Family Systems And The Preferred Sex Of Children Research Paper

To understand why some societies have strong son preference while others do not, we need to examine the gap between sons’ and daughters’ ability to contribute to the physical, emotional, and financial well-being of their parental household—as this is the unit primarily responsible for making and implementing decisions about childbearing and childrearing. This gap is determined largely by kinship systems, which specify clearly defined roles for different categories of family members. In most societies, it is possible for women to maintain mutually supportive relations with their parental household even after marriage, making for little difference in the value of girls and boys to their parents. However, in other societies women’s links with their parental household are largely severed at marriage and sons are enjoined to care for their parents—making it clearly more attractive for parents to rear sons instead of daughters. Gender-appropriate roles are also decided, to a lesser extent, by other norms—such as religious beliefs and injunctions, which can, for example, discourage women from participating in the labor market and thus reduce their ability to help their parents financially.

In this research paper we review the broad features of family systems in different cultural regions of the developing world to describe how far daughters are in a position to contribute to parental well-being—both in absolute terms, and relative to what is expected from sons. We then explore how these sex preferences are reflected quantitatively in survey data on family-building desires and in measures of excess female child mortality.

2. Family Systems

The strongest son preference is evident in societies which are rigidly patrilineal and patrilocal. Patrilineality implies that group membership and productive assets are passed on through the male line. Patrilocality implies that it is normative for a woman to take up residence with her husband’s family after marriage—often outside her parental village. In these societies, in which both inheritance and marriage rules are heavily weighted in favor of men, women have little economic independence or autonomy. Furthermore, since daughters move away from their birth homes after marriage, parents can have little expectation of subsequent physical or emotional sustenance from them since they are not living in close proximity. Even if women are educated and employed, the fruits of their labor are monopolized by their husband’s family, and parents cannot claim a share of their daughters’ earnings. On the other hand, a son is expected to provide his parents with economic security and insurance. He is also expected to bring in a daughter-in-law who will take care of his parents’ physical needs in their old age. In these societies, women also gain in prestige and status if they bear sons to continue the family line, so both women and men have a strong interest in producing sons.

In some patrilineal societies, there are additional norms which increase the burden to parents of raising daughters. Religious beliefs and social customs such as dowry and ‘purdah’ serve as further instruments of patriarchal control, and reinforce son preference. Furthermore, family honor often depends on the purity of patriarchal descent, which requires ensuring women’s sexual purity. This often entails secluding women from outside activities—which implies reduced income-earning opportunities—and marrying them off at young ages, before they have had a chance to develop into independent people.

In contrast, where kinship rules and norms make fewer distinctions between males and females, women have greater voice in the household and in public spaces, and face fewer constraints in becoming independent economic and social actors. In these societies, women are not constrained from providing old-age support to parents, and are valued accordingly.

2.1 South And East Asia

Much of South Asia displays the patterns of patrilineal and patrilocal kinship systems. This is especially strong in the northern part of the subcontinent. The widespread practice of dowry payments constitutes a drain on family resources, further raising the relative cost of a daughter (Miller 1981). In Bangladesh, as in much of the rest of the subcontinent, daughters are perceived as burdens due to the custom of dowry and their limited income opportunities, while sons are preferred due to their higher earning potential (Muhuri and Preston 1991).

Much of East Asia is also characterized by rigidly patrilineal kinship organization, although in recent decades women have become educated along with men and have been active in the industrial labor force. Patrilineality is most pronounced in South Korea and amongst the majority Han population of China (Goodkind 1996). Moreover, it is believed that only sons can give their parents the crucial support they need in their afterlife, to prevent their being hungry spirits for eternity. This puts additional pressure on people to have sons even if pension plans and other mechanisms for providing for one’s old age are in place, as they cannot provide for the afterlife—this can only be done by sons. (Japan is an exception to the East Asian pattern, practicing a very flexible form of patrilineal kinship organization which permits daughters under many circumstances effectively to substitute for sons; Nakane 1967.)

However, in Kerala and Sri Lanka, kinship systems allow women greater flexibility to interact with their parents after marriage than in the north (Dyson and Moore 1983). Village endogamy and cross-cousin marriages are favored, allowing women to live closer to their parents. Women sometimes transfer and inherit property as well. Thus there is considerable scope for mutually supportive relations between a married woman and her parental household.

2.2 Southeast Asia

Most Southeast Asian societies have bilateral kinship systems, which allow people to maintain strong links with both their family of birth and their family of marriage. Reciprocal obligations and expectations are more flexible than in strongly patrilineal societies. In much of Southeast Asia—as in Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines, for example—women have traditionally had considerable social and economic autonomy, playing a significant role in marketing and other independent income-generating activities. This makes it possible for them to provide old-age support for their parents should it be needed. In some cases, daughters are the main source of support—in Northern Thailand, for example, the norm is for newly married couples to live with the wife’s parents for some years, and for the last daughter to stay on and inherit the land and house after the parents’ death (Limanonda 1995). Although Islam has been actively practiced in several of these societies for some centuries, this had relatively little impact on traditional kinship systems, as documented for Malaysia (Kling 1995).

On the other hand, the Chinese populations of Southeast Asia—including those in Malaysia and Singapore—display patrilineal and patriarchal kin-ship systems ( Wongboonsin and Ruffolo 1994). Vietnam is an interesting amalgam of kinship systems, with strongly patrilineal values stemming from the incursion of Confucian ideologies from the north, superimposed on more bilateral Southeast Asian kinship systems, resulting in moderate levels of son preference (Goodkind 1994). As in China, sons alone can perform traditional rights of ancestor worship.

2.3 Middle East And North Africa

North Africa and the Middle East are characterized by patrilineal systems in that the family line is traced through males, but people are permitted to marry within their lineage, including cousins. This means that women often live in close proximity to their own parents, and can be a source of physical and emotional support to them. Economic reasons for son preference also do not appear to be strong—in Egypt, for example, parents value the labor of both sons and daughters, marriage expenses may actually be higher for males, and daughters can remain close to their parents after marriage (Makinson 1986). There are significant groups of educated and employed women in most of these countries, especially amongst the middle classes (Rostam-Kayali 1999).

However, the extent to which daughters can provide material support is constrained by the norms of Islam and the Arab family, whereby the husbands are the dominant decision makers in the household and most women are discouraged from active participation in the world outside the home (Obermeyer 1995). Normative pressures for bearing sons is strong, and women derive social status while men continue their name and lineage through sons. Overall, women are not as well placed as in Southeast Asia to contribute to their parental households, but not nearly as constrained from doing so as in East Asia and the northern parts of South Asia—making for moderate rather than strong son preference in the region.

2.4 Sub-Saharan Africa

Sub-Saharan Africa includes societies which are patrilineal, bilateral, and matrilineal. Despite these apparent differences, they have a great deal in common in terms of gender relations. Men tend to be dominant in the household—even in several of the matrilineal societies, property is passed through the female line, but from men to men (Kevane and Gray 1996). However, conjugal bonds in sub-Saharan Africa are weaker than in South Asia, and women have a higher degree of economic independence (Cain 1984). They have freedom to remarry upon divorce or widowhood (Bledsoe 1990). Marriage often involves bride-price from the groom to the kin of the prospective bride, rather than dowry (Oppong 1987).

Women typically function easily as independent economic actors who can operate comfortably in public arenas—whether as self-employed market women, or as managers of their own farm plots. In several West African societies, women are very active traders and are completely accustomed to being the mainstay of the household, through marital union and dissolution. There is substantial flexibility in terms of those whom people can choose to live with and support, and parents have little reason to be desperate about old-age support if they do not have sons. Hence, one is unlikely to see strong preferences for children of a particular sex on the part of parents.

2.5 Latin America

Central and South American societies are formed from the confluence of many different ethnic groups, each with their own customs and social organization. For all their differences, however, these societies derive from cultures which are not heavily patrilineal or gender differentiated. The dominant culture is that of those of European origin, mixed with those of sub-Saharan African origin, neither of which place rigid constraints on women’s participation in public life and interaction with their parental household. The Latin American family structure allows women a high degree of female autonomy. The conjugal bond is weaker than in countries of South Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa (Cain 1984). Childbearing outside formal marriage or stable unions is common, and women may spend much of their reproductive lives in consensual unions with men. Economic dependence of women on men is inconsistent with such family patterns. The result is that there is a strong tradition of male machismo, but there are few rigid rules constraining women from participating actively in social and economic life, or from helping their parents. Thus, there is little reason to expect strong gender preferences among parents—and whether or not they receive support from daughters is a matter of choice and circumstance, rather than one of custom and ability.

3. Quantitative Evidence Of Son Preference

Son preference is manifested in quantitative data in various ways. In this section, we focus on two measures—survey data on desire for additional children by number and sex of living children, and the sex ratios of children across developing countries—to examine the correspondence between family systems and these measures of revealed son preference.

As an indicator of sex preference among currently married nonpregnant women, the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) asked respondents whether or not they wanted another child, by sex distribution of their living children. The results from the latest available country studies are reproduced in Table 1, for women with two and three living children of the same sex. (This indicator is limited in that it focuses on a selected sample of women with a specific number of children rather than on the entire population of women of childbearing age, but is suggestive, nonetheless.) Son preference is indicated if, for a given number of children, a lower percentage of women wanted an additional child if all their children were sons, as compared with if they were all daughters. The number of children at which such preferences manifest themselves depends on the overall level of fertility in the country—it is only when people approach their desired family size that they are compelled to make decisions on additional childbearing to achieve their desired sex composition. Thus, where overall levels of fertility are high—as in some countries of South Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa, for example—gender preferences manifest themselves at higher numbers of children than where fertility levels are low.

Another way to measure sex preference is to examine the sex ratios of children aged below five years (Fig. 1). This reflects the extent to which the stated preference for sons actually translates into significant levels of excess female child mortality. Excess female child mortality can result from discrimination before birth (sex-selective abortion), at birth (female infanticide), and during early childhood (most commonly through neglect in providing timely health care). These are all motivated by the desire to rear more sons than daughters, and which method is used depends largely on the technological choices available.

There is no single ‘expected’ ratio of boys to girls, as this depends on the level of mortality. The observed sex ratio at birth is around 1.05 on average, and excess male mortality in early infancy is the biological norm ( Waldron 1998). A recent study of 82 developing countries that had populations in excess of a million in 1990 confirms that mortality among male infants (aged below a year) is higher than that of females, the median sex ratio of infant mortality being 1.18— although actual figures vary around this median, with lower ratios in societies with higher life expectancy (United Nations Secretariat 1998). In the age-group one to four, the median sex ratio of child mortality is about 1. Based on this information, sex ratios among children aged zero to 4 can be expected to be below 1.05, on average. We have used a cut-off ratio of 1.045 (see Fig. 1), and sex ratios above this expected value can be viewed as indicative of excess female child mortality. The higher the observed sex ratio above this cut-off, the stronger the manifestation of son preference.

The data presented in Table 1 and Fig. 1 are consistent with the broad regional differences in family systems outlined above. In Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, and Southeast Asia, where there is a higher degree of female autonomy, there is little consistent evidence of son preference in either juvenile sex ratios or desire for additional children. In Latin America, there are actually instances of a mild preference for daughters, in countries such as Colombia, Trinidad and Tobago, and Paraguay (Table 1).

On the other hand, in regions of the world where patrilineal and patrilocal family systems prevail, the data reveal a distinct preference for sons. Son preference in the desire for additional children is evident in all countries in the Middle East and North Africa, and even more strongly in South Asia, at a parity of 2 (Table 1). (Since the DHS surveys were not conducted in East Asia, these observations are missing from the table.) These preferences are strengthened at a parity of 3—reflecting that in high-fertility regions, son preferences are more evident at higher parities. (Only Sri Lanka in South Asia displays a different pattern; see Table 1.) These regions, along with China and South Korea in East Asia, have distinctly higher juvenile sex ratios than average as well—suggesting excess female mortality (Fig. 1).

Estimates indicate that in China and South Korea, around 7 percent of girls were ‘missing’ in 1990 on account of excess prenatal or postnatal mortality (Das Gupta et al. 1997). Globally, estimates indicate that there are between 60 and 100 million fewer women than there would be in the absence of gender discrimination—mostly in South and East Asia (Coale 1991, Klasen 1994, Sen 1992). (These estimates are based on comparing the actual sex ratio of the population against the sex ratio that would theoretically exist in the absence of gender discrimination.)

Since China and India are large countries with considerable cultural heterogeneity, it is instructive to look at province-level data (Fig. 2). This shows patterns which accord further with the description of family systems above. In India, the northwest shows sex ratios as excessively masculine as South Korea and the mainstream Han-populated provinces of China. South India shows less discrimination against girls, as do the interior provinces of China, where minority ethnic groups are clustered. Thus the strongest evidence of excess female child mortality is from the regions of East and South Asia characterized by rigidly patrilineal kinship systems. Similar consistency between kinship systems and son preference is evident in the data from Malaysia, where the Malays with their Southeast Asian patterns of bilateral kinship show little sign of excess female child mortality, while the Chinese and Indians show it clearly (Goodkind 1996).

4. Other Factors Affecting Son Preference

Although son preference is culturally determined, the extent to which the preferences within a given society are translated into actual discrimination against daughters is influenced by the pressures operating on parents at a given point in time. Such pressures can take many forms. For example, in times of adverse income shocks, investment in girls may suffer more than investment in boys. (See, for example, Behrman and Knowles 1998 for Vietnam, which suggests that the income elasticity of investment in daughters is higher than that of investing in sons. This implies that if household income falls, discrimination against daughters will rise.) It is not that parents are unwilling to invest in children, but that they would prefer to invest less in daughters who will be subsequently lost to them.

External crises, such as famine and war, increase the pressures on parents to discriminate against daughters, as the difficulties of nurturing all household members rise and harsher choices have to be made. Fig. 3 shows how the extent of actual discrimination against girls was affected by wars and famines in China and South Korea during this century (Das Gupta and Li 1999). (China experienced many severe crises during the twentieth century—during the first half of the century, civil war and invasion in China led to an enormous amount of disruption, which was followed by the famine of 1959–61.) The South Korean data show a massive deficit of males associated with the loss of young men during the Korean War in the early 1950s, followed by a rise in sex ratios as fertility declined.

Fertility decline also adds to the pressures to discriminate against daughters. When parents desire a smaller number of children, this further limits the number of daughters they would like to rear. If, for example, they want to have no more than two children, and the first is a girl, they are under severe pressure to ensure that the next is not a girl. Thus child sex ratios were observed to become more masculine when fertility declined significantly in India, China, and South Korea (Das Gupta et al. 1997).

5. Conclusions

This research paper provides a broad overview of family systems in the developing world, and how they influence sex preference for children. In general, evidence for son preference is strongest where women are not in a position to contribute to the well-being of the family.

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