"Jamie Oliver has son at 4th attempt"...

[TheOldestCat]

...or so says The Daily Telegraph today (printed edition).

Am I alone in finding this vile?

I don't usually get riled at things, but what does that say about his daughters? They were just an attempt to sire the all-important son and heir? What crap.

Not that gender preference is a crime, of course, but to act like someone having two or three babies of one gender before having one of the opposite sex makes the first ones failed attempts has made me feel sick.

Sparky, your description of the women in hospital 'blaming' themselves is particularly sad as the sex of a baby is actually all down to the father!

I think the headline was poorly phrased too.

yep Amelia[nodding]-i know.
these men didnt think this though.
i also knew a family where there was only one boy and a few girls.

at mealtimes-the boy and hes dad got all the best food and bigger portions!

I have 4 girls (plus two m/c's) and find Jamie Oliver's attitude quite sad, I don't think a father is missing out any by raising girls. Dp gets negative comments about being outnumbered on a regular basis but it hasn't made him desperate for a son, we would love a 5th but the sex would be unimportant.

"Interestingly, there was a programme on Radio 4 the other morning (it could have been WH) in which they were discussing China's one child policy. Because of the restriction, parents are only to invest emotionally and financially in one child,and this had led to the status of daughters being raised. That was really heartening to hear."

But the main side-effect of the One Child Policy was that a whole generation of baby girls were aborted/killed at birth/abandoned.

I do get it. I have four boys and I would have loved a daughter. I doesn't really matter, of course and I would never want my boys to know about it but sometimes I see things like this when buying nappies for ds4 and I do get a little pang! So then I go and buy something like this instead to cheer myself up. Costs me a fortune!

I think Jamie did let it slip after the third little girl was born and Jools was annoyed with him!

I'm one of 4 and my mum didn't like people to think she had 'tried' for a boy or was disappointed by girls, so when asked about us she used to say 'I have 4 chidren - a girl, a boy, and two girls'. The larger the family the more likely people are to think you have kept breeding purely to have a child of one sex or the other, and she hated people thinking her girls were just 'attempts' for a boy. She's not very feminist at all but in this regard she obviously felt she had a point to make!