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1More and more parents around the world prefer girls to boys
The bias in favour of boys is shrinking in developing countries even as a preference for girls emerges in the rich world
June 5, 2025, The Economist
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An American couple is throwing a party to commemorate the moment when they discover what sex their unborn child will be. “It’s a boy!” they blurt out, in a TikTok video that has since gone viral. But the mother-to-be cannot feign excitement for long. Within seconds she is clutching her partner and sobbing. He reassures her that they will have a daughter at some point, before they leave the room, too upset to stay with their guests.
“Gender reveal” parties can be elaborate, with the news of what sex an expectant couple’s baby will be delivered by confetti cannons or smoke bombs, which explode in telltale pink or blue. There are breathless hashtags: #boyorgirl and #TractorsOrTiaras. But festivities that end in disappointment for the unsuspecting #boymom and pity from those attending have spawned a whole new genre on social media, “gender disappointment” videos, some of which attract millions of views. Countless posts show or describe “feeling sad you aren’t having a little girl”.
Parents around the world used to have a pronounced preference for sons. In many cultures boys traditionally inherit both the family’s name and its wealth. Indeed, sons were considered so much more desirable than daughters that many parents would choose to abort baby girls, leaving whole cohorts of children with far more boys than girls in China and India, among other places. But in recent years that preference for boys has diminished dramatically in developing countries—and signs of a bias in favour of girls are emerging in the rich world. For perhaps the first time in humanity’s long history, in many parts of the world it is boys who are increasingly seen as a burden and girls who are a boon.
In the natural course of things, there are roughly 105 male births for every 100 female ones, which appears to be an evolutionary response to higher male mortality. The rate does fluctuate somewhat, for reasons scientists do not fully understand. Male births tend to spike immediately after wars, for instance. But until the 1980s, when ultrasound became cheap enough to let most would-be parents learn the sex of a fetus, there were few ways to act on a preference for boys beyond having lots of children and coddling the male ones. And since families tended to be big, most parents would anyway end up with a mix of boys and girls.
