JAPANESE SURPRISE : Out with baby boys, in with baby ... girls - Ca'c ba'c o+? Nhu+.t cho i't lo+`i ba`n

[Dao Van <daotb@yahoo.com>]

NOV 24 1999

Out with baby boys, in with babes

JAPANESE SURPRISE

ISEHARA (Japan) -- Baby boys are not wanted here -- not statistically
speaking, at least. 

While Asians have long put a premium on producing male heirs, surveys
show that up to 75 per cent of young Japanese parents now prefer baby
girls. 

Daughters are seen as cuter, easier to handle, more emotionally
accessible and, ever more important in this fast-ageing society, more
likely to look after their elderly parents. 

Many Japanese are dubious about whether the current crop of female
infants will grow up to fulfil such parental hopes. 

Nevertheless, a passion for baby girls has spawned hot-selling books and
magazines, pricey new personalised advice services for sex selection,
and clinics dispensing suppository jelly -- pink to help produce girls
or green for boys -- for would-be parents trying to conceive the child
of their dreams. 

"Boys don't listen and are harder to
raise," said Ms Yumi Yamaguchi, 27. 

To improve her odds of conceiving a girl, she followed the advice in a
popular sex-selection book scrupulously and took her temperature for an
entire year before trying to become pregnant.  She sobbed with joy when
daughter Ami was born 14 months ago. 

"Boys and their mothers seem to have a
weak bond, but mothers and daughters stay close all of their lives," she
said. 

Dr Shiro Sugiyama, chairman of the Sex Selection Study Association of
Japan, which has 800 obstetricians as members, estimates that only 2 per
cent of Japanese women seeking to conceive are taking measures to select
the baby's gender. 

So far, there has been no measurable change in the sex ratio of Japanese
newborns. 

The question that concerns demographers is whether and how fast the
boy-to-girl birth rate could change. 

In 1982, a survey by the National Institute of Population and Social
Security Research in Tokyo found that of those families who wanted only
one child, 51.5 per cent wanted a boy.  But by 1987, only 37.1 per cent
wanted a boy, and by 1997 it was just 25 per cent. 

But the number of families who wanted no boys and two girls had jumped
to 13 per cent from 8.9 per cent in 1982.  Only 2.1 per cent of couples
said they wanted two boys. 

In 1994, the powerful Obstetrics Society, citing safety concerns, issued
an edict against using the most potent new sex-selection technique,
which involves separating sperm containing the heavier X chromosomes,
which produce girls, from that bearing the lighter Y chromosomes, which
produce boys, before artificial insemination or in-vitro fertilisation. 
However parents like Ms Yamaguchi said the authorities should mind their
own business.  "They should leave it up to individuals to decide such
things," she said.  "It's about to be the 21st century, after all." --
Los Angeles Times

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