The Missing Girls Of India

A crisis is evolving in India and it has gone on for decades. The preference for Indian families to have male children is becoming so epidemic that there is now a lack of females in the culture and society that is leading to problems. Some estimates are that over 8 million female children have become victims of infanticide in India since 1986. The reason for male preference in having children is economic in nature. Males are preferred due to the fact that when they grow up they often bring money into the families that they belong to. They also help retain property that is owned by their families. With females in India the opposite is true. They do not help a family gain wealth, in fact the family of the female must often present a huge dowry to the family of the male when a marriage takes place and also surrender property to their daughters new husband. Indian couples often believe that it is not worth it to have and raise a female child for these reasons. The use of Ultrasound techniques in India is widespread in order to determine the sex of the child before it is born. Often after the female child is born it is either killed or abandoned somewhere and left to die. There is now beginning the makings of a crisis in that adult males in India are now finding it harder to find suitable females to marry when the time comes. Some adult males now indicate that they have to look farther and farther beyond their home villages in order to find women of their own age that they can marry due to the shortage.