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My interest in
that article was mostly about the nature of how we respond to children after
they are born, not what conditions surround their conception. As to the
theory you mention, I would very personally argue that it is wrong. But I hope we aren’t going to get into
a discussion, no matter how lively, about boxer shorts and other details,
including, how ancient Roman women reclined afterward (she said, with a fond
and bemused Mona Lisa smile). - KWC I guess what I left
out was the following assumption: (probably a shaky one) That where
there is less freq of sexual activity, either party may feel more tempted to
look elsewhere for sexual satisfaction. Thus more divorces in couples
with female gender children. Quite a stretch
but--who knows. arthur Years ago I ran across a study
which suggested that (all things being equal) the sex of the child was a
function of whether the ovum was present when the sperm arrived or whether the
sperm arrived with the ovum arriving after. The study suggested that the
latter case led to more males (by a slight number). So the greater the
frequency of sexual activity the more likely it is to have sperm present when
the ovum appears. The variable might be freq. of
intercourse with the gender of the child being the dependent variable. arthur -----Original Message----- Somedays, it is really difficult to be a Pollyanna and believe and hope
that people will tap into their better natures, and evolve towards more
positive ways of living with each other.
It doesn't have to be enlightenment or an utopian state, just better,
moving progressively forward reasonably.
Excerpts from two depressing states of realities, both an uncomfortable
notion to live with, both on topics discussed on this list. It's a Girl! (Will the Economy
Suffer?) By David Leonhardt, NYT, Business, Sunday, October 26, 2003 @ http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/26/business/yourmoney/26girl.html Looking for a distraction, the two economists sauntered out
of their offices at the University of California at Berkeley last spring and
met near the water cooler. The
economists, Gordon B. Dahl and Enrico Moretti, are both experts in a rarefied
part of the field known as econometrics. On this day, however, their
conversation quickly drifted to a wide-ranging discussion of the reasons for
the persistent wage
gap between men and women.
Could the problem stretch far beyond the workplace, they
wondered, and all the way back to childhood and the ways that parents treat boys and girls? Was it possible that even in the United
States, even in 2003, parents favor boys in a way that has lifelong
implications? One way to look for such a preference, they realized, would
be to see whether parents of girls divorced more often than parents of boys, as
has long been the case in male-centric societies like China. So the two
economists scurried back to their respective offices and, over the next three
days, did what economists do: plugged reams of data into a computer and ran
regressions, statistical speak for the search for patterns. "We thought, 'There is no way we
are going to find something systematic,' " Mr. Moretti said. "The
results were shocking." In every decade since the 1940's, couples with girls indeed
divorced more often than those with boys, United States Census Bureau data showed. The effect was not huge - just a few percentage
points - but it was unmistakable. It happened in every region of the country. It happened
among whites more than blacks and among people with only high school diplomas
more than those with college degrees. Over
the last 60 years,
parents with an only child that was a girl were 6 percent more likely to split
up than parents of a single boy. The gap rose to 8 percent for parents of two girls
versus those of two boys, 10 percent for families with three children of the
same sex and 13 percent for four. Every year, more than 10,000 American
divorces appear to stem partly from the number of girls in the family. Whatever the cause, and there are some prime suspects, the
effects are as obvious as they are pernicious. Children from divorced families
are twice as likely as other children to drop out of high school, become
parents while teenagers or be jobless as young adults, earlier studies show.
The new research makes clear that girls are bearing more than their share of these costs.
...Taken together, this research strongly suggests that the
age-old favoring of boys is not
confined to the past
or to developing countries like China and India. It is subtle and less widespread than it once
was in the United
States, but it still gives boys an important leg up. Parents, and especially fathers, appear to invest more in
their families when they include a boy. They put more money into their homes,
spending an additional $600 a year on housing, according to a study of families
with an only child by Ms. Lundberg and her colleague Elaina Rose, an associate
professor of economics. In
addition, fathers increase their workweeks by more than two hours, and their
earnings, after the birth of a first, male child. When the first child is a
girl, workweeks increase by less than an hour. ...The
preference for boys could matter a lot more in the future. Technology already permits parents to
choose a baby's sex, and as the cost of the procedure falls, it could create a
divisive social issue. For about
$3,000 on top of the usual fee for in vitro fertilization or artificial
insemination, the Genetics & IVF Institute in Fairfax, Va., will sort sperm
by weight, separating the X chromosomes, which produce girls, from the smaller
Y's. When its customers are indeed
able to become pregnant, the institute claims a 75 percent success rate for
parents who request boys and 90 percent success for those who want girls. Another
method boasts a success rate closer to 95 percent for each sex, but it is more
controversial because doctors check for gender after in vitro fertilization and
discard the embryos of the unwanted sex. "There is reliable technology for gender selection," said Dr.
Norbert Gleicher, chairman of the Centers for Human Reproduction, which has
clinics in Chicago and New York. Whether it becomes more popular "will
depend to a large degree on the political climate." >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> This below was accompanied by an editorial cartoon in my newspaper of a
couple standing on their lawn complaining about illegals piled in a truck
driving through their neighborhood, but in the second panel saying "On the
other hand, how are they going to get here to cut our lawn?" -KWC Georgie
Anne Geyer: Poll Puts Illegal Immigration At Heart Of California's Woes ALEXANDRIA, Va. -- To the traditional
American mind, there remains some question about what actually happened this
fall in the Golden (some would say "Crazy") State. A colorless and
incompetent governor? Sure, but that's hardly unique to California. A huge deficit? Hey, our present administration has us
into the $500 billions, almost all owed to the president's "enemies"
across the world,
and yet he has a humongous war chest behind him. Is there some undeclared bad mood in the country that fueled
the California recall? At an
immigration reform conference here last weekend, one of the country's most
respected pollster/analysts, Frank Luntz of The Luntz Research Companies,
released data showing that the core issue of
Californians' frustration, anger and rage at their government was illegal
immigration. In short, they felt it corrupted everything it touched
-- and they were fed up. "We found
more anger, more fear of the future, more rage than I had seen since the Newt
Gingrich campaign in 1994," Frank Luntz began. "People historically went to
California to experience something very special. There was always more hope and more future there -- except this year. They are so fed up with traffic congestion, and
hospitals where they don't get care and everyone coming across the border, that
the anger was so great they were actually punching the voting machines. "There is a rejection of the status quo
that may move eastward;
it is a rejection of politics and of principles that have failed and that have
fundamentally destroyed the state -- and immigration is at the top of it
all. The public in California has
decided it's gone too far, and they want a change." The Luntz team
polled 600 voters in California on the Oct. 7 recall day and found that 71
percent said the state was seriously on the wrong track; that stopping illegal immigration (40 percent
for stopping it) stood just behind crucial issues like the deficit, jobs and
education;
that 64 percent thought illegal immigration had had a very or somewhat negative
impact on California (compared
to equally positive responses to legal immigration); and that, by a ratio of 3-to-1, Californians
strongly or somewhat oppose the former administration's law allowing illegal
immigrants to obtain California driver's licenses. The Luntz group
further found illegal immigration to be an extremely partisan issue: While 9 percent of Republicans felt illegal
immigration had a positive impact and 72 percent of Republicans opposed
benefits for illegals, 40 percent of Democrats felt it had a positive impact
and only 36 percent of Democrats opposed such benefits. The Luntz report summed up: 1) There is a
solid belief that illegal immigration is at least partially responsible for
California's fiscal problems; 2) a sharp partisan divide exists in California
regarding immigration; and 3) the issue of immigration played an important role
in the recall election, both directly and through its impact on the economy. ... More and more, too, Americans living in
high-density illegal alien territory complain bitterly about hit-and-run drivers among the illegals. California's rate of hit-and-run
fatalities is twice the national rate, largely due to drunken driving by
unlicensed illegals. Still, what I
noted at this year's conference was not only the difference in the Luntz
polling conclusions from California, but a new urgency among immigration
control groups and individuals. As
military philosopher Victor Hanson Davis, author of the recent book
"Mexifornia," told the group: "We are in the 11th hour in
California." http://www.uexpress.com/georgieannegeyer/?uc_full_date=20031021 |
- [Futurework] Blue Monday Karen Watters Cole
- Karen Watters Cole
