A son is a son till he has a wife...

Was talking with a friend who was enquiring my well being and also about the expected date of the arrival of my long awaited, cherished bundle of joy... our baby...

I told him about the date (which happened to be somewhere in late December)... And some how spontaneously he asked (good intentionedly, of course): " So is it a boy or a girl?" I was somehow found wanting for answer as it has never even crossed my mind to check for the sex of the growing child in the umpteenth check up that my wife had with the doctor...

It is not out of a sense of pride or advocating for a burning social cause (like the case of female foeticide) which prompted us (myself and my wife) for not to go for such test... It was just a sense of joy and fulfillment which has kept us on our tenterhooks anticipating the arrival of our 1st child in to this world... boy or girl be damned...

While I have been an etic observer of the obsession that we as a country have for a boy child, it has always struck to me as a quintessential patriarchal passion which saw the birth of a male child as something auspicious or of someone to hold aloft the family torch etc etc... However, the real impact of the obsession hit me after we declared to the world about our forthcoming joy in to the world... That's when we heard whispers from relatives, friends et al to somehow sneak in the imaging chamber, coax the doctor to know the gender of our yet to be born offspring...

While I could go on and on about rattling statistics about the rampant female foeticide in the country (especially the northern part), how we as a country have brought ourselves to the brink of eliminating the female species with our obsession for the male child etc etc; I will desist from doing so...

As they say the proof of the pudding is in eating it, so is it in this instance too... In my opinion, the obsession to have a boy child stems from one of the basic emotion of humans.. fear... fear of loneliness in the old age, fear of being left abandoned in the evening of one's life, fear of having none to take the family name forward etc etc...

However, I have found such logic most 'illogical' and irrational... As I have seen umpteenth example of households full with boys and still the parents finding their way to an old age home in the late years of their life to lament the loneliness alone and wait for their death..

I think this perspective has to undergo a paradigm shift in our society and what should become a priority ultimately is the fact that we should strive to make a better human being  out of tour children and ensure that they become good citizens, better family man and somebody who would make you and your family name proud - boy or girl not withstanding...

I had heard of a famous quotation long ago and I will try to quote it here.. 

"My son's my son, till he hath got him a wife, But my daughter's my daughter all days of her life"
[1670 J. Ray English Proverbs 53]

Although a broad generalisation, but is  a good point for us to start to do away with our age old bias and obsession for the boy child and start looking at children more objectively in what they become in life through nurture than what they are by nature..