Selection of Sex Spawns Reader’s Ire

This letter is in response to your article “A Boy or a Girl” (View, Sept. 5). The article states that with a certain new procedure, couples can choose the sex of their unborn child and that there is an 85% success rate.

On the front page you showed the Neumanns, an “affluent couple” with four daughters and the woman pregnant with a child supposed to be a boy. I was disgusted to read that their ideal family not only included a boy, but that they probably wouldn’t have had so many children if they’d had their boy earlier.

The father stated that he wanted a boy to carry on the family name and to take over his auto detailing business. I for one can certainly understand why a female can’t take over an auto detailing business, when as an adult she could stay at home trying to produce the perfect male heir. (With all the emptiness this couple shows, what are any of their children heir to?) I pity their girls, who must find it hard to understand why they’re not truly wanted simply because of their sex.

Being pregnant, giving birth and parenting are truly wondrous (but) . . . soiled by attitudes such as this. I honestly thought a healthy child was what we all wanted.

CHERYL HOPPER

San Clemente