To say why not use IVF to choose the sex of a baby?

[Poppycattlepetal]

If people could save up for the IVF required, just don't see who else's business is it if they have a boy or a girl baby, really?

It seems U that we are not legally allowed to try for this in Britain. Clearly, we'd not all choose boys. See this mother of five sons in the Indy today: www.independent.co.uk/news/science/ban-on-sex-selection-of-ivf-embryos-is-not-justified-says-ethicist-8683940.html

It is allowed in US to do this, and you don't hear of a population imbalance over there. Just what seems like an incannily high proportion of celebrities who have twins, one of each!

I do get the issues about things being very different in other countries where there can be a cultural pressure to have sons of course. And i'm only talking about methods used before pregnancy begins. And obviously this would have to be genuinely freely chosen. Just feel that as the majority in the UK doesn't share any particular preference, why not let the people who do really mind, have the choice?

MrButtercat
What I was getting at was that the IVF / ICSI process just replaces the conception process that would happen if the infertility problem didn't exist. It doesn't do anything else. You can't select your child's sex naturally and I don't think you should be able to in the process that replaces that natural process.

I bet your children are very glad that you are their mum and bugger what was naturally meant in that respect.

That's all true, MrButtercat, but I don't think it has much to do with the wisdom or otherwise of choosing the sex of a baby.

(although perhaps you are responding to 1 or 2 odd opinions on this thread specifically about IVF...)

But here in the UK fortunately the same social pressures are not in play
Oh I hope you are right that certain ethnic communities in the UK are not already resorting to pre implantation sperm spinning and all the other techniques to ensure they have boys
but I suspect you are not

Sorry haven't read the whole thread.

I wonder though how it feels to be yet another girl/boy at the end of a long line of the same sex when the parents desperately what the opposite and if fact the only reason they had you at all was in the hope you might be a girl/boy. I always feel so sorry for the baby (never the parent) in cases like this and I feel very sorry for the younger children of the mum linked, greeted with disappointment at birth. Does that carry on for the child's whole life? Has anyone answered this up thread?

Another question I would like to know the answer to is why it matters so much what gender the baby is?

For what it's worth I would be very anti sex selection.

Chaz we don't currently have life cycle, from conception to death, "seen in nature". We use technology in all sorts of ways to thwart nature's attempts at natural selection. Is it wrong of us to do that? To keep some people alive that "nature" would not permit? Or to stop some from being born that "nature's course" would have alive?

We bandy around this idea of human actions as being somehow outside nature, rather than a product of it. It's a misconception that allows people to draw arbitary lines about what is permissable and what isn't. I strongly believe we should have evidence of harm before we ban something - especially something that is done relatively sparingly as this is - there is plenty of time to watch and step in before harm is done to the public good. And it may be that by letting people follow their own consciounce we find the public good is enhanced.

I think the 'evidence of harm' is that, leaving aside medical reasons, there is no sensible reason to select a child's sex.

Nobody has said anything on this thread to make me believe anything other than that parents think that by selecting their child's sex they can choose a certain kind of child. This is not possible, therefore why let people do something that is misguided?

I would change my mind if anybody could provide a sensible reason.

Emmeline
I would ask why is it a good thing to allow people to select the sex of their child (other than for medical reasons)?

Intervening to save someone's life arguably is a good thing both on an idividual and social level.

individual not idividual

How will you find out if something can be beneficial or not if you don't allow it? If there aren't benefits, if people don't get what they are after out of it (as many people here keep claiming they won't), then it is unlikely to continue as a practice.

I do think there is good in ensuring children aren't born into a family unwanted. However much I disagree with why a particular sex may not be wanted, I really abhore the idea of people being brought up in families that don't want them because of arbitary rules imposed by the state.

I think there is also good in a general sense (e.g. in the absence of harm) in allowing people to plan and act on those plans whether you or I perceive their reasoning to be valid or not, and similarly I think there is nothing wrong with people following their whims.

But there is no guarantee that the child would match up to the parent's image of the child they wanted just because they were a particular sex.

There has still been no coherent explanation of why you would do this. When you have a child you have to be open to whatever they will be - LGBT, with mental or physical differences, tall, short, academic or not, prepared to give you grandchildren or not or emigrating to Australia when they are 18.

The odds of successful ICSI or IVF are depressingly low. They're expensive, up to 3months per session & flood your body with aggressive hormones/drugs to take over your system.
No-one in their right mind would decide to attempt treatment lightly.

It's clearly not a good thing to do, mainly for the message it send sout about gender equality in the wider world as PPs have said.

FWIW I have three children, the first two were the same sex and so of course everyone assumed I would want the third child to be the opposite sex. We didn't mind what we had and didn't find out but because everyone was always asking what I preferred we did chat about it a bit. I'm maybe not the best person to ask since I really don't think sex has much influence on personality. The only arguments we could come up with were as follows:

ARGUMENTS FOR THIRD CHILD BEING THE SAME
Could reuse favourite non-gender neutral clothing given as presents (the stuff I buy is as gender neutral as I can manage)
sharing of bedroom

ARGUMENTS FOR THIRD CHILD BEING DIFFERENT
Get to use favourite name for other gender
Can't be accused of not knowing what it's like to parent the other gender

And, em, that's it. Can't say either list was very strong either way and certainly not enough to go through IVF for.

The only person I know this remotely applies to is a collegue who had 4MC's (girls) until she had a boy naturally in her 30s.
After 4failed ICSI attempts over as many years I think this threads really disappointing!

Excellent posts merrymouse. I can't see how choosing the sex helps in the least - it is the personality that counts. If you have a certain image of a girl in your mind, or an image of a boy, then the odds are that you will be disappointed.

merrymouse Tue 09-Jul-13 18:07:42
^I think the 'evidence of harm' is that, leaving aside medical reasons, there is no sensible reason to select a child's sex.

Nobody has said anything on this thread to make me believe anything other than that parents think that by selecting their child's sex they can choose a certain kind of child. This is not possible, therefore why let people do something that is misguided?

I would change my mind if anybody could provide a sensible reason.^

OK, I haven't read the whole thread, so these points may have been said already.

1. People who have had extremely difficult and abusive upbringings quite often want to avoid (or even dread) having the same family 'pattern' as in their birth family. Some are relieved at having a different pattern (eg a girl first instead of a boy) and some deliberately engineer a different family mix - eg by having three children rather than one, etc. I have had this conversation with several people in this situation, so I think it's quite a common feeling.

2. Parents who have lost a child sometimes want another child of the same sex (or they very much want the other sex).

You could argue that they should all have counselling instead. I think these are valid reasons for wanting a child of a certain sex, though.

I think that they should have the counselling- your scenarios seem to be placing expectations on the DC.

I agree that that's a possibility in scenario 2, exotic, where the parents want a child of the same sex (though I don't think it's necessarily the case even then). But wanting a child of the opposite sex isn't, I think...?

In scenario 1, I really don't think it is the case - it's more about a ritual / symbolic break with the past.

I think that all cases need counselling. I agree that wanting a 'replacement' of the same sex is worse, but actively avoiding it isn't healthy either.
In case 1- it might help break the pattern, but it is by no means sure. The problem is within the parent and not the child.

Yes, of course the problem is within the parent not the child. But I think these are still valid reasons.

I do know a couple who have a child of the opposite sex to the child that died. I don't know how they feel, but the extended family are mightily relieved... I think mainly because it avoids the freight of expectation on that child.

Re scenario 1, it's about a 'symbolic' breaking of the pattern - not per se a way to avoid the pattern being repeated.

Anyway, just wanted to throw out these examples that are not about sexism...

It does not seem right to want to choose the sex of your child. I can understand that some parents have a preference.

You only have to look at the problems brought in China and India.

This article from 2010 puts it very well, I think.

"And then the real clincher: wasn't sex selection for the benefit of the parents, rather than of the child? The report noted that, among some respondents, "The view was that it is one thing to wish to have a child of one sex rather than the other and another thing to take steps to bring it about, since positive intervention in this area changes one's relationship to the outcome, replacing hopes with expectations? Respect for the future child's value as an individual precludes the exercise of control by parents over the kind of child it is to be, including over its sex."

www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/apr/03/sex-selection-babies

The article is very interesting and concludes....

"But at the heart of this debate remains the fact that every child, while belonging to one sexual group or another, is unique. When you have a child, you open yourself to that uniqueness ? our most intimate of relationships is with a person who starts out unknown to us.

So you choose your child's sex at a price. You compromise a little bit of that unknownness. You chip away at the idea of their uniqueness. And when you do have your baby, you don't get a generic girl. You get Susan. Or Jane. Or Eleanor.

Or Ted.

It is the end of the day and I've just collected Ted, the younger of my two sons, from his school. In the car, I tell him I've been writing about people choosing the sex of their children.

He says, "What did you want?"

"I don't know," I reply. Of course I know. "Before you were born, Granny used to say you'd be 'a little brown-eyed sister for Sam'. And then out came Ted!"

I look at my lovely son. Brown hair, freckles, lunch stains down his front, shirt hanging out. He's fiddling with the radio controls. He always fiddles.

He says, "I mean, if you had a baby now?"

"Well, of course I'd want a girl!"

He says, "Hmm."

"Girls are less trouble, you know."

"Yeah," he says. "But boys are funner.""

I don't think that it is a valid reason, Katherina, the parent has a problem- looking to gender selection to solve it isn't the answer.

Very true, ItalianGreyhound. It is the uniqueness - and that is nothing to do with gender.

I don't think people who want a particular sex necessarily want a particular type of child other than to specify the sex. Nor do they necessarily have more ingrained or stronger ideas about natural sex differences or appropriate gender behaviour than most parents who don't have a preference.

People with ingrained ideas about "boys" or "girls" will treat whatever baby they have in accordance with those ideas. They will have expectations of their child based on those ideas. The fact they haven't chosen the sex doesn't mean they won't treat them in a sexist manner and ignore the "uniqueness" of their child.

katherina I agree with others that, having chosen the sex, the problems would still be there,unresolved, in both cases.

I know we all have false expectations of parenting and who our children will be. Perhaps nobody would become a parent at all if they had accurate foresight of everything it would entail.

However, believing that you can control the experience in this way is, to be honest, delusional.

Sexist parents will be sexist. Yes. That is true.

That doesn't mean we should give people what they want on the basis of "they'll be sexist anyway". I believe that having had the opportunity to choose the sex of the child will encourage them to believe that they were "right" in wat they wanted and that the child must therefore perform the role they have designated for them.

I can't think of a single non-sexist reason for wanting to choose the sex of your child (genetic conditions aside).