Baby girls in india

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Rape is about power, not male/female ratio

It is possible that the longtime outcome of the killing of baby girls has led to the high incidence of rape in India.

Many men cannot marry, there is such a shortage of women as a result of the killing........

And think of all the “legal” abortions in the western world ..

I nursed a young Indian woman in the 70s, a regular patient, whom her husband deemed a useless woman. His reason, his wife repeatedly miscarried. Although medically advised to let his wife have sufficient healing time before trying for another baby, the young woman told me he would not allow her time to heal but continue using her until she gave him a son. She was desperately unhappy but had to obey their religious rules.

What a heartbreaking indictment that a baby will only be welcomed into a family depending on its monetary gain. ?

Not necessarily true. When I was in Bangladesh I was asked if my son was married. I said that he wasn't and they were shocked. 'But who will look after you when you are old if you don't have a daughter in law?' Women can be useful in that respect as well as bringing in goods and cash from their families too. A gender balanced family is ideal.

I forgot to mention in my post above that my husband's friend told him the baby girl was purposely left to die because of her sex. The family did not want female babies.

Many years ago when I was teenager I knew a girl my age who was an immigrant from India. She told me how she wanted 11 children, all boys. I can remember asking her why - in shock at the thought of having 11 sons. She told me that boys look after you financially when you're old and girls are just a burden.

I wonder how many babies are abandoned because of their gender, disabilities, skin colour, etc but not because of the parents, it is the family pressure forcing them to do that

It’s always tragic, you hear of babies and children being sold because their families have no money for food, mothers have to choose between giving up a child and feeding the rest of the children.
In many countries boys are regarded as future breadwinners, girls as future burdens to the family. Any woman that gives up a child has that pain wondering what happened to it for the rest of her life.

Babies are abandoned, for many reasons, in the UK too. Often, their mother is watching, from a distance, until she's sure they've been rescued.

Yes, it is sad, but why assume her parents or parent abandoned her without a second thought?

Do you really not have sufficient imagination to think that she might have been abandoned due to any amount of circumstances that drove her mother or both parents to this dreadful step.

Presumably, she had desperately poor parents who already have more children than they can feed.

Or she may be the outcome of rape or incest of an unmarried girl,

Or have a mother suffering from severe post-natal depression.

I am not saying it is right to abandon children of either sex, but I do not believe anyone does so unless absolutely forced to do so.

And is it morally worse than aborting a child because you don't feel ready to be a mother, or know you cannot support the child and have been left in the lurch by the man responsible?

I trust you don't condemm the poor women in our society who feel forced to choose abortion?

This is why there are so many 'incels' in countries where female babies are discarded or worse. Too many young men swimming in testosterone are a recipe for disaster.

As has been said the laws are ignored, and the cast system I highly discriminatory, particularly towards women. Nowhere else in the world have I seen women laboring on building sites or women camped alongside the highway repairing the road with their children running in the gutter.

And that’s in Delhi!

Sallywally1

Just read an article about a five day old baby girl in India left to die in a drain. Luckily she was found and is now in hospital and doing well. I had my lovely nearly three year old granddaughter this afternoon, she is the apple of her parents eye and simply delightful. I look at her and cannot understand the attitude to girls some countries still have.

They must be so desperate and so poor they cannot see any other way, but to me it is incomprehensible.

The article made me want to cry it is so sad.

But, they did not kill her so someone wanted her found and saved!!!
Think of the many others that have been murdered and their bodies left somewhere where they possibly won't be found at all, or for so long a time!!

I agree, ALL lives are to be cherished and nurtured, not just the ones their 'gods' deem to be important!
One of these days they'll find themselves with only men to marry off to men, and I wonder what they'll do then?

When my husband was in university in the early 70's his roommate took a trip to India. When he returned he told my husband how he kept hearing a baby crying so he went to investigate and found a baby girl who had been left on some rocks to die.

and still!

Dee1012, I remember only too well watching The Dying Rooms. It had still does have a profound effect on me. Like you I will never forget it.

I will never, ever forget watching The Dying Rooms documentary some years ago - about orphanages in China. I was left heartbroken and angry.....

Heartbreaking. They must be so desperate as others have said, who could possible do this. India has a culture that still doesn’t respect women and then there is the wedding dowry. It’s bad news there having a baby girl - so sad.

My parents had friends who adopted seven children that they found abandoned or orphaned from around the world. The first was a baby girl they found on a rubbish heap in India.

This would have been in the fifties mainly. It's probably more complicated now.

Awful, yet a heart warming story, my Muslim Cambodian friend, extremely poor, when his wife was expecting their 2nd just wanted a girl and His daughter is now 4 and the apple of his eye. He told me he wants education for his daughter and sees it as way out of poverty and it is. But not all countries are the same. There is certainly no excuse here in this country for child abuse and neglect, I just hope the abusers of these children get a really stiff sentence and are given hell in jail.

When I was in Bangladesh the lady appointed as my 'minder' told me that her mother had taken in her maid's baby daughter as the maid's husband had told her not to come home from hospital with another girl.
They were desperately poor though. The husband slept under his bicycle rickshaw at night.
Re child cruelty here. Absolutely no excuse whatsoever. Severest penalties for perpetrators.

V3ra in 1979 I attended a 3 day safeguarding course as part of my training. It was excellent, not least as it was multi agency. The cid officer standing next to me during a short video aimed to help identify brain injuries fainted. It was my introduction into the impact on staff who work closely with child abuse. It’s always distressing and staff somehow learn to manage their own feelings in the face of horrors. I’ve not seen any research into the long term impact. Off to google

Sallywally1 when we had our third baby, and our second son, there was an Indian couple on the ward who had just had their third daughter. The baby's father came every visiting time and sat with his head in his hands. His wife was miserable.
He admired my baby son and I complimented him on their baby. "No good," he said, "Is girl is no good."
This was in 1984 in Coventry.

Iam64 as part of my recent safeguarding training course we had to watch the YouTube video of "The Daniel Pelka story: Ordinary World." Also in Coventry.
It's heartbreaking stuff and there is seemingly no end to these tragic cases.

Absolutely heartbreaking, both here, in India, and elsewhere. Children should be nurtured, loved, they are everyone’s future.

I agree Iam64, it is heartbreaking. Little Arthur who was abused and tortured and poisoned with salt. The UK has a terrible litany of child abuse cases.

I cry for them all