Customer Reviews

Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Mara Hvistendahl's story of the worldwide horror of gender selection favoring baby boys is riveting. She has clearly traveled the globe to reach tiny rural pockets where this abuse thrives as well as its corollary issues of sex trafficking and bride buying for the generation of men coming of age with far fewer women to pair off with. The stories of the people affected are moving in a very human way, but her scope extends far beyond that to the complicated political history that engendered this problem, which involves the US in ways that are quite shocking. And she delves into the complex issues arising from a young, single male-dominated society, such as the one that flourished in the American frontier. This is a very thoughtful, multifaceted, and compelling book.

As I started reading this book, I had been pondering Wall Street's idiotic behavior of recent years yet again, and I don't think it's a coincidence that as I made my way through the pages of Hvistendahl's impeccably-researched tome I began to recognize some parallels. What happens when we are reluctant to admit that some of our most closely-held beliefs might have an ugly underside? (In Hvistendahl's, it's the right to abortion as a cornerstone of a woman's right to control her fertility; on Wall Street, it's the right to pursue profits of all kinds, regardless of the risk) Why don't we acknowledge that simply because something is legal, and reasonable for one person to do, that doesn't mean everyone can do it without the gravest potential consequences? (It's OK for one person to select the sex of their unborn child, or to buy a $500,000 house with a weird mortgage, no down payment and an income of only $30,000 a year, but when a significant number of people do so, the balance is no longer sustainable.) Above all, why can't we recognize that just because we can do something, practically and legally, that doesn't mean that we should? Why can't we learn to think about the wider context and just say no?

Admittedly, Hvistendahl doesn't get that philosophical in her excellent book. What she is trying to do is show just how badly out of whack birth rates have become not just in countries like India and China (where the preference for boys has already been well documented) but also Korea, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Albania. And, she worries, this is likely to spread to other countries as the level of affluence grows together with the wide availability of the technology that is needed to verify the gender of a fetus -- before aborting it if it's a girl. Don't think for a moment that cultural mores about the value of human life will stop them from doing so, she warns -- she provides evidence that in some of the worst offenders, such as China, abortion was traditionally thought of as heinous and not viewed in matter-of-fact terms, at the time the transition began. Hvistendahl doesn't stop with diagnosing the problem, but extends her analysis to the early signs of how male-dominated societies appear to function: ironically, women are less valued as individuals and viewed only as scarce sexual partners; those who can't find wives or partners in Taiwan and China venture to neighboring countries and buy or even kidnap brides, forcing them into marriage or prostitution.

This thought-provoking book made me wonder and ponder what happens when multiple cherished ideals collide. We want, for instance, a "sustainable" planet, not one where everyone sets out to maximize the number of children they have. At the same time, we want women to be able to control their fertility -- to have that right. And we cherish the idea of personal freedom. But what happens when these are incompatible? Hvistendahl looks at the panic of the 1950s and 1960s, when under the influence of U.S. population control "experts", governments cracked down on their citizens' fertility using forced abortions and forced sterilizations -- ironic, given that affluence has led people to voluntarily restrict the size of their families. Now the problem is the opposite one: how to tell people that their single child can't be a boy; that they can't select what gender child they have but must put up with what comes along. Not surprisingly, no government has been willing to grasp that thorny challenge. Rules banning sex-selective abortions are honored only in principle, not in practice in nations like India.

The kind of world that is created when there are seven men for every five women (or whatever ratio emerges) is likely to be an ugly one, Hvistendahl argues, convincingly and with considerable data. And until we see the impact of our individual decisions decades from now -- when the problem will be far worse -- we're not likely to do anything about it. (Global warming, anyone?) And the challenges are significant. Already, Hvistendahl notes that activists are using sex-selective abortions as a way to try and remove the access of all women to any king of abortion. The intentions were good -- give parents a way to ensure they'd have a boy early on in their reproductive careers, and they'd have fewer children trying -- but ended up fitting in poorly with the reality that parents were ready to limit family size anyway.

This is a book that is straightforward and simple -- no scientific or statistical terms to make you wrinkle your brows in puzzlement -- and that ultimately I couldn't put down as I became just as caught up in the narrative as I would have been in any thriller. While the fundamental facts behind her analysis aren't that startling, what Hvistendahl does with them is: she examines the data with a critical eye and draws lessons from it, even as she shows the reader what it means for real people on a day to day basis. She writes with style and panache, and at the same time never lets her own anger and frustration overtake her reason.

The only point at which she fails to do justice to her argument is in a few pages late in the book, when she attempts to argue -- awkwardly -- that the level of violence in U.S. society has something to do with the male-dominated frontier traditions of the 19th and early 20th centuries (when women were scarce) and their prevalence in popular culture. I looked for evidence -- she is scrupulous when providing proof of her theories everywhere else -- but beyond the data of the demographic makeup of the frontier societies during the Gold Rush, etc., Hvistendahl doesn't bother providing facts supporting this part of her theory. (There's no study showing that men who commit violent acts have a disproportionate fondness for TV shows or movies set in the old West, for instance.) That sloppiness stands in odd contrast to her punctilious approach in the rest of the book, and is the reason I can't give more than 4.5 stars to the book -- but I'm rounding it up anyway.

The reason I bumped this to the top of my "must read" list? Well, I stumbled across an article in the Daily Telegraph about Indian parents paying surgeons to turn healthy baby girls, whose gender is very clear at birth, into baby boys -- albeit sterile baby boys. (This isn't the same as taking a child born with confusing genitalia into one or the other gender -- a very rare condition.) In their quest for boy children, parents, it seems will not only abort a six-month fetus but put their baby girls through unnecessary and dangerous surgery...

Full disclosure: I won a copy of this book in a publisher giveaway.

Mara Hvistendahl makes an interesting point. It is evident that easy availability of abortion clinics (Marie Stopes) and of ultra-sound diagnostic tests has helped make it easier for Indians to get rid of unborn daughters with less fuss and qualms than before. Secondly, the Government's vigorous promotion of a two-child family norm and its wide-spread social acceptance would tempt many into 'ensuring' they had a son while sticking to the two-child norm. Kishore Mahbubani (Can Asians Think?) has also pointed to the influence that Aid agencies and rich nations exercised over population control in Asian nations. This appears to be true - for India at least.

However, the preference for sons over daughters appears to an ancient one, and widely reflected in Hindu literature and mythology. King Pandu, in Mahabharat, asks only for sons and ends up with five. His elder brother, Dhritarashtra has 100 sons, and only one daughter. King Dashrath has four children in old age - all sons. King Sagar has 60,001 children - all male. Ultrasound technology probably means that what was once sought as a divine boon is now available over the counter, for a few thousand rupees.

The shortage of women in ancient India may also be corroborated by the practice of bride-price, which was later condemned as uncivilized behaviour, amounting to sale of daughters.

Secondly, mid-wives in India had a versatile tool-kit for killing off unwanted children (whether illegitimate sons or merely female). This indigenous technology certainly did not come from the West. However, it worked only when the child was born.

To counter this, the smritis (codes of conduct) recommended social ostracism for those who aborted a foetus. This stigma, possibly never very strong, appears to have been completely extinguished by the Government's vigorous, no-questions-asked promotion of abortions.

All in all, Ms. Hvistendahl argument is valid to the extent it helps us understand that it is not just local culture that is to blame for this ongoing silent genocide in Asia. Rich Western nations may also have some blood on their hands, when it comes to killing of the never-born.

The breadth and depth of research, the complex nuance of the argument and the stunning writing make this book one of the best non-fiction works I've read in years. It also demonstrates what long-form narrative journalism may achieve when given the space and resources to do so.

What is the result when combining the genes of journalism and literature? Answer: Mara Hvistendahl. Her first book, Unnatural Selection, is investigative journalism at its best introducing the reader to a world-wide problem with dire yet unimaginable consequences. The mined data than soars to the heights of literature as the reader accompanies the author on the back of a motor scooter into the Mekong Delta to visit with parents who have sold a daughter to be the wife of a stranger and maybe his brothers as well. The book is creating more than a stir as people come to grips with well intentioned but unforeseen consequences of the past. It is a book that won't be forgotten. Mara has emerged on the literary stage as an author whose further offerings are already eagerly awaited.

The book was often one sided and superficial. I have no doubt that sex selection, male or female, is unethical and fraught with negative consequences, as partially outlined by Hvistendahl. I agree that it should be outlawed internationally, and that better enforcement of existing laws is essential. However, clearly there is more to reversing this phenomenon than simply making it illegal and punishing those involved. We need to address the reasons that boys are preferred in the first place. Hvistendahl did not offer a clear explanation for why parents prefer boys to girls in societies around the world and what we can do to increase the value of women. To me, that is the obvious solution.

The research was often lacking. I was left with more questions than answers. For example, I wonder what the fate would be of millions of unwanted children (girls). For the women who were sold into arranged marriages, what was their alternative? What would their lives have been like otherwise? Some idea of the other side would have been helpful.

I also wonder how much truth there is to the statement that "After years of penalties for out-of-quota births, incentivized sterilizations, and forced abortions, Korean women had finally given in and stopped having children." That seems like an overly simplified explanation for a much more complex social phenomenon. Births rates have fallen to similar levels in many countries without those forces at play. The birth rate in the Ukraine currently is 1.12 children per woman and in Greece 1.25 children per woman; these countries are historically and culturally different from each other and from South Korea.

I wasn't taking notes as I read, and there were many other times when I disagreed with Hvistendahl or felt that she was rushing to conclusions without all the facts. Strangely reading the book took me from thinking that this is a horrible phenomenon to wondering if it's not just a trend that will eventually correct itself as societies realize the consequences. I'm not sure. Ultimately I felt like Hvistendahl herself was being a doomsayer even as she criticizes others for being doomsayers.

Very well written and researched. Chronicles the practice of sex selection abortion and infanticide through history. Emphasis on the unintended impact of sonograms on sex selection abortion. Particularly interesting is the possibility of the restrictive family size rules in communist China may have been caused by capitalists in the West. Moreover, the author is sympathetic to abortion "rights," but has written a work with very good information to use in the debate against abortion.

This is an excellent work of shoe leather journalism and timely popularized sociology. Our multi-lingual author has put together and summarized a lot of interviews and research, to explain how (mostly) Asia has gotten itself into its current demographic fix of being top-heavy with males.

One need not altogether buy into her assertion that onerous 19th Century British rule in India led to that country's devaluing of female infants. I mean, waves of invasions have swept over the sub-continent time out of mind, so I doubt that the East India Co. was all that different or worse than what had come many times before. The more likely explanation is that much of what we in the pampered First World consider to be human nature is really the thin, brittle overlay of Western Civilization. Much of the rest of the world's hinterlands do not have Charles Dickens and his sentimental vision of childhood.

But Dr. Hvistendahl paints a damning and irrefutable picture of how Western NGOs of decades past, possessed with fear of overpopulation, pushed large scale birth control efforts onto the developing world. These efforts were copied by many Third World nations, along with so many other ideas and innovations of the West, as they hoped to jump start the modernization of their countries. Couple access to modern medicine, traditional preferences for boys, and lack of respect for human rights, and you get abominations like China's one child policy, and worse abominations like female-specific abortion. The resulting demographic bulge of males is the mother, so to speak, of all unintended consequences.

Dr. Hvistendahl also convincingly argues that a scarcity of females will not lead to empowered women picking and choosing their mates, but rather an increase in female trafficking and subjugation, as men fight over "their" now valuable "assets". She includes some cases of real victims, to indicate the horror that will soon escalate.

Dr. Hvistendahl does present a few scattered success stories, of a sort. South Korea has corrected its sex ratio imbalance by simply ceasing to have children at all, as attested by the sky-high abortion rates there. She also honestly grapples with the bind that family planning NGOs are in--how to preserve women's rights to abortion, but persuade them to forswear female infant abortion. The problem may well turn out to be Gordian. No matter what policies are enacted now, the blunt fact is that Asia will in coming decades have tens of millions of unmarriageable young men. Whether this will lead to the world's biggest crime wave, the world's biggest armies, or the world's biggest online gaming conventions can only be guessed at.

A pretty great book about a massive problem looming in the worlds future. A generation of female Asians from China, India, South Korea, Vietnam and Taiwan are "missing" and by that I mean 130 million of them have been aborted. These countries have predominately selected male children over female children and as a result a large segment of them have been killed off in a few successive generations and trends show this will continue. Mara states that the traditional view of these cultures being backward or overly sexist cant account for the sheer number and opportunity these countries have had in accomplishing this.

She blames western governments and private companies for funding "over population" scare campaigns and forced family planning laws. Which these Asian governments took up enthusiastically because of all the funds and nation building help that came with these population control packages.

Mara goes on to show a few social problems that have resulted. The first being increased sex trafficking and massive prostitution rings being seeded from countries with balanced populations or communities into these ones devoid of a female presence. It also led to roving bands of young men in China who commit crimes and are obsessed with violence and rape fantasies because of the general lack of women around. In South Korea it has led to a large population of older people than younger people who cant re-enter the work force to fix the countries growing economic problems.

She ends the book on the ironic note that Americans unlike the rest of the world seem to prefer having Female children when given the choice.

As much as I liked this book, I did have two major disagreements. The first disagreement, wont really weaken her cases, in fact I think it will help her case. The arguments made by her opposition throughout this book rest on the fact that over population is a problem. I don't believe over population is a problem, I don't think it has ever adequately even been framed in such a way as to show how over population itself can be seen to be bad.

The idea of over population as the author points out was a concern brought to western civilization through the writings of Thomas Malthus, whose works supposedly showed that due to an ever increasing population the existing agricultural system would not be able to handle the burgeoning population explosion brought on by the then in its infancy industrial revolution. The only thing was Malthus was dead wrong, the problem with his figures was that they relied on a feudal system of agriculture that itself was quickly subsumed into the industrial apparatus and processes. Eliminating many of the concerns his idea of over population rested upon rather then having a massive population with too little resources the United Kingdom, the country he lived in at the time came to have an over abundance of resources and a slew of new innovative distribution systems brought on by capital and factorization of workplace that made the concerns of starving feudal peasants a thing of the past.

Malthus main concerns rested on the idea that famines and diseases would occur that would disrupt the already fragile agricultural system. A concern echoed by the Author who wrote Population Bomb almost two hundred years later. The problem is famines don't occur in largely industrialized capitalist countries they happen in feudalistic countries that rely on central planning as an economic system. Take two of the largest famines in history the Irish "potato" famine and the Chinese five year plan. The Irish famine didn't occur because of over population concerns and a lack of birth control, they happened because the British mercantilism that was forced upon the Irish displaced thousands of farmers and working peasants in favor of colonizing Scots and English. That not only took the land and food from the Irish in some of the most populated areas of the country they sent the fruits of these new found resources back home and the wealth they earned from them impoverishing Ireland in favor of the UK. When food shortages then occurred due to harsh winters and other seasons the illusion of a famine had been perpetuated by the already strained distributive structure of the forced mercantile economy on the still mostly feudal Irish land mass. Causing starvation and many other problems. The same can be said of the five year plan, where starving Chinese farmers were forced to grow crops that yielded profits rather then vital resources to their communities because of a forced attempt at Chinese modernization by the Maoist regime. Many people died because they couldn't grow what they actually needed and hence the problem was not one of over population but a lack of resources for the existing population. Getting rid of either Irish or Chinese will not help because the situation with either will not resolve itself until the distribution system is replaced by one that makes feasible the task of getting necessary resources to populations that need them. The most efficient in history thus far being capitalism.

So the problem was not sociological but rather political and economical in the special cases that Malthus and others have cited in needing to curb populations. Just think further about china as an example, which did worst Taiwan and Hong Kong or mainland china? Hong Kong is merely a speck in the sea but through creative entrepreneurial and technological forces it has managed to allocate its resources and keep its insanely high and dense population compared to western areas of the same geographical size from being a sociological threat in any regard. The same can be said for Taiwan. Again the main difference between them and mainland China is not one of culture or population, it is one of recent political and economic history.

The definition of over population is further muddled when you consider the fact that historically, modern times are an anomaly. As shown by the works of biohistorians like Jared Diamond and William McNeill the last century was the only time in recorded history when the population level universally started to go up. We know from census held in Europe in particular from Hellenic age on through the modern age, large scale pandemics due to expanding trade routes and an almost constant state of war between the territories during the various ages. The problem throughout history has never been over population, the populations of humans around the world were fighting an almost constant battle to stay above water and not be in a net negative of population growth. If you don't think disease plays a significant factor in curbing population growth consider the fact the Bubonic plague killed seventy five million people in medieval Europe and similar smaller pandemics occurred before that. Consider further that ninety percent of the population of native Americans was killed off only a few years after the first Spanish contact with those continents due to things as small as the common cold in Europe. A sign of a positive population count is a distinct sign of progress. So is not utterly destroying the environment around the cities we create in the same way that Athens, Arcadia, machu pichu and Rome partly were. We now have an ability those great ancient cities of the past didn't to renew and make useful for ourselves and other organisms the environment around us. Whether we will actually follow through with that is more of a concern to me then population control.

My final knock against over population as an ideas is what exactly is the measure of a population being out of control? As has been stated by many, all of humanity can fit itself into one state in the US and we would still have free space in the state for more people. That will only get easier as technology in the fields of agriculture, medicine, architecture, greener cities and general environmental control grow easier to handle. So what constitutes being over populated in terms of world geography as the people in this book arguing for population control clamor for?

I'm not only asking that to be a dick, but lets pretend for a second that everything ever said about over population is true. What would be the circumstances that signify an end to over population? If I take Malthusian terms to be the case that has already happened, so are those in the population bomb. So what constitutes stability in the minds of people who support this as a serious social concern? If you do happen to support population controls and you're reading this, send me an email or a comment explaining this if you like.

Humans shouldn't worry about over population, they should worry about real environmental and medical concerns and making more efficient our resource distribution systems so that resources can adequately reach existing populations rather then trying to find ingenious ways of killing off thousands of humans over a concern that isn't founded on anything substantial. I don't just take claims of the world being over populated as a an agreed upon statement and I'm not sure given the flimsy history of the intellectual ideas supporting it why anyone has.

My second problem is that Mara's claim that these policies that lead to less female were wholly technological and political policy laden with help with the west, seems to not answer the central question of why did they prefer males over females in the first place? Yes the book highlights the often ignored process that led to the catastrophe, but motive is not the same as opportunity in highlighting this she didn't have to downplay the sexist aspects of some of these cultures. To say that it plays no role in a country like China where someones self worth is so much tied into the merits of their gender and the males perceived ability to take care of his parents better then a female could I would say has quite a lot to do with why this has occurred. Also considering the fact that since china despite rapid industrialization like most of these countries is still primarily agrarian and feudal in the majority of its outlying structure which makes boys inherently more valuable for farm work, sometimes the only work available to the uneducated in these countries. There are of course all the religious reasons tied into Vedic and Confucians ideas of social roles. I think this has as much to do with their motives of wanting boys as things she listed Americans wanting girls over. The sexism can be put to the side while she explains the process and the reason why reform measures on a culture level wont work, but it still leaves her ability to answer the question of why these societies wanted sexual selection in the first place unanswered.

I would compound this with the fact that, to some extent evolutionary psychology would agree with the feminist view of these societies stratified sexist views. The motive is more apparent and substantiated then she might actually want us to believe here.

That being said, if I could select for a nice young child, it would be like Mara Hvistendahl. I kid, but lets get serious. A great book that was sometimes hard to read because of the emotional and seemingly horrid nature in which this system of mass female genocide has developed. I would highly recommend it.

This was a very well written and thought provoking book. The author sheds light on a topic that for whatever reason does't get the attention it deserves. Good mix of science, economics and storytelling.