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Women of the family are often blamed for having daughters instead of sons. Even though the gender of a child should not matter, here is an old newsflash from science: If anyone is responsible, its the men.
Women of the family are often blamed for having daughters instead of sons. Even though the gender of a child should not matter, here is an old newsflash from science: If anyone is responsible, it’s the men.
I hear my fifteen year old reading chromosomes in biology, Female = X-X and Male= X-Y.
He reads further, and I’m suddenly nostalgic. It’s been a quarter of a century, but yes, I have studied this too.
I borrow my son’s text book for a moment and check it out myself. I see a diagram with a man and woman placed adjacent, X Y marked on the man, X-X on the woman. Then follows some matching X and Y stuff, which clearly indicates, women only contribute to X chromosome. The 2nd chromosome, X or Y, what eventually decides the gender of the baby, comes from the man.
This is like long forgotten enlightenment for me, I explain this to my son as well. He nods with a, ‘Yes I Know’, kind of expression on his face.
“Don’t ever forget this.” I advise, wondering what he gathered.
At dinner, I mention the X-Y chromosome thing to my husband as well.
“Oh yeah!” he recalls for a moment and gets back to having food.
What surprises me the most is, in a fast developing country like India with more people gaining access to education and more ladies getting independent, why is this particular theory not popular enough?
I mean, a woman being blamed for birthing a girl is a known fact in our country, which unfortunately is not restricted to the illiterate. Many urban households expect the woman in question to ‘gift’ them a boy, a heir. And then many of these people I’m sure would have cleared matriculation, weren’t they taught about the chromosome thing then?
Perhaps they weren’t, but then, with the influx of social media, which is turning out to be so influential these days, is it so difficult to spread awareness about this particular fact?
An average person in India is aware of all kinds of stuff like what causes the flu, or how to reduce weight, how to keep sugar under control, smoking causes cancer and how to perhaps tackle corona for that matter.
So how come we still hold the woman responsible, conveniently forgetting the simple truth that MEN determine their child’s gender? Or somewhere along the line, have we consciously succumbed to the ever prevailing patriarchy, failing to snap back and letting them know, that HE would gift them their heir, not us.
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