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I'm sick of these articles talking about how nobody wants girls. In our country, nobody wants the boys. When Americans have a choice, they choose a girl. People are lined up for girls in countries that will give them a choice, like Ethiopia, and for years, Guatemala. Adoption agencies were and are literally begging families to consider adding a little boy from those countries to their family. My daughter adopted her twin boys from Guatemala shortly after her first son. The agency said they had 20 people waiting for a girl, but none of them would take these two little boys. It disgusts me.

I'm sorry in some ass backward countries they kill the little girls. Really, I am. Obviously, that's evil. But in our own country, how long will it be before we're offing the little boys?

In the West, there’s a saying: “A daughter is a daughter all of her life; a son is a son until he takes a wife.” The expectation is that girls will stay closer to their families, and if you’ve already been through infertility and you’re only going to have one child, then you’ll play the odds with a girl. It’s the opposite of how they think the East.

IMO people adopting are more leery of boys because of the increased potential for behavior problems. Not all children are placed for adoption because their parents are dead or too poor to take care of them; some are placed because the parents are dysfunctional, and a tendency to mental illness or behavior problems is inheritable.

Boys act out more than girls generally speaking anyway even when there are no problems, and the couples adopting are usually older and may want a child who needs less energy in supervising.

And finally, my guess is that most adoptions are driven by the wife in a couple, and there are more single mother than single father adoptions. Most women would like at least one daughter; most men would like at least one son, but if he can’t have his own son by blood, then the child’s sex probably doesn’t matter so much.

I don’t think that female-favoring sex-selection is occurring or will occur with birth children the way it is with adoptive children in the West.

In our country, daughters tend to be the caretakers of their parents. While that for sure is not always the case, it is what I have witnessed more often than not. Many of my girlfriends are the ones that take their parents and in-laws to the doctor, visit them when they are shut in or in a nursing home and make many of the long-term care decisions.

I find men to be compassionate in these situations, but often in more practical ways. I found I picked up on nuances with my mom during her last years. My brother never really heard the tone of her voice and the look in her eye, just the words she spoke. And she was always trying to buck up and avoid your pity — so he missed a lot of what was really going on. He was wonderful though in other ways — fixing her things, helping her with finances. We all show love in different ways, but I think a daughter is more apt to be the one helping to change the adult diaper, wipe the drool, change the bedsheets, etc... And we all know we may need that one day.