Unnatural Selection by Mara Hvistendahl

Our annual non-fiction pick for Book Club was inspired by a book review at my staff meeting.  And with a very preggers Cyn around, who wouldn't want to read about "choosing boys over girls and the consequences of a world full of men"?

Enter Mara Hvistendahl's Unnatural Selection.  What began as a cultural study of why certain cultures continue to covet males over females turns into a statistical nightmare that reveals humanity's  dirtiest secret: our technology has surpassed our ability to control the repercussions of using that very same technology.

The crux of Hvistendah's is this: parents, even in modern-day societies, still have a "son preference' which leads to many families having babies until they have a bouncing baby boy.  (Do a quick, informal survey of your own: who many families do you know that have the older-girl-younger-boy makeup?  Look at single-child homes: how many are single boys versus single girls?  How many families do you know where the son is the youngest of the brood?  It's fascinating.)  In fact, this trending towards having as many kids as possible until you have a son is what led to the one-child-rule in China and the scores of abandoned female babies in other countries.
Enter technology: amniocentesis and ultrasound.  Now parents may choose to find out about any birth defects their children may have; and, if that defect happens to be the lack of a Y-chromosome, they often elect for late-term abortions.

Let me be very clear here: Hvistendahl is not anti-abortion.  The right to choose to abort a baby in the first trimester for a number of reasons (health, rape, age, etc.) is a separate issue from choosing to terminate a viable fetus well past the doctor-recommended 12-week period.  It is this blatant sex selection that is now having alarming results, with ratios of boys outnumbering girls in many places as high at 150-100.  That's a lot of frustrated men with absolutely no potential for a mate.  What's a guy to do?

Well.

That's when the real scary begins.  In this world, with few females, women are prized and commodified.  They are abducted, forced into polyandry or prostitution, used as bartering chips and are generally in grave danger.  (Would a world with significantly more females be better?  Not really - that's where harems come in).  Men with no mates take greater risks, join cults and gangs and terrorism cells.  In essence, we become lawless.

And if we don't address it right now, for every year this trend continues, it takes another 5 years in the future to regain gender balance. 

Sigh.

An absolutely riveting read that should spur tonnes of conversations. I know, at least, if did for me.