I realize reading this article, “A Dangerous Surplus of Sons?”, that while I thought I was being negative about the sex-imbalance in Asia—the fact that there are going to be far too many more men than women in places like China and India—I was being a little too optimistic, in fact.
One question occurs to me. If skewed sex-selection is going to engender a global epidemic, might it become necessary for families outside of these countries to select female children proactively? Could some kind of immigration system be set up to defuse the situation? This might sound crazy, but after all it’s what the Greeks probably would have done. It would effectively alter Indian and Chinese societies and cultures very rapidly, as mothers taught their children their own values from early on, either in conjunction with those of the children’s fathers, or discreetly and in resistance to the society into which they’d emigrated.
Of course, the whole notion involves treating women from birth as solutions to a problem, emissaries of peace-brokering, but then governments and businesses routinely regard humans as resources to be used for whatever ends they deem important. I’m wondering more about how feasible it might be. If a government convinced the Chinese that it’d avert a civil war, they might buy in.
But would the newly emigrated Chinese/Indian population in the West change Western society radically as well? Most Westerners I know would probably doubt it, considering how foreigners generally adapt to Western culture; but a mass influx of males from one or two nations might have a rather striking effect.
And it strikes me that all of this should go into a short story, once my hand is in better shape.
Sorry, but you couldn’t talk me into dating most of the Korean or Indian men I’ve met. And putting two opposing forces on a child–a mother’s values and a father’s or society’s values–is a sure way to mess a kid up. Nope. I don’t think mass immigration is going to work. I think there are just going to be a lot more selective women and more old batchelor men.
You have a point there. :)
Still, as far as a science-fiction idea, it could still get off the ground, if you get governments that are very nasty running the show… it’s nothing I’d *want* to see happen, but as a story plot it might be interesting…
But then again, you know, I think the “two opposing forces” being put on a child thing is something most of us grew up with, isn’t it? Parents very often disagree about things. My parents came from different (albeit both Western) cultures and family backgrounds, and I don’t think that was what messed me up, to whatever degree I was indeed messed up as a kid.
However, I do think living in one culture at home and another in the public sphere is a good way to mess someone up… though usually people who live that way are more apt to be openminded, able to tolerate and even understand difference, and more able to see beyond their own little corner of the world. In my experience.
But again, the scheme I wrote about isn’t something I’d necessarily advocate. At all. And I think you’re sort of right about what the real-world result will be. Sort of. Wait till my novel comes out to see what I mean. :)