Baby Girls: Big in Japan

By Sonni Efron Los Angeles Times Service

ISEHARA, Japan - In a surprising repudiation of the traditional Asian values that for centuries have put a premium on producing male heirs, surveys show that up to 75 percent of young Japanese parents now prefer baby girls.

Daughters are seen as cuter, easier to handle, more emotionally accessible and, ever more important in this fast-aging society, more likely to look after their elderly parents.

Plenty of Japanese are dubious about whether the current crop of female infants will grow up to fulfill such parental hopes. Nevertheless, a passion for baby girls has spawned hot-selling books and magazines, pricey personalized advice services for sex selection and clinics dispensing suppository jelly - pink to help produce girls or green for boys - for would-be parents trying to conceive the child of their dreams.

''Boys don't listen and are harder to raise,'' said Yumi Yamaguchi, 27. To improve her odds of conceiving a girl, Mrs. Yamaguchi scrupulously followed the advice in a popular sex-selection book and took her temperature for an entire year before trying to become pregnant. She sobbed with joy when her daughter, Ami, was born 14 months ago.

''Boys and their mothers seem to have a weak bond, but mothers and daughters stay close all of their lives,'' she said.

She lives in a tiny, two-room apartment in Isehara, about 50 kilometers (30 miles) southwest of Tokyo. Her husband and his family run a lumber company. Twenty years ago, such couples usually hoped for a boy to carry on the family business and were likely to keep trying until they got one. But Mrs. Yamaguchi says that she and her husband cannot afford a second child, but even if their economic prospects improve, they will try for another girl.

Shiro Sugiyama, chairman of the Sex Selection Study Association of Japan, which has 800 obstetricians as members, estimates that only 2 percent of Japanese women seeking to conceive are taking measures to select the baby's gender. Only their thermometers know for sure, though, because many do not consult doctors on the subject.

So far, there has been no measurable change in the sex ratio of Japanese newborns. That may be explained in part by the fact that sex-selective abortion is unheard of in Japan, doctors and sociologists say.

Abortion is legal until the 22d week of pregnancy, but the Japan Society of Obstetrics and Gynecology forbids doctors to reveal the gender of a baby before then, because of concerns about gender-targeted abortions.

Demographers wonder whether and how fast the boy-to-girl birth rate might change as low birthrates fall further and the technology for selecting a baby's gender grows more reliable, cheaper and, to many people, less morally troubling than abortion.

Mr. Sugiyama, whose how-to books on sex selection have sold more than 465,000 copies in the past six years, claims that his method is about 80 percent effective. It is based on such low-tech techniques as charting the ovulation cycle using body temperature, as well as the use of a pH-altering jelly that favors survival of the sperm of choice.

Although inheritance laws in Japan no longer favor sons over daughters, and failure to produce a male heir is no longer grounds for divorce, pressure to bear sons - especially in rural areas - has not vanished altogether, according to another doctor at the clinic, Satoshi Ienaga. He said some women who have one or more girls still cite a traditional proverb, ''A bride who doesn't have a son finds her position is weak,'' to explain why they want help conceiving a boy.

Still, the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research in Tokyo has systematically documented the growing preference for girls by asking the same questions of married couples every five years. In 1982, the survey found that of those families who wanted only one child, 51.5 percent wanted a boy. But by 1987, only 37.1 percent wanted a boy, and by 1997 it was just 25 percent.

The vast majority of couples say they want two children, a boy and a girl, about the same as in 1982. But the number of families who wanted no boys and two girls jumped to 13 percent from 8.9 percent in 1982. Only 2.1 percent of couples say they want two boys.

A majority of Japanese men still prefer to have a boy if they have only one child, but most men want one child of each sex. This leads some observers to conclude that the women's yen for girls might not translate into more female births, as many men might not cooperate - in the bedroom or the doctor's office - with the sex-selection regimen chosen by their wives.

WHETHER OR NOT the girl craze produces more females, experts say it is noteworthy as an indicator of profound social change that includes a national pension system that makes male offspring less essential in providing financial support for their elderly parents, a weakening of the ancestral male-dominated family system, increasing individualism and the much-improved socioeconomic status of women.

But some people say more parents want girls because life is no longer sweet for Japanese boys. To hear them tell it, hapless male tots are condemned to endure the take-no-prisoners Japanese educational system, followed by a life sentence as a faceless corporate drone.

''It's tough to be a man,'' said Yukiko Nakayama, deputy editor of My Baby magazine. ''Even when they are little, boys have to compete. If they are bad at sports, it's a problem; if they are bad in school, it's a problem. They have to get into a good university and get a good job. There's a lot more pressure on them.

''Life is easier for girls,'' she said. ''They have more choices.''

And although society may give more choices to its daughters, expectations for sons remain unchanged.

''Mothers feel pressure to raise these boys as they always did: 'Become a good man,''' Mrs. Nakayama said. ''Of course, these pressures existed in the past, but then men had special privileges. Now the privileges are gone, but they still have all the responsibilities.''

Meanwhile, Japan is only beginning to grapple with the ethics of sex-selection technology. So far, the reaction of the medical establishment is ''go slow.''

In 1994, the obstetrics society, citing safety concerns, issued an edict against the most potent sex-selection technique, separating sperm containing the heavier X chromosomes, which produce girls, from that bearing the lighter Y chromosomes, which produce boys. Artificial insemination or in vitro fertilization can follow.

The head of the obstetrics society's ethics committee, Seichiro Fujimoto, said the edict against sperm separation was based on both safety concerns and ethical objections. ''The general feeling is that it goes against God's logic,'' he said. ''The silent majority, most Japanese, would be against it.''

Families Worldwide
75 East Fort Union Blvd.
Salt Lake City, UT 84047
USA

Fax us: USA 801/562-6008,
or Call us: USA 801/562-6185

Send comments and mail to Webmaster