THE GENDER BENDERS ; This Week MPs Said Couples Should Be Able to Choose the Sex of Their Baby. But What Would the Consequences Be for the Human Species?

HOW far would you go to be able to choose the sex of your baby – to ensure that it was a delightful little girl or a bouncing baby boy? Science has reached the stage where such choices are available to parents.

In place of fervent wishes and desperate hopes, there are fertility treatments that, in the clinical world of the modern laboratory, can fulfil your heart’s desire.

This week, it was announced that MPs in the all-party House of Commons Science and Technology Committee will recommend that parents undergoing these treatments should be allowed to choose the sex of their unborn child.

It cannot be too long, surely, before this choice is extended to couples who may not suffer infertility but who, for whatever reason, are determined to have a child of a particular sex.

This immediately prompts an intriguing question. If future generations of parents can simply mark a form that says MALE or FEMALE and thus ensure the gender of their future child, what effect will this have on society as a whole?

In the past, with nature taking its course, there has always been a close balance in the number of males and females in the population. What would happen if new parents all started choosing the same gender? Let’s say they all chose boys.

How would a future society, with several males to every female, structure itself?

Would women eventually be allowed to have more than one husband, for example? Would the surplus males form roaming bands to steal what would have become a rare commodity – a sexually active adult female? One can imagine this making an intriguing science fiction movie: but what if it became science fact?

Surprisingly, we do already have some of the answers to these questions. A close study of human sex ratios in different populations at different times in history reveals there have already been small fluctuations in the male/ female balance, and that these variations can be linked to changes in society.

Population gender statistics have been recorded in the U.S. for many years, and it is here that the most detailed studies of the subject have been made.

The U.S. Bureau of the Census records that, between 1790 and 1910, there were 105 men in the population for every 100 women.

It is reasonable to assume that Victorian Britain and much of Western Europe would have had similar population ratios.

The figures do not sound like a big difference, but with a U.S.

population standing at roughly 100 million in 1910, it would mean that there would have been five million surplus males in the country. In Britain, the numbers would have been similarly dramatic.

WHY were there so many more men than women? One reason is that, in Victorian times, there was a very high maternal mortality rate. Because of poor sanitation, large numbers of women died in pregnancy or childbirth .

The ratio was skewed further because, typically, there have always been slightly more male babies born than female. Ever since our hunting days, men have taken more risks (at work, in war, driving fast and so on) than women, and this helped keep the population in balance.

Then, from 1910 to 1970, there was a dramatic decline in the surplus of males. Improved sanitation and a better understanding of pregnancy brought down maternal mortality rates.

In Victorian times, men lived longer than women, while today women outlive men by an average of seven years.

By 1950, the male surplus had dropped to the point where the sexes were equal in number.

And, for reasons I will explain, it continued on down and down until, by 1970, there were only 95 males to 100 females.

A female surplus now exists throughout the affluent West. In America, there are nearly nine million surplus women. The same general pattern is to be found in Europe and other industrialised countries.

In other parts of the world, where sanitation has not improved and women bear the brunt of poverty, there has not been this shift towards a female surplus. In India, for example, with a population of 1,000 million, there is a male surplus of about 70 million.

The fascinating point is that these fluctuations in gender ratios that have already occurred in different parts of the world make it possible to predict what would happen if, in the future, people were able to pre- determine the gender of their babies.

If, for example, widespread gender-picking resulted in more males being born, then we should look to the social patterns of Victorian Europe and 19th century America for a model.

But if more girls were selected, we should look to modern industrialised countries. Let us first suppose that boys are on the increase. If we returned to a male surplus, this would mean that young adult women would be more highly valued as homemakers and mothers (as they were back in Victorian times), and would once again become the prized possessions of the males fortunate enough to woo them and win them.

Young women would find themselves with a wide choice of males as potential mates and, with careful selection, would be able to increase their social status when they married.

AT THE same time, we would witness the return of an oldfashioned bachelor community made up of the unlucky surplus males.

Women would have greater social power – but they would direct it towards family matters rather than towards independent careers. Old- fashioned sexual morality would reappear, with virginity and fidelity making a comeback.

Romantic love would blossom again.

Men would remain permanently attached to their wives because there would be far fewer ‘spare mates’ to turn to; but prostitution would probably flourish as an outlet for sexual frustration and boredom. All this sounds remarkably like life in bygone times, and it is tempting to say that we would never return to it after the liberations of recent decades, even if we did see a return to a male surplus in the population.

But this type of social pattern can be found today in many parts of the world – India, for example – where one can find ‘rare’ females treated as prized possessions, with strict moral codes and sexual restrictions.

It is behaviour which has nothing to do with historical periods, but with the malefavoured human sex ratio.

Now let us suppose our brave new parents were to select more and more girls (at the expense of boys). We would see a further extension of what has been happening in recent decades in the West.

If the female surplus grew even bigger, we would expect to see more and more career women and fewer stable families.

It is significant that the feminist movement gained momentum in the early Seventies – the very time when the female surplus in the West reached its peak.

With millions of women unable to find a male partner to start a family, their energies went in a new direction – towards independence and personal initiative.

The feminists no doubt thought they were influencing society, but in reality it was society’s unbalanced sex ratio that was influencing them.

Along with this new style of female ‘social freedom’ would come other changes. Marriage ties would weaken, singleparent families proliferate, sexual license grow and adultery become more commonplace.

Because there would be so many spare women around, men could play the field more easily.

It is amazing that such a simple thing as a sex ratio could lead to such dramatic social differences.

But all the evidence is there to confirm that this really is so.

It follows that the new technology – allowing future parents to determine the gender of their offspring – may, if widely used, lead us into a dramatically altered social world.

A surfeit of boy-pickers will take us back to sexually repressed, family-based Victoriana.

ON THE other hand, a surfeit of girl-pickers will thrust us onwards to an even more exaggerated version of what we already have today.

Millions more women would ignore family life and homemaking, and would strike out more and more into the realms of business, politics and public service, with sexual freedoms increasing and brief liaisons becoming more common.

If gender-picking becomes a routine feature of modern life, which do you think would be more likely: a male surplus or a female surplus?

I would guess that boys would be favoured – for a variety of reasons, including the fact that so many men want to see their family name perpetuated.

This means that if politicians do not outlaw gender-picking, they may unwittingly be regaining (in a few decades) the stricter kind of society that so many of them seem to prefer. Ironically, the only voices raised against genderpicking seem to be those of the pious and the holy.

One cleric, on hearing the news, declared: ‘Only God can choose the sex of a baby.’ If the cleric has his way, the present female- surplus sex ratio will doubtless continue in the West, and we will see a continuation of the liberal trend that is all around us today.

A question that has to be asked at this point is: why have numbers of male babies declined and numbers of female babies risen throughout the 20th and into the 21st century?

As this has happened only in industrialised countries, some aspect of industrialisation must be at the heart of the matter.

Several suggestions have been offered, the most important of which seems to be the falling male sperm count.

Since the middle of the 20th century, Western males have been producing fewer sperm, and this favours female births. One report gives the decline as 1.5 per cent per year in the U.S., and 3 per cent per year in Europe.

Males in Asia and Latin America have shown no such decline.

One of the culprits in falling sperm counts seems to be the way we package our food.

Common industrial chemicals that are widely present in our foods because of contact with various plastics have been shown to reduce testicle size and lower sperm counts in laboratory mice.

There is no reason to believe that human sperm would react in a different way. So many of the foods we buy today are shrinkwrapped for ‘hygienic’ purposes that there is hardly anything we eat that has not been in tight contact with plastic sheeting of some sort.

The chemicals we acquire from the plastics, via the food, are thought to interfere with the hormonal balance of the body, and it is this that then affects the sperm count. It’s enough to send any red-blooded male rushing to the grubbiest food market he can find.

Another source of sperm reduction is to be found among certain pesticides.

Male workers in a plant that was producing pesticides employing dioxin as an active ingredient were found to be fathering far fewer male offspring than might be expected.

When tested, the fathers were shown to have high dioxin levels. There is little doubt that this was the direct cause of their greatly reduced ability to produce male babies.

THE stress of modern living has also been given as a cause. In the male, stress increases certain pituitary secretions which, in turn, lower the levels of testosterone and boost the levels of oestrogen, which increases the likelihood of baby girls.

With all these factors working towards creating a large female surplus in modern society, it would seem that only the arrival of a major fashion for gender-picking baby boys could alter the situation.

For those parents who would like to try to influence the sex of their babies but who are not prepared to resort to laboratory techniques, there are some simpler procedures available – though none of these is 100 per cent reliable.

In fact, there are many rival books and internet websites offering all kinds of advice – some sensible, some fanciful – usually claiming success rates of between 85 per cent and 95 per cent.

Of all the suggestions made, perhaps the most useful is the one that requires the male who wants a baby boy to wear loose clothing that keeps his testicles cool; avoid ejaculation for one week before his partner’s ovulation date; and then have sex only once, until conception has had a chance to take place.

This way, he will ensure the highest possible sperm count, even in today’s low-count world.

If, instead, he wants a baby girl, then he does the opposite – tight clothing and frequent sex.

Finally, a word to those who feel we should not interfere with natural conception and that gender-picking should be banned.

The truth is that we are already interfering with natural conception with our modern, industrialised lifestyle. There is nothing ‘natural’ about stress-filled, chemical-laden cities and towns.

We humans have adapted to this as best we can, but it has artificially reduced the number of male babies born.

So while there may be ethical, moral and religious objections to sex selection, the paradox is that, by gender-picking male babies, we might recreate a more natural balance of the sexes.