What are your thoughts on one of science's latest breakthroughs that expectant parents can now pick which sex they want their child to be?

Clearly some people, a lot in fact, seem to have forgotten the John/Joan case, granted that happened after the child was born, but whose to say that the result would not be the same of the kid finds out that you screwed up who he was originally supposed to be and in the end kills himself? I could see a lot of that happening if these kids were to find out mommy and daddy decided not to let nature take its course, but they HAD to have a boy or a girl, they couldn't just take what they got and see how it turned out.

Now there are some people who compare the parents' right to do WHATEVER they want to their kid because it's THEIR kid, to owning a car and getting to pick what color it is, as if the child is nothing more than a piece of property, that is not alive, not an individual, doesn't have a soul or a personality or anything that qualifies it as a human being. Well I say those kinds of people can get back to us when their cars go off to college, get married and start a family of their own.

I mean really, if your kid found out and asked you why you didn't want what they were supposed to be, how could you answer them and not have it come out as something like 'well I just couldn't love a son as much as a daughter' or 'I just did it to see what it would be like' (there have really been people who give this answer as to why they would do it). Thinking about it from the kids' pov, your parents COULDN'T have you turn out as nature intended, they had to make sure you were born a certain way if they were going to have you at all, doesn't sound like that unconditional love crap you always hear about that parents are supposed to have for their kids regardless of what they are, do, or look like, does it?

I'm totally against it, part of being a parent is unconditionally accepting what your children are or will be. If you begin the process of parenthood on this much of a control high, it will only get worse. Take what nature gives you and love it just the same. Kids aren't designer garments.

CatEyes10736 wrote:

I'm totally against it, part of being a parent is unconditionally accepting what your children are or will be. If you begin the process of parenthood on this much of a control high, it will only get worse. Take what nature gives you and love it just the same. Kids aren't designer garments.

What next, choosing the child's eye color/height/skin tone/body type/sexual orientation? Children are a gift, they aren't a "have it your way" sandwich at Burger King.

Just about every expectant parents hopes for one over the other, but going as far as tinkering with nature to make it happen rubs me the wrong way. Take what you get and love it. You will get what was meant for you to have.

I am totally against all this pre-birth messing. I'm rather traditional on this; don't mess with nature. If you need something to help nature work right, that's fine, but doing anything to make nature work wrong is just a pandora's box.

Chris wrote:

What next, choosing the child's eye color/height/skin tone/body type/sexual orientation? Children are a gift, they aren't a "have it your way" sandwich at Burger King.

Actually that IS what they're working on also...they were saying in a few years parents will be able to pick the hair, eye and skin color of their babies. And all the time I'm thinking 'THIS is what our taxes go for?', now, the people for it will disagree, but the way I see it, if you'd go for something like that, then you must be some kind of Nazi that your child just HAS to be born with the 'right' hair and eyes, can't take a chance they might come out wrong too. HOW could anybody who would do that say of COURSE they'd love their child regardless of how it looks? Oh? Then why according to you does he HAVE to be born looking a certain way? I think it's very low when a parent more or less says they just couldn't love a child with red hair or brown eyes as much as if it was born with blonde hair and blue eyes.

I'm all for science, but sometimes....they need to just leave shit alone. This is totally ridiculous. I wouldn't support it at all.

Choosing/creating a gender for the unborn baby strikes me as "mad scientist"-esque.
Prenatal-related medical science should be restricted to making sure the baby is born healthy.

^^^^Alas, when science runs amuck, these are the consequences.

Interfering with nature but I'm not surprised it's come to this.

^^^^We've been interfering with nature for years so I am not surprised either.

I'm against it. Also, some cultures are already killing baby girls because they want only boys. If parents are allowed to chose before hand, what's going to happen in those countries? I was reading an article about this one province in India in which gender selection goes on - baby girls are killed in favour of trying again for a boy - and in the average classroom, the ratio was 6 boys to 4 girls. Just where are those boys going to find wives to have children of their own, if baby girls are killed off? Families prefer boys because boys take care of the families and girls require a dowry upon marriage. In China, I've heard that some areas are so bad that young men are committing suicide because they can't find wives due to baby girls being given up for adoption, abandoned, or killed. In some cases, as soon as a girl is born, a family with a boy around the same age will approach the girl's family and basically arrange a marriage at that point just so their son has someone to marry 20 or 30 years down the road. That's what happens when you mess with the gender balance. Things happen in nature for a reason. Out of 100 births, 51 are likely to be boys while 49 are girls, because there's a higher chance of boys dying early of various illnesses and diseases that are far more likely to affect boys. I think it has something to do with girls getting XX chromosomes and how the double X chromosomes can help balance out defects in the other X chromosome, but boys only get one X chromosome, so they're more vulnerable. I remember learning something about that way back in genetics in Bio. but it's been a long time.

Anyway, when you mess with nature, you're setting yourself up. All we need to do is look to China and India - countries that practice infanticide - to see the problems of gender imbalance. Where I live, they won't even tell you the gender of your baby unless you pay $100, as there is a concern that some cultures will abort a baby girl. I think the whole province is that way now.

Besides, I like finding out at the birth - having my friend call up and say "It's a boy" or "It's a girl". There's just something really special about that.

TSJFan4Ever wrote:

In China, I've heard that some areas are so bad that young men are committing suicide because they can't find wives due to baby girls being given up for adoption, abandoned, or killed.

And yet for some reason there is an immense pressure on our society, even by our own president, that we can't go on as our own society at our own pace, we HAVE to be able to compete with THESE kinds of people from THESE messed up societies. Tell you what, when China stops forcing needles down their babies' throats and pressuring their kids into suicide if they don't make all A's, THEN you can talk about we need to be more like them. In the meantime, it still stands of God Bless America that while we're not far off from having this option, those of us who actually have a brain won't use it because it's better to take your kids and their genders as nature sees fit, and here if you try the Chinese methods of 'wrong sex, try again', you will go to jail.

I think you must have misunderstood. I NEVER said that we need to be more like China. I'm not sure why you got that impression. I was using those examples of what happens when you mess with nature and the problems that can happen when you're allowed to chose the gender of your child. I really don't understand how you came to the conclusion that I said we need to be more like China and hold them up as examples, because that's not at ALL what I said.

I misunderstood nothing and I never said you did say it. It just seriously HONKS me off when we got our own people saying that our kids need to be more like Chinese kids, we even got our own president saying we need to change the school programs so they extend to 7 o' clock at night, open weekends and cut down on summer break so our kids can catch up to the Chinese students. Yeah, like we'd really want to be related to any of that mess.

Supernova wrote:

I misunderstood nothing and I never said you did say it. It just seriously HONKS me off when we got our own people saying that our kids need to be more like Chinese kids, we even got our own president saying we need to change the school programs so they extend to 7 o' clock at night, open weekends and cut down on summer break so our kids can catch up to the Chinese students. Yeah, like we'd really want to be related to any of that mess.

Let's be honest, that's just so parents can have a free babysitter for a longer period of time. Yeah, cut down on any free time our kids have and overwork them and I guess that is gonna make them smarter. Sure. I am sure bathing in mud for another 12 hours a week will somehow make our kids cleaner.

I agree, we don't need to be making ourselves like China. If people like it so much, go live there.

That's what I say, along with all the parents in this country who just couldn't HAVE a girl, they HAVE to have all boys because boys don't whine or get pregnant. Well then go live in China where if you get a girl you can just stick needles down her throat and get rid of her if girls are so useless and men are so valuable.

Yes we were, and I still complain about a school system that basically says 'your child can't have any life if they're going to keep up with people on the other side of the world who live by completely different rules'. We already have kindergarteners suffering from nervous breakdowns because they're given so much work in school just to keep up with standardized test scores, do you really mean to say taking away the rest of their free time is going to do them any favors?

Think about it, go to school until 7, then do homework until it's time to go to bed, go weekends, go for more time in the summer as well, are you planning on only hanging out with your friends a couple weeks out of the whole year? Then you have to factor in all the kids on sports teams and other extra curricular activities and all the time that takes away from them as well. At this rate, why don't the schools just keep the kids there 24/7 until they're graduated since being with mommy and daddy and having friends and doing fun things is just holding them back?

Nystyle709 wrote:

So it's a problem wanting our children to be as smart and better academically like the majority of Chinese students? Weren't you and your other crony just complaining about our school system?

No, that is a good goal, hence why giving kids MORE school is such a bad idea. As I said, bathing in the mud for a longer period of time isn't going to get you any cleaner. The idea is not to increase the quantity of the education but the quality of it.

Let's face it, the idea of giving kids more schooltime is nuts and will only hurt kids. So much for socialization; they'll never have time to do jack. They'll never have time to BE KIDS. And frankly, if you don't give kids time to be kids, I don't see them ever growing up.

Besides, how do we measure smartness anyway, standardized test scores? Give me a break, that's such a phony way to educate. Sorry but giving kids more schooltime is both harmful and pointless. If we want our kids to be smarter than China, we do it by increasing the QUALITY of education, not the quantity. I was complaining about the crappy school system, you're right there. So why is it such a surprise that I find making kids spend more time in it to be a stupid idea. It all comes back to my analogy, bathing in the mud longer won't get you cleaner.

Forgiveness_Man wrote:

No, that is a good goal, hence why giving kids MORE school is such a bad idea. As I said, bathing in the mud for a longer period of time isn't going to get you any cleaner. The idea is not to increase the quantity of the education but the quality of it.

Let's face it, the idea of giving kids more schooltime is nuts and will only hurt kids. So much for socialization; they'll never have time to do jack. They'll never have time to BE KIDS. And frankly, if you don't give kids time to be kids, I don't see them ever growing up.

Besides, how do we measure smartness anyway, standardized test scores? Give me a break, that's such a phony way to educate. Sorry but giving kids more schooltime is both harmful and pointless. If we want our kids to be smarter than China, we do it by increasing the QUALITY of education, not the quantity. I was complaining about the crappy school system, you're right there. So why is it such a surprise that I find making kids spend more time in it to be a stupid idea. It all comes back to my analogy, bathing in the mud longer won't get you cleaner.

FG, I've moved the discussion on this to another thread: https://conversationchamber.forumotion.net/the-alcove-general-discussion-f2/this-needs-a-thread-of-its-own-t2157.htm if you'd like to further comment there.

^^^^Ah, thanks!

You quoted my post and then went on to say:

Supernova wrote:

...Tell you what, when China stops forcing needles down their babies' throats and pressuring their kids into suicide if they don't make all A's, THEN you can talk about we need to be more like them...

It really does sound like you are addressing me, given that my post is quoted AND your comment appears to be me directed to me when you say "You can talk about we need to be more like them".

Impact wrote:

Just about every expectant parents hopes for one over the other, but going as far as tinkering with nature to make it happen rubs me the wrong way. Take what you get and love it. You will get what was meant for you to have.

Totally agreed.

Designer babies. What will they think of next?