Hvistendahl, M. (2011) Unnatural Selection: Choosing boys over girls and the consequences of a world full of men, New York: Public Affairs, 314 pages

One goes into an Asian village and there are males everywhere. They are in strollers, bistros, shops, and on the streets. Where have all the girls gone, long time passing? They are with the ages. Little female fetuses have been aborted. Some who were born were choked to death.  Others disappear. Some are sold into prostitution. What is going on here?

Males are more prestigious. They will carry on the family name and hopefully support their parents. Females are nobodies . They reproduce and they go on errands. So what is society like? Boys like prostitutes, but they would like a wife if they could afford one. One would think that where girls become more scarce, they become more powerful. No the males are up to the same tricks used over the generations and so the women come to believe that somebody will make their life for them. That of course is  if they are not sold off or killed.

The unbalance of males is like creating hell on earth. Crime, violence, deviance goes up. More alcoholism and pornography emerges. However, if the population gets to be between 30 and 40 percent female, things calm down. However, in societies that want more production, males fill the bill. You have a ton of them and then you put the lid on. Through the pathology increases, profits go up.

The author a female also indicates that the west was also involved in the abortions and killings. Blame Paul Ehrlich who wrote THE POPULATION BOMB. She also trashes Alan  Guttmacher  as well as others.

They also favored sex selection abortion. Oh? At the time of the discussion about population, I carried baggage into my Social Demography classes of the following. My mother discovered that she had an unintended third child. She cried for at least  6 weeks. That child was me. Further, my wife’s mom, headed to the bedroom after the second child. My wife raised 5 kids that were her brothers and sisters.  The lady down the street who had 8 would get the family off in the morning, and then spend much of the day crying.

I did not want children or one or two. The issue was birth control. Abortion issue of Roe v. Wade would come years later.  Alan Guttmacher was in a class in which I was a teaching assistant. He gave in my judgment a great speech. There was nothing about killing little girls. I used Paul Ehrlich’s book in class. I also showed a tape between a Jesuit demographer and Ehrlich in the same class.

I watched the JOHNNY CARSON show in which Ehrlich debated hapless Ben Wattenberg, a Democrat turned Republican. So, she reaches too far. However, the message about a natural balance of having both sexes in equal proportion completely makes sense. All male institutions have to have a hard line on behavior. Testosterone is the enemy of civilization.

Her stand on abortion is typically American though she  is troubled by it, she does not want it to be illegal. She just wants it to be rare. One thing that she avoids or does not discuss, is that a society without many women who have been taken over by rich men is situational homosexuality. More research appears to indicate that being gay has more to do with genetics than with the environment. If that finding continues, straight males become situational gay when in prison or where there are few women. In other words, this is the case for environment. Situational gays are bi-sexual and prefer women. If they are gone then they move to men. Thus, for many  males, in this case, environment and accompanying testosterone trump theology and ideology.

When I first started teaching Social Demography, the message had nothing to do with abortion and sex selection. It appeared that  birth control could bring down the population in the third world so that more babies would not starve. Further, in the theory of demographic transition, when it costs more and more to have children, people have less. They also have better medical facilities to save more babies to that a population bubble emerges. Owners of plantations like it, because reproduction drives down wages, increases consumption, and creates more prosperity for the owners.

My second or third year, 1970 there was 200 million Americans. Recently through immigration and births, we have reached 300 million. Americans are big consumers of energy and food. We also have yet to develop retrofitting houses and factories to save heat.

This is where the book ends. China and India still have big loads of humans and the reproductive age is becoming a problem as the population ages. In the mean time, in the 70’s Lester Brown developed the biological miracle of growing and harvesting more food which will delay the issue of population. Again, when first teaching, the world was at 3 billion , now it is 6 billion.

By the way, Roman Catholics now have 2 and a fraction kids. The big gains are with Hispanics and Asians in the USA. Blacks and Whites have stabled out at around two. Other than my defense of western demographers, this reviewer could not be more appreciative of this book. She is an excellent science journalist and has a long list of articles in prestigious periodicals. Buy the book.

Prof. Joel C. Snell

Kirkwood College