When you’re having a baby, it’s not uncommon for people to have a preference for the sexual selection of the unborn baby. Obviously, the main thing that all new parents are interested in is the wellness and wellbeing of the baby, but secondary to that, it’s quite common for parents to long specifically for a little son or daughter.
Fuelling this are all kinds of old wives’ tales about how to influence the gender of your baby. Some say that if you want a boy you need to eat meat, for example, and if you want a girl you need to eat lots of sweet foods. There are times of the month that are supposed to be better for conceiving each gender, and positions that you should use.
In these modern times, there are also ways to scientifically choose a specific gender. There are clinics that can screen fertilised embryos to see if they have genetic diseases, and these clinics can also pick up whether an embryo is male or female, allowing parents (in theory at least) to choose the gender of their unborn baby.
What many parents don’t realise, however, is that whilst they may be able to choose the biological sex of their baby, they are not actually able to pick the gender. Sex is determined by chromosome alignment and type of genitalia, but gender is a social construct, meaning a state of being male and female.
Societies have different rules about how men and women should act, dress and behave. People who don’t fit into the societal norms for gender behaviour can make others uncomfortable (such as men who like to dress up in women’s clothes). As a result of these societal rules, gender identity is not well understood. Some think that gender is fixed at a very young age, whilst others think that it remains fluid for a long time.