It's A Girl! ART Being Used to Favor Daughters Over Sons

Matthew Yglesias points out a new micro-trend when it comes to parenting: Girls May Be The New Boys.

In the world that I study, this comes as a surprise. After looking at countries like China, where boys are the preference, and continents like Africa, where women are often treated as second class citizens, I am a bit shocked to hear that parents in the United States are actually suffering from "gender disappointment" when they find out they have given birth to a boy, instead of a girl. Not only does this go against the norms of patriarchy, it also seems grossly superficial.

Why is giving birth to one sex "better" than the other?

Ruth Shalit Barrett covers the phenomenon in an Elle story, Girl Crazy: Women Who Suffer from Gender Disappointment.

She explains that "Gender disappointment is not an official psychiatric diagnosis. It's an Internet-era label, an appellation coined by women who are bitterly unhappy about their baby's gender and who can't get over it, even after their child is born."

Now that this subculture is gaining some traction, there is of course an entire commercial industry building up around it, which comes with its own marketing agenda. There are now books on Gender Disappointment, herbal tonics and tablets intended to influence a child's sex, and a handful of fertility specialists who have no qualms about taking all the guesswork out of baby making.

For those hell-bent on having a girl instead of a boy, the best method of selection must be unnatural. Couples, even if they can get pregnant naturally, must decide to invest in Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ART), techniques, which are usually used only as a last resort by infertile couples who can't have a baby any other way.

Here are the four major methods that are being used, from the site Ingender:

• MicroSort Sperm Sorting: MicroSort is a technique for separating X and Y sperm, with a success rate of 91% for a girl, and 76% for a boy. This is the only method proved to effectively sort X and Y sperm, and is available only in the US.

• PGD, Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis: PGD is the only method which can guarantee the gender of your choice with virtually 100% accuracy, because embryos are tested for gender before being implanted in the mother's womb.

• PGH, Preimplantation Genetic Haplotyping: PGH works the same way as PGD, except that the genetic testing technique is more advanced. This is a very new variation of PGD, with the first pregnancies announced in mid-2006.

• The Ericsson Method and Sperm Spinning: The Ericsson method for sperm sorting is less expensive, and is widely available in the US in Europe. However, it is not clinically proven to increase your chances of having the desired gender, and most experts dismiss this method as ineffective.

And from these methods come the research that says: more Americans want girls instead of boys. Barrett shares research from these firms that say, "Seventy-one percent of American families who use MicroSort--which is still in clinical trials--want a daughter. The Ericsson method that Lewis used is actually more effective for selecting a boy: about 80 percent, compared with only 74 percent for a girl. But the ratio of girl-to-boy requests is as high as two to one at licensed clinics."

So what do you think of this modern-day girl fetish? As we fight for equality among men, could it be possible that women in the United States will end up outgrowing the "boys club"?

Photo credit: Zitona Flickr