On Girls vs. Boys - Preference in China

Hey Laowinners!

Hanging in there? It's only Tuesday!!!

I took Vivi and Olivia to the doctors office to one more ultrasound before Vivi goes into labor. I still can't believe Lucia is the same size as Olivia when she was born... already! 

It got me thinking about these conversations I always hear with my wife and her mom on the phone. 

Despite the ultrasound proving that it is a girl in Vivi's womb, my mother in law REFUSES to believe that it is not a boy. She says that it is a mistake, and it is definitely a boy. The fortune tell is never wrong... right?!

All of that mystical, fortune telling stuff aside, why is it so important that we have a boy? 

It starts from way back, and a simple version is this. A boy carries your family name, and gets to absorb another woman into his family. So nothing is lost, only gained. Also, men do the work on the farm, therefore, more hands = more production = more wealth/health. Simple.

However, a lot of China doesn't need to use these outdated principles. So why does the preference remain?

Part of it is still cultural, part of it is a perceived sense of "not being a true man if you have a girl" and part of it is a hangover from the one child policy. 

Pic - Me losing my manliness with my daughter

Yeah, you might lose your daughter now to another family when she gets married, but now you can try again for a boy. In the days of the one child policy, you got one shot, and you better hope for a boy. People now, are finding out that their mom tried to kill them. In this 2007 article from the LA times that recently resurfaced, a woman finds out as an adult that her grandparents tried to kill her with sewing needles. 

    "Doctors discovered more than two dozen sewing needles embedded in her body, some piercing her vital organs.

X-rays of her head and torso look like a dart board.

Doctors believe the needles were driven into her body when Luo was days old. One in the top of her skull could only have been stuck there when the bones in her head were still soft.

"They wanted her dead," said Qu Rei, a spokesman at Richland International Hospital in Yunnan province, which has agreed to surgically remove the first six of the 26 needles in her body today. "The fact she is still alive is a medical miracle."

Luo does not remember ever being stabbed. Relatives suspect her grandparents. They wanted a grandson instead of a second granddaughter.

"I was horrified," said Luo, now 29, in an interview by phone Monday from her hospital room. "How could they do such a thing to me when I was so young?"

LA Times - http://articles.latimes.com/2007/sep/11/world/fg-needles11

As insane as this sounds, my wife, although not punctured with needles, was tried to be rid of upon finding out she was a girl through an illegal gendering process in 1986. Thank heavens her mom used Chinese medicine for the try at abortion and it didn't work.

So for Vivi's mom, she already lost her daughter to me (not really, since I am not Chinese), so having a boy shouldn't matter, right?

At this point it's a face match. It's a point of pride. My mother in law has friends with children that have had boys, and her sisters and brothers have had boys who have also gotten married and had boys themselves. The hangover from cultural values, and the one child policy rings true today for traditional families. You simply haven't contributed to the circle of life until you have a boy. Reality and changes in society have made it irrelevant to a point, but many cannot move on, as is the case with Vivi's mom.

The beautiful thing is, Vivi's dad and I look at Olivia, and even Lucia in the womb, and we couldn't be happier. We are one damned proud father in law, and an even prouder father.