Maid in China

I have a beautiful goddaughter who was adopted by her Canadian mother at an agency in rural China. The girl, now aged 11, was found abandoned in a ditch, probably either the unwanted result of a first pregnancy or the product of a forbidden subsequent pregnancy.

In China, it's one kid per couple, at least for most.

The orphanage where my goddaughter was warehoused was filled with baby girls, although I know of a few boys that were exported.

For a while there, it seemed as if China was using its unwanted girl babies as a big fat source of foreign currency. There was even talk of a ''lost generation'' of girls.

There, like in so many other places throughout history, girl babies are not as valued as boys. And why is that? Because the society is structured to give boys more rights than girls. It's a catch-22 sort of situation.

In some places, as soon as the parents know the fetus is female, they arrange for an abortion. This has become a big thing in India, for example. The availability of abortion and the advent of ultrasound technology has probably been among the reasons the number of girls available for adoption from China has decreased.

I can hear it now, from the usual suspects: How do I,  as a proponent of reproductive choices, feel about sex-selective abortion?

Not great since I would rather that abortions were never necessary. But I expect that that, as genetic testing improves, more and more people will make the decision to end pregnancies based on everything from sex to disabilities to sexual orientation.

And, as the great-aunt of a charming little girl with Down Syndrome, that makes me sad.

When it comes to sex though, no matter how you look at it, it is still part of that anti-woman culture that continues to exist in much of the world.

The people who devalue girls and don't terminate the pregnancies would, in most cases, rob their daughters of all choices, raising them in environments where they'd get little or no education and married off at tender ages.

Girls never get an even break.

But back to China where, now, the boy-girl gap has reached epic proportions, according to the New York Times.

BEIJING — A bias in favor of male offspring has left China with 32 million more boys under the age of 20 than girls, creating “an imminent generation of excess men,” a study released Friday said.

For the next 20 years, China will have increasingly more men than women of reproductive age, according to the paper, which was published online by the British Medical Journal. “Nothing can be done now to prevent this,” the researchers said.

Chinese government planners have long known that the urge of couples to have sons was skewing the gender balance of the population. But the study, by two Chinese university professors and a London researcher, provides some of the first hard data on the extent of the disparity and the factors contributing to it.

In 2005 , they found, births of boys in China exceeded births of girls by more than 1.1 million. There were 120 boys born for every 100 girls.

This disparity seems to surpass that of any other country, they said — a finding, they wrote, that was perhaps unsurprising in light of China’s one-child policy.

They attributed the imbalance almost entirely to couples’ decisions to abort female fetuses.

The trend toward more male than female children intensified steadily after 1986, they said, as ultrasound tests and abortion became more available. “Sex-selective abortion accounts for almost all the excess males,” the paper said.

The researchers, who analyzed data from a 2005 census, said the disparity was widest among children ages 1 to 4, a sign that the greatest imbalances among the adult population lie ahead. They also found more distortion in provinces that allow rural couples a second child if the first is a girl, or in cases of hardship.

Those couples were determined to ensure they had at least one son, the researchers noted. Among children born second, there were 143 boys for 100 girls, the data showed.

The inevitable result? A lot of testosterone run amok.

The Chinese government is openly concerned “about the consequences of large numbers of excess men for social stability and security,” the researchers said.

The mind boggles at the consequences.

This is sexism taken to its extreme conclusion.

There will be hell to pay.

Comments

[jb]

Just to play devil's advocate, isn't there an up side here for the women of China? If there aren't enough women to go around, then the competition will be fierce and the men will have to treat women really well in an effort to win them and keep them, since the women will have a huge choice and be able to walk away from any man who doesn't treat her well and find another, better partner. I know, I know, that implies that the men have not all been brought up to be egotistical, misogynist, macho idiots, but some of the more intelligent ones may catch on, right?

[sooey]

Gee, why aren't Mark Steyn et al over in China protesting against mandatory abortions? Oh right, because they're as anti-choice when it comes to female reproduction (i.e. women's human rights) as is the Chinese government.

[The Stygian and his Shemitish Dogs]

Esteemed and Beautiful Moderator, jb (hopefully not as in most Slavic languages),

So what WILL all these surplus young men do? Invade Russia? or try and reassert China's dominance over Central Asia?

Sooey Sweetie,

Individually, we can't cover everything on our own, and, inevitably, some of us are more interested in some topics than others, but I can assure you that a lot of us do protest what is going on in China . . .

[johnnykap]

"I know, I know, that implies that the men have not all been brought up to be egotistical, misogynist, macho idiots, but some of the more intelligent ones may catch on, right?"

jb, you fit right in with Antonia's gang here, with your implication, which is seen in virtually every commercial on tv, that all men are idiots and are overbearing misogynists.

Your point, however, could only be understood from a female perspective. Put yourself in a man's shoes: why would a group that is superior physically, financially, etc, give up the way they are simply bc there are less females available? Wouldn't they ratchet up their existing (successful) behavior to attain the available remaining females?

Oh, you liberals and your unintended consequences.