MattY presents some evidence that Americans prefer daughters:

“Seventy-one percent of American families who use MicroSort—which is still in clinical trials—want a daughter.” MicroSort being a company that at least claims to be able to help you choose a son or daughter deliberately.

This of course stands in contrast to a historic preference for boys in agricultural societies (though not the hunter/gatherer societies that preceded them). It is not entirely surprising that with enough time, our entry into a service economy that does not particularly favor a man’s strength would lead to a shift in child preference (delayed perhaps by social norms).

Of course, there has been a lot of talk (including an article in the latest Men’s Health) about the effect of chemicals in shifting birth ratios towards more girls and towards more feminine boys. I wonder if there is a relationship between these shifting preferences and these other changes (though I don’t know which way a causal pattern would go).

Yglesias goes on to talk about the consequences if the demographics skewed in favor of women:

Optimistically, a predominantly female society should have substantially fewer people killed by violent crime and car accidents, and somewhat more enlightened public policy. At the same time, I’ve seen models in which a relatively modest oversupply of women (normally the scenario this is supposed to model is inner-city neighborhoods impacted by the mass incarceration of African-American men) leads to the collapse of norms of monogamy with deleterious consequences for the next generation of children.

I’d say two things would be dominant. War would be less frequent in a world with fewer men. War has often been a refuge for extra/unnecessary men, genetically speaking. The Crusades are often highlighted as being a place to send your extra sons given the social norms of the time gave all the rights and responsibilities to the first born male (laws of primogeniture).

The other result, from an evolutionary perspective, would likely be polygamy. Polyandry is never an overly practical situation as reproductive limitations lie in the woman, but having men with multiple wives is rather practical from this particular perspective. Another aspect would be increased lesbianism/bisexuality on the part of females. Females are thought to have more fluid sexuality so there is no reason to think they might pursue the more readily available outlet for sexual bonding.

I would suggest that Yglesias’ scenario of societal breakdown based on urban gender imbalances is faulty because that is a situation where the gender imbalance exists in a limited spectrum within the broader patriarchy. If gender imbalance manifested itself on a broader scale, the society and its policies would reflect more matriarchal views including many of the policies that are lacking presently in urban environments to provide the necessary support to avoid the problems he references.

I am seriously considering canceling my Matthew Yglesias newsfeed subscription. Presumably, the Center for American Progress requires Yglesias to meet blogging quotas each day, making it difficult to devote much time to any one post. That doesn’t, however, excuse his more than occasional substitution of bald assertions for substantive analysis.

In one of today’s posts, Yglesias takes up the fascinating question as to whether the media creates a double-standard by refraining from serious criticism of Islam (especially Islamic violence), even as it continually bashes Christianity. A little bit of reflection and a spell-checker might have yielded an insightful post. Here’s an excerpt of what Yglesias came up with:

After all, what are you really supposed to say about religion. After all, not only is the bishops’ statement [on the murder of abortion doctor George Tiller] kind of inadequate, but the central premise of Christian religion (the whole Jesus thing) is—according to me and to Jeff Goldberg too—totally false. Islam too! And yet at the same time we all need to coexist. And fortunately the vast majority of people professing every faith, along with the vast majority of those professing no faith, are rejecting violence and not killing people.

I hadn’t realized that the “whole Jesus thing” was totally false, let alone Islam. Some vague premonition that “we all need to coexist” has been swirling around in my brain for the past few months, but now I am sure of it. Meanwhile, it appears that the era of crusading and inquisitions has come to an end, as have the Soviet and Nazi persecutions. Who knew?