Like I said, there is no way that I can know that Madeline Neumann's parents would have taken her to hospital if she had been a boy. I'm just saying that there is a pattern which says that some parents take their sons to hospital, but not their daughters.

This, however, is not an American pattern. Neglecting to take your daughter to hospital is in no way whatsoever a part of American mainstream culture. Instead, I'm sure that the overwhelming number of Americans (and Europeans) know that if their child dies because they have wilfully neglected to take him or her to hospital, everyone around them will be absolutely horrified. Doing that sort of thing to your child is not only bad, it is unthinkable. If you let your behaviour be guided by mainstream American or European culture or thought patterns, it is unthinkable to neglect your child like that.

But I think that Madeline's parents are so religious that they can't fully be regarded as loyal to American mainstream culture. I refuse to believe that most Americans think it would be okay to let their child slowly waste away and do nothing more than pray for him or her!

Because the Neumanns were so religious, they let their religious belief guide them when it came to their approach to their daughter's illness, not the question of what others would do or what others would think.

Other strong beliefs, not only religious ones, can similarly affect a person so that he or she behaves in a way that is not acceptable according to the mainstream culture of the country where this person lives.

So causing the death of young girls by neglecting to take them to hospital when they are seriously ill, although you would take the girl's brother to hospital if he suffered from the same illness, is not part of American culture. But I strongly believe that it is part of the traditions in some other countries. I have read a lot of feminist literature and also reports from the United Nations which strongly suggest that there are countries and cultures where girls don't get as much or as good health care as boys receive.

But to the very best of my knowledge, there are no countries or cultures that preferentially mistreat boys, so that boy children get less health care than girl children.

Why would there be cultures - several cultures - that preferentially mistreat girl children in terms of health care, but possibly no cultures that preferentially mistreat boy children when it comes to health care?

This is what I believe. Bottom line, it has to do with deeper and more fundamental things than cultures and thought patterns. My answer is that so many people believe, deep down and perhaps on a subconscious level, that boys are more valuable than girls. Because of that belief, it becomes easier to to turn female infanticide into something socially acceptable - to turn it, in fact, into a part of a culture. It may not be exactly nice to kill your daughter, but people will understand you if you do it. Because she was only a girl, after all.

I believe that this "higher estimation of boys" may be something universal. I'm not saying that it is so strong that people normally will not want to keep their daughters. Of course not. But an instinctive feeling that boys are a little more valuable than girls may be there anyway.

Suppose it is "normal" or "human" to place a higher value on boys than on girls. If you live in America or in Europe, you are not allowed to act on that preference very much, because our cultures force us to take care of our children regardless of their gender. If you don't do that, you may be ostracized, or the social services may take your children away from you. But if you have a strong alternative belief, so that you don't much care what the mainstream culture of your country teaches, you may listen to your deep subconscious preferences instead. And just possibly, these subconscious preferences may tell you that a daughter's illness might present the perfect opportunity to test your own religious faith, whereas a son's illness would prompt you to take him to hospital after all.

Okay. Am I jumping to conclusions here? Yes, I realize that I definitely might be. But is it certain that what I say is nonsense? I ask you to at least consider the possibility that our future ability to preselect the sex of our children may have dire consequences for society, and certainly for women and for anything resembling equality between the sexes, if you believe in that sort of thing. If, when push comes to shove, people really prefer to have more sons than daughters, what will our society be like?

Ann