Friday 9 July 2010

Post No. 129 - Less salubrious parenting

Today the Australian media has reports on a woman who wants to be able to choose the sex of her children through IVF. This woman cannot do that in Australia (thank the Goddess!), and is going overseas to do this, despite already having three children.

How irresponsible - in fact, I consider this woman pathetic and dangerously bordering on incompetent as a parent.

Firstly, she can NOT guarantee the sex of her children even if she gets a birth which appears to be what she wants: what if they are trans - or bigendered or intersexed? (see here if you are unsure of these terms.) If her child is trans, she will have no forewarning, and what will she do then? Stop loving the child because the child has mucked up with her carefully calculated gender mix? What if one of her existing or the new child doesn't meet her definition of what a particular child should be - perhaps the child would be same sex attracted or bisexual - is she going to continue loving the child? My experience of such people is that she won't, but this one COULD, of course, be different ... maybe ... then again, she thinks sex is significant enough to try to determine from before birth, which is not a good sign.

Secondly, there are VERY good reasons for banning this: the simple fact is, in some cultures being able to do so may open the door to a variation of the appalling practice of sex-selective abortion or infanticide.

Finally, having more than replacement numbers of children in a developed nation is, in my opinion, environmentally irresponsible: we in the "first world" need to slow our population growth rate down, so we stop consuming resources at an ever increasing rate!

In my opinion, this woman is not be pitied for not being able to dictate to nature what type of family she should have: she is pitiable for thinking she should be able to do so, and it is outrageous that she should try to reinforce existing gender stereotypes in society.

I am quite sure she is telling the truth that she has a deep urge to have a female child: I consider she should either have counselling to find a way to come to terms with this, or consider adopting a female child. I'm adopted, and consider that there is NOTHING lesser about that type of family situation.

Love, light, hugs and blessings

Gnwmythr

This post's photo is yet to be posted

Tags: science, sexism, family,

First published: Friday 9th July, 2010

Last edited: Friday 9th July, 2010