YOU'VE FALLEN A LONG WAY, BABY

It's a Boy! Will You Marry Me? (Reuters, 5/06/03)

A woman who has a boy out of wedlock is much more likely to marry the father than if she has a girl, U.S. economists reported on Monday.

The study, by two University of Washington economists, suggests not only that men may value sons more, but that little girls are more likely to grow up poor.

The flip-side of this, which is almost never spoken of in polite company, is that girls, because they are less-valued, are also more likely to be aborted, a practice that will only accelerate as family size shrinks. Even setting aside the obvious social disruption that attends too many young men looking for too few young girls, there's an aspect of this that you'd think would have women's groups in particular concerned: if we assume men are as beastly as they say, which seems more right than wrong, what might be the fate of women in the future when, having used their position as the majority of the electorate to foist things like affirmative action on us, they decline into the minority and men determine to get even for those slights? Posted by Orrin Judd at May 6, 2003 7:17 PM