To get away from this who is better stuff, it strikes me that this cloud has a silver lining in limiting population growth. That is a function of the number of females in the population, not males, so a reduced number of females reduces the number of children. Also, it seems that many parents kept having children until they got a boy, so guaranteeing a boy first would reduce the number of girls. I believe this since my mother was one of four girls in her family until my grandmother said no more. I see the downside (I have two daughters and so can feel virtuous) but maybe this will turn out to be good for the planet.
So what would you have done if your daughter had wanted toys trucks, video games and Little League? None of the girls in the last two generations of our family has been into dolls, dresses or nail polish, but most of them have played teams sports, taken part in dirt clod wars, and built go-karts.
Dammit! Beat me to it!
There’s a sense of connection in being able to trace your family name, a sense of identity. We often go by our last names, at least in some circumstances. It’s much easier to look back six generations of “Andersons” rather than “Moms Dad was Grandpa Baker, but her mother’s dad was Great-Grandpa Carter. Carter’s wife’s father was GGGrandpa Donaldson.” Etc. (Just to look at the male progenitors, since I am male. YMMV.)
But for my family, the trend is the reverse - keep having boys until a girl pops out.
Male here, if I had kids (not by lack of trying, as my father pointed out a few weeks ago on his birthday, but not my choice), I’d rather deal with a girl – they seem much more comprehensible to me than some raging little man-brat raising hell. I’d have to hire a wife or nanny for all the “insert tampon here” thing, though. That would be very uncomfortable for me to explain, whereas with a little Mannlein, you can just say, “Ah, just clean it, boy, then fix my car’s tires with your new blowtorch, then take 'er for a spin [throws keys to zit-faced little punk].”