Son Preference

Son preference refers to a general preference by an individual or a group for male offspring over female offspring. Son preference may be evidenced by female infanticide, sperm sorting, or female fetus abortion, or it may simply exist as a psychological preference. Even a psychological preference may have an impact on the lives of offspring: preferred male offspring may be given more and better food, greater access to health care services, or greater access to education, for example.

Son preference is both a historical and a contemporary phenomenon. Historically, evidence of son preference exists for many civilizations, including ancient Greece, Rome, India, China, Japan, Korea, and Europe. The same is true for Arab and Native American civilizations, Australian aboriginal society, and historical Polynesia. In the twenty-first century, son preference exists in a prevalent fashion only in China, Taiwan, Korea, India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nepal, and a few other locations in Asia. Nevertheless, son preference as a psychological construct is still prevalent worldwide, sometimes with the life of boys accorded greater value than the life of girls, but more often manifested in greater parental investment in boys than in girls.

Son preference in a society can also lead to a more limited set of life possibilities for women, and so it may result in phenomena such as higher suicide rates for women of childbearing age. Son preference can also lead to difficulties attendant to the resulting surplus of young males that results. For example, studies estimate that by 2020, 12 to 15 percent of young adult males in China and India will not be able to marry within their society because too few women will be available.

Contemporary customary practices of son preference are illegal in every society in which they occur. However, enforcement of the law in the face of entrenched social preference is quite difficult. Despite national alarm in both China and India, studies report that together in 2001 there were statistically missing about 80 million women from their populations. Normal birth sex ratios range from 105 to 107 boys born for every 100 girls born, but China's birth sex ratio is officially 119 to 100 and is no doubt in reality higher, and India's birth sex ratio is approximately 113 to 100, reflecting the increasing use of fetal sex identification techniques, such as ultrasound, since the mid-1980s. In 2004, the Chinese government announced a nationwide campaign to improve the status of girls and normalize the birth sex ratio by 2010.

The causes of son preference are many and include factors such as patrilocality, religious beliefs concerning the status of women, the value of women's labor in agriculture (or lack thereof), government policies (such as the one-child policy in China), and ideas of caste purity and hypergyny.