A Boy or a Girl?  A Boy for Sure??!!!

 Perhaps the Dark Ages are so named because it was in this time that negative values and general ignorance were spread to various parts of life.  Now we dismiss as unacceptable any value that is different from what we know and live.  This custom of ours is an old relic.  It is a phenomenon which has been revisited across the ages, amongst various peoples.  It is the phenomena of: “Do you want a boy or a girl?  Of course I want a boy.”

Social studies and research institutions agree that there are two causes for this (“I want a boy”) phenomenon.  No one hates his child when she is a girl.  However, the circumstances women live under make many fathers hope that the next generation will be boys and just boys.  Yet, at the same time today many are convinced that the girl, not the boy, has become the backbone and main support for her family, as the difficulties of life make boys interested in other things.  Perhaps most families desire their oldest child to be male.  This desire we have inherited from the ignorant, agricultural patriarchies of the orient, who saw the male as the main supporter of his family in their work and their needs.

Between past and present: a connection

From the past until now, and for people who have lived with this old mentality, the woman who bore a girl felt that she brought shame to the family.  Tribal women slapped their cheeks and ripped at their breasts, and a man’s face became black after he heard he had a girl, not a boy.  When a girl was born, the option was to kill her (or bury her, in the correct words) or for the mother to stay in the cycle of birthing, and to give birth every year until she had given birth to more male than female babies.

Boys mean reverence from the others, and they mean physical strength to protect the tribe.  Traditionally, the same woman who is ignored and whose existence is denied will become mother, sister, wife, or lover, and without her society will become unbalanced.

What about us?

Today, negative traditions still influence us.  The same patriarchy renews itself in its rejection of God’s path and wisdom.  We could hope that if a man today received the news that a baby girl was born, he would be more noble in his behavior, and he wouldn’t kill her as was done in the Dark Ages.  But at the same time, the man is not interested in what the girl gives him, so he doesn’t share with his wife in her happiness that she gave birth to a soul from God, and the man forgets that he is a father.  He doesn’t recognize the meaning of a mother’s nine months of labor and pain.  The oment of birth stays a moment of happiness for the mother because of her child, but the man does not see this. 

I met a woman at the gynecologist’s office-- she was there to get test results telling her if she would have a boy or a girl.  Surprisingly, the third pregnancy came back also a girl.  The woman’s mother became unhappy and she said to her daughter,  “your luck is not better than your mother’s.”  The woman will continue her life upset, not because of the child she has, but because society will call her the mother of just girls.  Another woman told me that in her first pregnancy, the nurse grabbed her husband by his shoulders and took him out of the room to tell him alone that fate brought him a girl, as if what God gives us is a shame, and as if I can choose the sex of my baby.  Another woman told me six months ago that in her first months of pregnancy, she went on a special diet with her husband to control the sex of the embryo.  She did this to make her husband stay with her because he threatened to marry again if she didn't have a boy this time. 

Another woman tried to have a boy after eight girls, but unfortunately when she had a boy on the eighth pregnancy, he came out deformed.   Though the doctor advised her to get rid of the embryo, she did not listen.  After eight years of pain, she said "What I lived with my deformed boy is more than what I went through in bringing up my girls.  All that because I wanted a boy and I didn't thank God blessing that I have girls, flowers of my life."   

I asked a gynecologist about her behavior as a doctor with women who want a boy, and how she speaks with honesty about the sex of their child.  She assured me that  news of a girl upsets many women and many of them leave the office and go to another doctor.  She continued: “What medical advice we have to give, we give, and the rest is left to fate.  Because of our patriarchal society and the old traditions and customs, I say to you and truly most women want boys I will tell you a secret, I am a gynecologist and God gave me six girls and I continued to try until God gave me a boy, and a lot of women do this with out any recognition of the negative affect this has on their health and society and on life which becomes more difficult day after day.” 

Lava Khaled