It can be done with IVF and “sperm sorting” (X sperm and Y sperm apparently behave in slightly different ways).
In places like India and China, sex selection more typically takes the form of doing ultrasounds during the pregnancy to determine the fetus’s sex and then aborting a female fetus. There are signs that this is going to lead to some major social/demographic problems in the near future because there are now not enough surviving girls for all the boys in these cultures to find wives.
Nope. There are several methods.
And the family property.
Not so much “historically” as “right now”. Historically, female children were actually preferred more than they are now, in part because they had a better chance of being able to help their family by marrying a rich man than a boy had of being able to do the same by his own labor. In the past for example, it was males who were the typical targets of infanticide among the general population, while female infanticide was practiced mainly among the wealthy. As opposed to the present pattern of females being targeted at all strata of society. Societies where dowries are expected to be bestowed upon girls also tend to regard them as less desirable.
There’s a definite strong economic factor in which if any gender is desired.
Weird. There hasn’t been a boy born in my family in 36 years, and I’ve always hoped the trend continues with me. I had two little sisters, two little girl cousins, and for some reason most of the kids I’ve babysat in my life have been girls too. I like girls/women more and relate to them much better than boys/men generally. Older boys and young men make me very anxious with their often aggressive, violent, and insanely risky behavior. Sometimes I worry I would have trouble parenting a son, if I had one.
I’m interested in adoption/fostering, and I have read before that prospective adoptive (American) families show strong a preference for girls, while it’s the opposite for biological children.
I remember the doctor saying, so do you want to know what the sex is? And when I heard it was a girl, I burst into tears …with joy. If it had been a boy, I would have cried in despair. I honestly don’t know what I would have done with a boy. I can’t relate to all that boy stuff - their toy trucks, their videogames, the mandatory Little League and football and…and stuff…I would have turned him over to his father to raise, or I would have raised him as a girl. 
. So far, my girl hasn’t run off with anyone, though since she moved out and got a car, I really don’t know what she’s up to. I have to look at her Facebook page to see what’s going on.
When my wife and I have kids I hope our first is a boy. I don’t know, to me it seems more right to have an eldest as a son.
One of my older friends on Facebook:
“Who the fuck is Justin Beiber?”
“He’s some singer that girls love”
“See, I have nothing but boys so I only have to know cool things, like all the X-Men and transformers”
eta: oh, and the odds are you aren’t going to have to hear, “But daddy, I love him.”
I think we solved the sex selection in the US question.
I don’t think it’s anymore complicated than this.
Do you have a cite for the historical female preference? And for what continents? I haven’t researched it but I’m 99% sure it’s never been true for China, Japan, Korean and most of Asia.
No, but a boy grew up and lured girls from craiglist into a hotel. Where he murdered them… So, boys and girls both have their cons.
Funny, while most people seem to say they want boys. I notice people treat their daughters better.
In many cultures it’s not subconscious. It’s traditional for the son to support his parents in their old age, and for the daughter to support her HUSBAND’s parents. So if a couple do not have at least one boy, they will be in serious economic trouble eventually. This is the big problem in China, where despite modernization many people still cling to traditions.
Google “former Republican Congressman Mark Foley” and it will all become clear.
Not “going to lead”, there is already a clear gender imbalance in China leading to serious mating problems (don’t have my cites on that handy).
Not surprising among the uneducated and working classes. But I get the impression in educated middle and upper middle classes on up in the US that most families want “one of each”, order irrelevant.
Girls are more rare on both sides of my family; including me there are 14 cousins and 4 are girls. Girls were and are prayed and hoped for, not boys.
I absolutely thought that, too. When I found out that my second child was a boy, I was stunned. I wasn’t disappointed, per se, just kind of…confused. (Yeah, I know, I had a 50% chance, but it never occurred to me that I would have a boy).
Fast forward to today, though…I cannot imagine life without my little guy. He was the absolute perfect addition to our family and he’s my little buddy. He loves me with such enthusiasm and sweetness and joy—the other day he said to me, “Mom, I ten million six hundred love you.”
My daughter is much more likely to view Little League and football as “mandatory”. She hasn’t worn a dress in 3 years and doesn’t even currently own one. It’s much more about the kid than about the sex.
OTOH, even if it’s rarer, many parents won’t be too happy to hear their son saying “But daddy, I love him”
This!..and I don’t have to fix anyone’s hair but my own. 
I would have welcomed a daughter, and thought about having more kids to try for one. It just wasn’t meant to be, though, and I can live happily with that.
- Mother of three boys
This has been hinted at in some posts, but I think there’s a widespread perception that boys are easier to raise and I wonder how much of a factor that is.
They each come with their own personality. There is absolutely no guarantee that that personality is going to match up with your ideas about what boys or girls should do, no matter what the gender of the kid.
Even if you get the gender you wanted, there’s no guarantee that the kid’s mental gender is going to match their physical gender, or that they’re going to have the sexual orientation you expect. Gay, lesbian, bi, and transgender people do exist, and do have parents, just like everybody else.
My mom thought computerized toys were “for boys” (I remember her using those words when I asked for one). She was always, always on my case to dress more “femininely” when I was a teenager. I grew up to work in computing and spend most of my time wearing polo shirts or T-shirts. I really doubt this is what she expected when she heard “it’s a girl” for the first time.