By Anya Kamenetz – Most would-be parents prefer boys, not girls. Is part of the trouble, dare we say, a branding problem–one that advertising could solve?

On December 11, according to my doctors’ best guesstimate, I am due to give birth to a baby girl. My husband and I couldn’t be happier. Most parents, however? They’d rather have a boy.

It may not be surprising that there’s a lingering preference for baby boys over baby girls worldwide. What’s alarming, however, is that this global inclination is manifesting more strongly than ever. Historically, when nature is allowed to determine sex all on its own, about 105 boys are born for every 100 girls (and because women live longer, the ratio of people on the planet evens out over time, even tilting slightly toward females). But the balance of nature has shifted in Asia, thanks to wider availability of affordable ultrasound equipment, which detects gender as early as 15 weeks, and widespread abortion. In China, after 30-plus years of the country’s One Child Policy, the ratio of boys to girls is a highly unnatural 120:100 (it’s even reached 150:100 in one province). In India, 109 boys are born for every 100 girls. Demographers calculate that roughly 160 million Asian females have gone what they euphemistically categorize as “missing.” There’s growing evidence that this pattern of sex selection is being followed in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, and similar trends seem likely in Africa and the Middle East.

Lest we think this is some sort of second- and third-world predicament, it turns out boys are still No. 1 in the United States too. A 2011 Gallup poll revealed that if American men between the ages of 18 and 49 could have only one child, 54% would want a boy; “no preference,” at 26%, beat out girls, who rated a measly 19%. According to the same poll, women don’t have a preference; but since it takes two to tango, as the song goes, that makes for heavy pressure in favor of “a masculine child,” as Luca Brasi so eloquently put it in The Godfather. These figures have remained essentially unchanged for 70 years–the stats were the same in 1941. While it may be culturally taboo here to openly reject or abort a child based on gender, fears of second-class status and doubts of a daughter’s potential value are remarkably persistent.

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