Nov. 18, 1999

Pink nurseries are preferred in Osaka, but in Jaipur they're aiming for blue. Shocking statistics this week reveal that girls have emerged as the infant-of-choice in Japan, but in India they're victims of feticide (illegal abortion).

"Boys don't listen and are harder to raise," recent mother Yumi Yamaguchi explains in Monday's Los Angeles Times. "Boys and their mothers seem to have a weak bond, but mothers and daughters stay close all of their lives."

Yumi carefully monitored her body temperature for an entire year before she tried to get pregnant. When her daughter Ami was born, she sobbed with happiness.

Seventy-five percent of Japanese couples are hoping for a female offspring if they have only one child, claims a survey published by the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research in Tokyo. Sex-selection guidebooks and pH-altering vaginal jellies are flying off consumer shelves to girl-crazy parents, like Yumi.

Fifteen years ago, the Nipponese public was biased toward boys, but social and economic pressures on the island's males have helped trigger an astounding reversal. "It's tough to be a man," Yukio Nakayama, editor of My Baby magazine, admits. "There's a lot more pressure." The report claims that Japanese boys are "condemned to endure a take-no-prisoners educational system, followed by a life sentence as a faceless drone."

Hunger for girl tots is anomalous on the Asian continent, where abortions of XX-chromosome fetuses are widespread. Significant gender imbalance has resulted in many nations: China has 118 boys per 100 girls under age 5, Korea has 117 to 100, and Taiwan is 110 to 100.

The female feticide epidemic is strongest in India though, reports Monday's Agence France Presse. The northern states of Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Bihar and Haryana have lopsided girl/boy birth ratios of 8-to-10, and one district in Haryana is a scandalous, testosterone-heavy 6-to-10. UNICEF representative Alan Court worries that, "These ratios ... will create major problems for the next generation, both socially and culturally."