As for that case in Denmark, when a baby boy was found abandoned but alive. In Sweden during the last circa ten years, all abandoned newborn babies have been found dead, and all but one of them have been girls. If you assume, as I do, that practically no mothers want to kill their newborn sons, but some of them do want to kill their newborn daughters, then it makes sense that the boy in Denmark was found alive. His mother felt unable to take care of him, but she really wanted him to survive. He was her son, after all.

I know that some parents do kill their sons, but I don't think that parents ever kill their sons because they are boys. No, I think it is the boys' habits or quirks or irritating behaviour that drive their parents crazy and provoke them to commit murder. I do think, however, that some parents are willing to kill their daughters, or take insufficient care of their daughters, because the daughters are girls. If you consider that new case in Austria, the man who killed his daughter didn't do it because the girl drove him crazy with her behaviour. No, he wanted to obliterate his entire family so that he wouldn't have to tell them that he had squandered a large sum of money. He was prepared to kill his own child to cover up his shame. Would he have been willing to kill his child for that sort of reason, though, if the child had been a boy? Personally, I strongly doubt it. A son's life is so valuable to a father that I really doubt that the father would be willing to kill his son just to save his own dignity. But his daughter's life may be worth less to the man than his own loss of standing in the eyes of his family. At the very least, I don't know of a case where a man went on a murder spree which started with his own killing of his own son.

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Don't kill your son! God stops Abraham from sacrificing Isaac.

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But God didn't stop Jephthah from sacrificing his daughter. But then, she was only a girl. (Judges, chapter 11.)

Ann