Skewed Birthrates Even in America
The New York Times has posted a fascinating article stating that the Chinese (and other East Asian peoples – Japan excluded) have carried their proclivity toward male children with them to the New World. Here is an excerpt:
In general, more boys than girls are born in the United States, by a ratio of 1.05 to 1. But among American families of Chinese, Korean and Indian descent, the likelihood of having a boy increased to 1.17 to 1 if the first child was a girl, according to the Columbia economists. If the first two children were girls, the ratio for a third child was 1.51 to 1 — or about 50 percent greater — in favor of boys.
Personally, I am quite astonished at this fact. I would have thought that the tendency toward male children would be one of the first things to disappear upon arrival in the States, but that doesn’t appear to be the case at all. There is still strong familial and societal pressure for male children. Take the following excerpt. Note that the person involved is not a first generation immigrant, but was born and raised in America.
“I have two daughters and am married to an only child,” said a Chinese-American professional woman who is married to an engineer. “Early on, after the two girls were born and another two years went by and there was not a third, I found myself in the living room with four or five older relatives in a discussion of ‘Wouldn’t it be lovely for you to have a boy?’ It’s extremely uncomfortable.”
I’ve been fascinated for some time now with the massively skewed birthrates here in China – I wrote up this article about a month ago, but most of the info in it is still relevant.
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