with alarm to reports that came out of China. Headlines like this one cropped up everywhere: Rural Chinese Reported Killing Their Baby Girls. There is still a strong pro-male bias in countries like China where rural people, in particular, view sons as economic assets and a form of security; sons can work in the fields, carry on the father's work, and support the parents in their old age. But what was often overlooked in these reports of female infanticide is the fact that China is attempting to impose a strict policy of population control that permits only one child per family. The killing of female children is thus less an expression of anti-female bias as of the desire to have at least one son. Any instance of infanticide is appalling, of course; yet if sex selection was widely available in China, we can only conclude that the frequency of infanticide would be reduced. And if the policy of the country were changed to permit two children, it seems likely that many Chinese would still have -- and want -- daughters.

The most definitive study to date on what would happen if sex selection came into widespread use in the U.S. was carried out by Dr. Charles E. Westoff of Princeton University's Office of Population Research and by Dr. Ronald R. Rindfuss of the University of Wisconsin's Center for Demography and Ecology. Detailed surveys of some six thousand married women revealed that an excess of male births would indeed be the result, but that this excess would prevail for only two years, during which time more childless couples would choose to have sons as their firstborn. Thereafter, the same couples would have daughters, and a balance, the study indicated, would be restored. Other researchers have confirmed these findings.

This desire that the firstborn be a son is, nonetheless, worthy of note. Why this desire persists, even in developed countries, no doubt has something to do with the die-hard desire of the husband to perpetuate "the family name." There also seems to be a perception that sons may, even in technologically advanced societies, somehow come in more "handy" or be more "economical."

Bioethicist John C. Fletcher, speaking for himself, rather than for the National Institute of Health, for which he works, has reversed his earlier position on sex selection and now opposes it as "inherently sexist because there is a universal preference for males." The late anthropologist Dr. Margaret Mead had different views, however. She strongly favored the use of sex selection because, she argued, "for the first time in human history, girls would be as wanted as boys." What she meant was that if a girl was the product of sex selection she could grow up secure in the knowledge that she had truly been wanted and was not simply the child her parents had had to "settle for".

Advantages

Another expert has studied the psychological advantages of sex selection. Dr. Thomas Verny, in his recent, ground-breaking book, The Secret Life of the Unborn Child, reported on a pilot study he conducted in which he sought to determine the effects prenatal events and birth experiences seemed to have, in later life, upon a group of individuals who were in psychotherapy. The Toronto psychiatrist concluded that how parents felt about their children at birth and even before birth could have a lasting impact and be predictive, in some important respects, of the future behavior and mental health of those children. The best combination for healthy personality development, he concluded, was for the parents to have "a positive pregnancy attitude and getting a child of the desired sex." In other words, the two most important perceptions we can have of ourselves is that, first, we are wanted as human beings and, second, that we are wanted, specifically, as sons or daughters. In both men and women, Dr. Verny states, that combination produced less depression, less irrational anger and better sexual adjustment in adulthood.

Another researcher, Dr. A.L. Benedict, has suggested that some individuals are really only suited for raising children of one sex. Sex selection could be used in such instances to help ensure that neither those parents nor any offspring suffer undue trauma. This makes us a bit uneasy, however, because a parent who cannot adapt at all to children of one sex must almost certainly be psychologically disturbed to the point where it would be better for him or her to have no children. But since that individual is likely to go ahead and have children, no matter what we think, it can be argued that sex selection could be useful even in such extreme cases.

But is it moral?

Some couples are concerned about the morality of sex selection. And there are many different opinion from religious authorities. Dr. Shettles has his own view: he feels there is nothing immoral or sacrilegious about pre-conception sex selection, yet he opposes post-conception sex selection. He does regard this as immoral as do many doctors and religious authorities. Post-conception methods entail determining the sex of the child after it has been conceived (through examination of cells extracted from the amniotic fluid in the womb) and then aborting if the child is of the "wrong" sex. I personally agree that abortion for this purpose is completely unjustified.

Sex selection may eventually acquire virtues that may not be obvious today. If fail-safe pre-conception sex-selection methods should emerge, they could be used to prevent the births of children who carry sex-linked genetic disorders. Only males, for example, suffer from hemophilia, the "bleeding disease." The recessive gene that is the cause of this disease can express itself only in males. Known carriers of the disease could stop passing the gene on to future generations by avoiding male conceptions. There are many other sex-linked disease that could also be avoided in this fashion.

Sex selection is not without some social risk. But we can also appreciate the benefits, which include satisfied parents, happier, healthier children, and smaller, better-balanced families. It is evident that a sound sex selection method, if it could be made to work, would not only alleviate suffering among couples and within families but could also have a favorable impact on society as a whole. If couples could achieve sexually balanced families with a minimum of "tries", then there was a good chance that population growth could be slowed down to some extent.

Someday it will undoubtedly be possible to have a 100 percent effective sex-selection method. Whatever comes to pass, we hope that parents will always reproduce not because, first and foremost, they want a child of a particular sex but because they want and love children, period.