British Indians still aborting baby girls in UK

I’ve used three taxis over Christmas, no surprise in our area, the drivers were Muslims whose family came from India or Pakistan.

They were interested in my famiky gatherings, my adult and grandchildren. When I asked about their family, one told me with great pride about his only child, a ten year old girl. The others had three or four children, girls and boys. The girls education definitely seen as important as the boys. Pharmacy or medicine seen as likeky career paths for boys and girls.

I’m not disputing the awful evidence of girl babies and terminations. Of course it’s just wrong on every level. I worked with the Pakistani/Indisn community here over many years. I wasn’t looking through rose tinted specs but my impression was of delight for a healthy baby.
I dislike the arranged marrisges want greater equality. I’m uneasy about the idea of inferior cultures directed at entire communities.

I’m very unimpressed by some of the cultures as demonstrated by some white British people

I think that just as the historic valueing of boys over girls is an attuitude which persists in a few British indian families, Oreo herself is demonstrating a historic prejudice when she says 'It has to be accepted that some cultures are inferior to others'.

This is a view which was mainstream & widespread in this country 60 years ago, but I for one don't accept it if we are talking about mainstream cultures found in 2020's Britain.

Which culture has contributed most to global warming which will devalue the quality of life all babies can look forward to, girls or boys? We invented industrialisation remember, and white western societies have been fairly resistant to doinig anything drastic to put that right.

Look at that over there, that shiny thing, don't for goodness sake talk about the issue at hand.

valdavi

I think that just as the historic valueing of boys over girls is an attuitude which persists in a few British indian families, Oreo herself is demonstrating a historic prejudice when she says 'It has to be accepted that some cultures are inferior to others'.

This is a view which was mainstream & widespread in this country 60 years ago, but I for one don't accept it if we are talking about mainstream cultures found in 2020's Britain.

Which culture has contributed most to global warming which will devalue the quality of life all babies can look forward to, girls or boys? We invented industrialisation remember, and white western societies have been fairly resistant to doinig anything drastic to put that right.

Some cultures are def inferior to others, it’s heads in the sand time to think otherwise.
FGM anyone? Afghan culture? Many other cultures around the world that are downright shocking.
It may be woke to pretend otherwise but I don’t go in for that nonsense.

Which culture has contributed most to global warming which will devalue the quality of life all babies can look forward to, girls or boys?

I think you’ll find China & India are two of the worst culprits.

Global warning… start another thread.A lot of Western countries doing what they can to minimise.
The US and India are massive polluters. Not for this thread tho.

Yes China too!

Forced marriages, especially those where girls are taken to India or Pakistan for a ‘holiday’ and are married off there to older men.
Honour killings, which still happen here in the UK.
These are the kind of cultural practices which still happen here.
Cousin marriage too, which are known to cause physical and mental problems.
It’s to be hoped that eventually young men and women revolt against these things.

I don't understand why calling out extreme cultural practices that cause intense pain, physically and mentally, sometimes to the point of death , is considered by some to be beyond the pale and prompt the closing down of discussion with accusations of...isms & ...phobias. It happens a lot on these particular threads here on gransnet.

Extremely shocking and abhorrent things are considered very ok in some societies, are we to just shut up and condone by silence appalling behaviour for fear of upsetting the people who take part in cultural atrocities?

My dd worked as a trainee medic on a maternity delivery unit in a Delhi hospital. Boy babies were definitely celebrated more than girl babies, when mums were often left to labour alone and girl babies received lesser care after birth. The unit was so busy it was very definitely a production line, with each mum coming into the labour room hard on the heels of the newly delivered previous mum. My dd came across a baby who had been wrapped in an old cloth and just dumped on a shelf, no one paying it any attention until dd heard it whimper. She picked it up and cradled it while she called for some help, but it was heartbreaking.

Quite apart from it being wrong on so many levels to abort girls - who do they think will go on to give birth to future generations?

Such ignorance and misguided prejudice.

This is Gransnet. If some Posters wish to 'extend' the discussion, then so be it.
Unless, of course, Santa has given some of you 'Prefect' badges for Christmas, so that you may dictate the direction of the discussion.

Are these parents and their familes aware of how the sex of a baby is determined?

No-one on the thread has mentioned that the foetus doesn't receive the Y chromosome which means it will be a boy from its mother, but from its father. Some of the sperm he produces result in boys, some in girls. If anyone is producing all girls but no boys, or all boys but no girls, it is not the wife but the husband!

He is the one who should be "got rid of" to change the run of girls, not the mother of his children.

This is Gransnet if some posters wish to point out distraction when they see it that is fine too.

Iam64

I’ve used three taxis over Christmas, no surprise in our area, the drivers were Muslims whose family came from India or Pakistan.

They were interested in my famiky gatherings, my adult and grandchildren. When I asked about their family, one told me with great pride about his only child, a ten year old girl. The others had three or four children, girls and boys. The girls education definitely seen as important as the boys. Pharmacy or medicine seen as likeky career paths for boys and girls.

I’m not disputing the awful evidence of girl babies and terminations. Of course it’s just wrong on every level. I worked with the Pakistani/Indisn community here over many years. I wasn’t looking through rose tinted specs but my impression was of delight for a healthy baby.
I dislike the arranged marrisges want greater equality. I’m uneasy about the idea of inferior cultures directed at entire communities.

I’m very unimpressed by some of the cultures as demonstrated by some white British people

Absolutely. Continual tarnishing of a whole culture by the behaviour of a minority within that culture, and a refusal to look at " the mote in our own eyes"

Maremia

This is Gransnet. If some Posters wish to 'extend' the discussion, then so be it.
Unless, of course, Santa has given some of you 'Prefect' badges for Christmas, so that you may dictate the direction of the discussion.

Global warming and major polluters is going a bit beyond stretching the subject of the abortion of baby girls, though.
It's a completely different subject.

I still have my perfect's badge from primary school 😁

Allira 😆

ferry23

Quite apart from it being wrong on so many levels to abort girls - who do they think will go on to give birth to future generations?

Such ignorance and misguided prejudice.

Absolutely!!

Hmm, wonder what any poster dislikes about our own culture here in the UK that is somehow worse than aborting healthy baby girl babies, forced marriages, honour killings or other known ethnic abhorrent practices? Just be glad that our own culture has nothing worse than Morris Dancing.

Oreo

Allira 😆

I see autocorrect changed prefect to perfect!
😁

Do these men know that it is the father who determines the sex of the child?

If not, is it not time that they were told, forcefully, by the midwives?

Who's refusing to look at "the mote in our own eyes" Wyllow3?

What is the point of bringing entirely unrelated issues in to a discussion about a specific subject?

Of course we in the UK, as a society, have heinous wrongdoings in our midst. It ALL needs calling out, monitoring, putting a stop to whenever we can. And, thank God, of whatever persuasion, we CAN do those things, we're not muffled and shuffled and silenced.

Maybe you were a perfect prefect?😃

There's an interesting and comprehensive article in today's Times about the fertility clinics in California that are being used by parents to create the babies that they want by IVF. Seems some Americans are also keen to choose the sex of their child and not for medical reasons.

Oreo

And I don’t think that some cultures are changing fast enough unfortunately.

If you read Mumsnet it seems that boys aren't wanted. The disappointment about having a son is awful. Are we really that different?

I remember when I had my second son the midwife said she'd just delivered a baby girl to a woman who had 12 sons and said she'd carry on till she got a girl. I said those poor little boys, she said that poor little girl, will she live up to her mother's dreams