Girls just want to have boys

‘If my next child’s a boy, I’ll stop. If not, then I’ll keep trying until I get one.’ These words weren’t spoken by an Asian or Indian woman, desperate to give her husband an heir, but by a white woman, upper-middle-class and married to an investment banker. She spoke from the cosy confines of her flat in Hampstead two months after giving birth to her first child, a girl. Of course, she loves her daughter and she is a wonderful mother. Still, there it is: the disappointment that she didn’t bear a boy.

This was not the first time I had met someone disappointed not to have a boy. A cousin of mine wept after his wife gave birth to their first, a girl; a former colleague wore blue the entire time she was pregnant, only to have a daughter; and my own father recently divulged that he was temporarily upset after I was born — me, his lovely daughter.

You can imagine my surprise at hearing this for the first time in my early thirties. After the shock passed I was struck by the timing of his confession. The revelation, and others like it, came after the birth of my son. Walking around with a little male hanging off me has encouraged other parents to reveal an uncomfortable truth: the preference for boy babies is still very much alive. For all the talk of equal rights and equal opportunities, the West seems to be holding fast to traditional thinking about sons. It’s the last bastion of sexism.

Since I gave birth I’ve met couples who can’t wait for the 20-week scan to find out if they’re having a boy. So persistent was one woman that she booked extra ultrasounds because the baby kept hiding his bits (he turned out to be a ‘he’ after all).