Changing Attitude Towards Child Sex Preference Essay

This paper focuses on the in hug drugsity of pick for sons oer daughters in anticipation of doddery be on certificate two physic ally and financially, and its impact on the carry on and offer/ well-being of the elderly in Nigeria in general, and in particular among the Yoruba of southeasternwest. The paper examines the impact of sociable kind on child perk up orientation course as archaic be on protection. Before delving into the theme of the paper, the fantasy of social permute was briefly discussed.The savvys for having children in the main be discussed, child sex choice among the elderly were equally examine the pattern it took before now, the c beens that adjudge occurred and the attitude of pargonnts toward child sex taste perception as darkened age security system in the contemporary Nigerian orderliness were equally examined. The effects of sex alternative and other socio-stinting factors on the status of the elderly and its implications for the fami ly were menti unityd.Various writings and theoretical models on the issuance matter were re inspected and finally, a general conclusion was drawn. Introduction Startling trans get toations prevail occurred all everyplace the gentlemans gentleman, particularly on the mode of caring and documentation of senior persons and in that respect be a function of well-nigh-valuable issues, which organize as a result of these transformations and the major structural shift in the population. One of these issues is the concern of social gerontologists for the necessitate of erstwhile(a) pile for lose in the society.Although, it should be mentioned at this uncture that this transformation (that is, social swap) affects different pot in different ways, mattering on sex, location, size of cohort, economic resources (individual, familial and national), norms patrimonial from the past and individuals live experiences and personality. For example, marital status and former patte rns of childbearing atomic frame 18 significant factors influencing the nature of the support avail equal to(p) in old age. While co-residence of one-time(a) persons and adult children is super C in numerous ontogeny countries, the tendency worldwide is for this arrangement to become less common.This has operate consequences for economic security, specially in the numerous societies (and particularly, their rural sphere of models), where pensions atomic number 18 paid save to a small dimension of of age(p) persons who are entitled because of earlier employment in the former sectors or few fourth-year persons who were able to save or invest for their old age. Even in countries where pensions are to a greater conclusion broadly procurable, the hindrance of an ageing population is progressively being regarded as unsustainable, particularly since there is an increasing tendency for those able to do so to take early retirement.For m any(prenominal), especially wom en, there is a real threat of poverty in old-age, and this problem may be exacerbated by social exclusions and the deteriorating health conditions experienced by many older persons particularly, women at more advanced ages. Care of the frail and disabled becomes more and more problematic, both in terms of stress placed on care providers and care- go awayrs and also the mobilization of the appropriate resources of families, agencies and programmes to meet horizontal the basic needs of older persons. harmonise to Peil (1991), as life expectancy rises, early couples are more likely to be called upon to provide for their older parents than these parents were at the homogeneous stage of the life cycle, at a time when increasing emphasis on educating ones children, rampant inflation and widespread unemployment of young adults construct adequate readinesss for older parents difficult. The situation among older heap without children of their own were even more pathetic. For instanc e, old citizenry who imbibe no living children tend to risk the chances of isolation and lack of support.Personality is some other real crucial factor to be considered this is because, personality can make considerable difference to the help have. For example, an older person who was hard to live along with is more likely to lack support than the cheerful old person who gets along well with family and neighbours (Peil, 1991). completely these are important variables, which study whether individuals will receive adequate care and support from family and society. It is evident from the unlike literature that, very little attention has been paid to older citizenry of modern industrializing societies of the world.In Nigeria for example, as well as in near developing countries, the need to plan for the social public supporter of older persons has received very little attention. There are clear evidences of lack of formal social support services for older people in Nigeria, much(prenominal) as Social Securiy, Pension, Health Insurance Scheme, Old Peoples Home, etc. One of the explanatory factors arises from the belief that the existing extended family system generally protects and provides for the welfare of old people in rural and agri ethnic societies.Hence, where an older person is childless, his/her brothers or sisters or even the children of his siblings are believed to be responsible for his/her maintenance. This may non be unconnected with why well-nigh policies, programmes and projects in the developing countries such as Nigeria have been concentrated on the children and the youths at the expense of older persons in the awkward. Both national and international organizations are seen adding tirelessly on programmes and projects that would returns the children and the youths, forgetting that the children and the youths of today would be the adult and older persons in the near coming(prenominal).Such beliefs and practices give the impressi on that the aged, unlike children, represent a discomforting second-order dependency on the younger working generation. But it should be mentioned at this juncture that old people are non always strung-out on others for survival. For example, old age may not necessarily lay out dependency especially in modern Nigeria in which the possession of arrive property by older people and access to business opportunities may earn them some income.Hence, while it is generally believed that old people in general depend on the younger people for their survival, it can be equally true that some younger people do depend on such old people for their survival. In fact, some older persons in Nigeria may be rich enough to provide educational activityal assistance for the children of their brothers and sisters as well as their own. Put differently, the regular panorama of older people as a social problem emphasizes the burden of older people in the population.This negative and blinkered vision h as al well-nigh only if neglected the provision of care by older people themselves, although there are some notable exceptions. It should also be said that prevailing social problem focus has stigmatized older people as a dependent and un full-bodied group. This negative stereotyping is partly because of invisibility of informal work as a contri justion to society. Older people are givers as well as receivers through their substantial caring for other older people, unpaid domestic work, care for grandchildren and voluntary work.However, it should be mentioned that differences occur surrounded by phallic and fe antheral in terms of access to, and possession of wealthiness in the society. This, in turn, leads to differences in the care and support apt(p) and received by older men and women in the society. This we must emphasized has change older persons attitude towards child sex gustatory modality as old age security globally and particularly in Nigeria society. A pronounce discernment of parents to have male children has been noted in a scrap of countries, although a desire for a balanced fig of sons and daughters is also common (Williamson, 1976 Arnold and Kuo, 1984). parole gustatory modality is particularly prevalent in countries with concentrated immemorial system or tradition (Cle reason, Verrall, and Vaessen, 1983 Cho, Arnold, and Kwon, 1982 Freedman and Coombs, 1994). The extent of son preference has been the subject of considerable discussion and debate in most literature. male childs are preferred for a bod of reasons, including family name propagation, old age security, provision of labour, and the performance of ancestral rites (Wolf, 1985 Zhao and Zhu, 1983).Also, the Fifth National Womens Congress (1983) Haupt (1983) Li (1982) Liu (1984) Tien (1985) Wolf (1985) all maintained that tralatitiously, sons were considered advantageous for two economic reasons, videlicet support for their parents in old age and the provision of labour for the put forward or family business. They argued further that the former is still an important consideration in most societies, despite the new-made introduction of some forms of social security.So much has been written most social change that it is really not of much use for us to start a process of seek definitions. At the take of the daily lives of ordinary citizens, it is even doubtful whether our people are really interested, one way or the other, in what sharp ideas may really be. It is the manifestations of their collective cynicism towards this concept that one feels ought to worry us, unless we are able to capture the reasons for this drift, we run the risk of merely speaking to ourselves.The concept of social change may mean different things to different people, depending on the available indicators in any given social milieu. Many sociologists view social change in the structure of society or adaptation of the social structure (Morris Ginsberg, 1958205). Others stress that social change is not only a change in the structure, but also in the surgical process of society. agree to Allen, (197139) social change comprises modifications in social systems or subsystems in structure, functioning, or process over some period of time.It should be mentioned at this juncture that quiet a number of scholars have adopted a number of different definitions/approaches to the study of social change at unhomogeneous levels. (For more details see Amitai (1964), Appelbaum (1970), DeVries, (1961), Peter, (1966), Moore & Ogburn, (1922), etc. ) In spite of the misanthropic attitudes of the people about the concept of social change, effort is made to give a working definition of social change within the context of this paper. Social change within the context of this paper can be defined as he transformation of culture and social institutions over time. It should be mentioned at this juncture that our society has experienced social change over the past two or more centuries. Nigeria, like any other country of the world, has changed particularly, in the area of agriculture, urbanization, industrialization, family/personal relationships. Social change has influenced nearly every aspect of our life. Although, we should also mention here that people are not equally affected by these changes.This is because social change affects different people in different ways, depending on sex, age, work experience, location, class, size of cohort, economic resources (individual, familial and national), norms inherited from the past, individuals live experiences and personality. All these are important variables, which determine how individuals are advantaged or disadvantaged by their position. Reasons for having children In many Third gentleman countries or societies, having a huge family is an eminently rational strategy of survival.Childrens labour particularly that of sons is a vital part of the family economy in many peasant communities of Africa i n general, and in Nigeria in particular. Children help on the fields, tend animals, fetch weewee and wood, and care for their younger brothers and sisters freeing their parents for other tasks. Quite early in life, childrens labour makes them an asset rather than a liability on family income (Betsy Hartman, 1998) . In urban settings, children often earn income as servants, messengers, etc, or else apprehension at home to care for younger children while their parents work.Among the Yoruba community in Nigeria, demographer John Caldwell (1982) appoint that even urban professional families benefit from many children through sibling assistance chains. As one child completes education and takes a job, he or she helps younger brothers and sisters flow up the educational and employment ladder, thus the connections and the influence of the family spread. Another reason for having many children, according to Cain (1983) is security. According to him, in many Third World societies, the va st majority of the population has no access to insurance schemes, pension plans, or government social security.For instance, in Nigeria, little or postcode is known, said or done about social security, i. e. about how to assure the individual against want, poverty, destitution, disease and idleness which may be thrust upon him by the varied hazards and vicissitudes of social life notably loss or jailbreak of income or mover of sustenance, resulting from sickness, maternity, injury, invalidity, old age, death of a breadwinner or unemployment. According to Nwabueze (1989) there is no clear statement of policy regarding social security and little is spent on it by the state, except in the electrical condenser of the employer.This neglect manifests itself in the hordes of the elderly people engaged in habitual alms solicitation in our urban cities in the country at large, and most especially in southwestern Nigeria. One of the reasons adduced for the policy neglect is that, childr en are expected to care for their parents in their old age. Without them, ones future is endangered. The help of crowing up children, particularly male children, can whence be crucial in surviving the periodic crisis-illness, drought, floods, food shortages, land disputes, political upheavals, which, unfortunately, punctuate village life in most separate of the world.Folbre (1983) further maintained that, in most developing countries of the world in general, and in Nigeria in particular, son preference can be another(prenominal)(prenominal) important motive for having larger families. The subordination of women means that, economically and socially daughters are less or not valued as extremely as sons in many cultures, particularly among the Yoruba of the southwest Nigeria, most especially in the traditional era. Not only does daughters domestic work have less prestige, but daughters typically provide fewer years of productive labour to their parents, and leave home to live with their husbands and in-laws shortly after puberty.Sons preference, combined with high infant and child mortality rates, means that parents must have many children just to ensure that one or two sons survive so as to serve as old-age security, most especially in the face of economic suspicion. As a corollary to the supra point, Lappe et al (1979) maintained that in the 1960s, an Indian couple had to bear an amount of 6. 3 children to be confident of having one son who would survive to adulthood. antheral dominance in the family, patriarchal social mores, the systematic exclusion of women from the tuition process, and the absence of decent birth control services combine to squelch many women into having more children than they want. Put differently, the social environment, in effect, leaves them (women) little or no reproductive choice. Thus, there is tendency among them, to have more children in order to fasten the future of the lineage. Sex Preferences and Worldwide Patterns Par ental preference for sons over daughters is a common phenomenon in many parts of the world.Son preference has been well documented in a large number of countries, including Nigeria. But the point in time of such preference varies substantially from one country to another, depending on such factors as the level of economic development, social norms, level of education, cultural and religious practices, marriage and family systems, degree of urbanization, and the nature of social security systems available. The preference for sons tend to be particularly pronounced in developing countries, in rural areas, and among more traditional couples and couples of lower socio-economic status.Although son preference is still common even in many economically actual countries (Bennett, 1983), this preference often exists side by side with parents desire to have, at least, one child of each sex. The World Fertility Survey (WFS) piece that son preference was moderately punishing in Lesotho and t he Sudan, and very strong in Jordan and Syria. In Asia, son preference was found to be tender among women from Indonesia (except for the first child). The survey also found a moderate degree of son preference in Malaysia, Thailand, and SriLanka, and son preference was extremely strong in Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, and South Korea.The WFS result for Asia generally agrees quite closely with the findings of Williamson (1976), who reviewed the literature on sex preferences throughout the world in the mid seventies (Arnold and Liu 1986). Further, son preference has been found to be prevalent in all East Asia and among groups outside of that region that share a heritage of Confucian patriarchal tradition. According to Arnold and Kuo (1984301), son preference in South Korea and mainland China is both pervasive and extreme.This finding has been confirmed by a number of other studies (see Williamson, 1976 Coombs and Sun, 1981 Cho, Arnold and Kwon, 1982 Chung, Cha, and Lee, 1974). In spite of the foregoing, it should be mentioned that in some countries, couples border little or no son preference, and there are even a few instances in which a preference for daughters has been documented. For example, WFS found that intimately more women wanted a daughter for their next child than a son in Jamaica and Venezuela (Cleland, Verrall, and Vaessen, 1983).The WFS also found little or no sex preference of any type in most South America countries, in parts of the Caribbean and in Kenya and so on, to mention but a few (Arnold and Liu, 1986). Sex Preference among the Yoruba Concern among the Yoruba of Southwest Nigeria about son preference, as an old age security is a long-standing one. monoamine oxidase Zedong vividly depicted this problem in a talk with Edgar black eye in 1970. In the country side, a woman still wants a boy child. If the first and second babies are girls, she will make another try. If the third one comes and is still a girl, the mother would try again. grace ful soon, there are nine of them, Then, the mother is already over 45 or so and she finally decides to leave it at that (cited in Katagiri and Terao, 19722). A variety of historical, moral, ethical, and economic factors underlie son preference among the Yoruba of Southwest Nigeria. In the past, the male patriarch dominated the family in Nigeria, and the practice of ancestor pietism gradually developed. Hence, the patriarchal family structure and the resulting strong preference for sons became institutionalized determine among the Yoruba.These traditions also stress the importance of carrying on the family line through male progeny. Traditionally, apart from social prestige and the felt need to continue the family line, the beingness of sons among the Yoruba is considered advantageous for two economic reasons. These are, support for their parents in old age and the provision of labour for the farm or family business. The former is still an important consideration in Nigeria in gen eral, and among the Yoruba of Southwest in particular, despite the recent introduction of some forms of social security in Nigeria.Other reasons for sex preference among the Yoruba include sons financial contribution to the family income stirred support and the need for sons to meet religious obligations, and so on. Finally, the productive public utility of sons is still an important factor underlying son preference among the Yoruba, where traditional notions about the appropriate division of labour by sex are still prevalent. Child Sex Preference, Old Age Security and the offbeat of the Elderly. Income in later life may come from a variety of sources, including earnings, family members, the children, the state or charity.The balance of these sources has shifted over time as a result of social change, modernization, urbanization, westernization, education of women, more women in formal sector of the economy, coupled with the cracks in the extended family tie and introduction of p ension systems by government. In particular, older peoples economic reliance on their children or older peoples reliance on their children as old-age security has declined, allowing them the dignity of financial independence of kin.The twenty-first century has seen a dramatic shift in the sources of income of older people in both industrialized and non-industrialized countries of the world, but the changes differ profoundly according to sexual urge. For men, the change has been from primary(prenominal)ly earnings to mainly pensions, while for women, the change has mainly been from reliance on family members (particularly the children), to income from offstage business and the support from the spouse.Heavy reliance on private support and support from spouses have not guaranteed or ensured womens economic security in later life and this has further led to gender inequality of income among older people (Ginn, 2001). Having said the foregoing, it is germane to mention that the old-a ge security and child sex (gender) preference are two highly polemic hypotheses regarding the influence of dwelling house fertility and welfare in less-developed and developing countries of the world such as Nigeria.The old-age security hypothesis postulates that in environments where parents face uncertainty about the ability to support themselves during old age, they would expect such support from their children (Raut, 199681-104). This motive could be strong particularly in rural areas of less-developed or developing countries such as Nigeria, particularly among rural dwellers of the Yoruba of Southwest Nigeria where available resources both financial and somatic (materials) tend to yield low or negative interest.Therefore, these are not able to provide for parents needed welfare at old age, so that children may provide a more efficient hedge against old age disability risks (Raut, 1985 1990 1992 Nerlove and Raut, 1995 Cain, 1981 1983 Nerlove, Razin, and Sadka, 1987 and Nugent , 1985). The gender preference hypothesis postulates that parents exhibit preference for having children of a particular sex. In most developing or less-developed societies, parents seem to have preference for sons rather than daughters. The preference for sons may be rooted purely in taste and cultural values or it could be the outcome of some economic calculations.For instance, sons generally stay with their parents, while daughters are married off to another menage or family, so that sons tend to provide better support in old-age as well as augment current household income. The extent to which the preference for sons occurs as an economic response to underdeveloped capital markets and unelaborated risk markets has been a long-standing issue in economic demography literature. Ben Porath and Welch (1976) Heer (1983) and Leung (1988) have examined the consequences of this motive for population growth, and sex ratio.Also, the consequences of child sex preference (sons preference) o n the allocation of human capital and bequest among children have been discussed by Behrman, Pollak and Taubman, (1982). Generally, children are expected to provide long term net benefit streams by supplying labour for family enterprises, generating monetary income stream, providing for old-age security, and acting as a form of insurance. In a setting of risk and uncertainty, parents engage in strategies to influence the pattern and guarantee the reliability of long-term intergenerational benefit flows.Such self-interested strategies to countenance parental well-being at old age include conditional inheritance benefits, practices controlling the mobility of children, and sex differentiated educational and nutritional investments. According to Fapounda et al (1988), West African parents invest more in the education of male children since the financial returns on their education are relatively high. On the other hand, parents are more oriented towards the receipt of a one-time financ ial payment, a bride price, from the marriage of their daughters than to an economically uncertain investment in their daughters study (Fapounda et al 1988).Caldwell further maintained that, in rural Nigeria, for example, one of the reasons for sons preference is that, male children (boys) produce more than they consume by the age of ten to thirteen and by the age of fifteen their total production has exceeded their additive life-time consumption. Although, female children (girls) likewise perform a number of valuable economic tasks, which include helping their mothers with cooking and the post-harvest processing of crops etc. , this is insignificant when compared to the contributions of their male counterparts to the family economy (Caldwell, 1982).Today, the expected increase in the absolute number and proportion of the elderly raises serious concerns about their welfare in the country, particularly given the absence of social security scheme and formal social welfare services f or the old in most African countries. A number of studies have therefore, focused on examining the extent to which the family is involved in providing assistance to the elderly (Peil, 1995 Apt and Katila, 1994 and Togonu-Bickersteth, 1989, 1997). All confirm that the families, particularly children, are the principal source of old-age support in the various African countries studied.It has also been found that assistance is usually offered by children to ensure some level of physical and economic survival for their elderly to the extent that the former can afford. By contrast, parents in industrialized countries and their affluent counterparts among Third World urban elect(ip) have much less need to rely on children any for labour or old-age security. The economics of family size changes as income goes up, until children become a financial burden instead of an asset (Folbre, 1983). According to him, when children are in school, for example, they no longer serve as a source of labo ur. sooner parents must pay for their education, as well as for their other needs, which personify far more in a high consumption society than in a peasant village. And there is often no guarantee that parents investment will buy the future loyalty of a grown up child. As economist Nancy Folbre (1983) noted, The gift of education, unlike a bequest, cannot be made contingent upon conformity to certain expectations. Once given, it can merely be revoked.In industrialized societies personal savings, pension plans, and overnment programs replace children as the basic forms of social security. These social changes fundamentally alter the value of children, fashioning it far more rational from an economic standpoint, to limit family size. Folbre (1983) also argued that as the value of children decreases, male heads of households are more willing to allow their wives to work outside the home, since the contribution of their wages to the family economy now exceeds the value of their house hold work. This further spurs low demand for children and less craze sex preference of a particular child.