Social aspects of > 800 couples coming forward for gender selection of their children.

The social characteristics of 809 couples attending a sex preselection clinic have been studied. Their ethnic origins were: Indian 57.8%, European 32.0%, Chinese 3.6% and others 6.8%. The average number of boys and girls per family was 0.09 and 2.70 respectively for couples wanting a boy, and 2.46 and 0.14 for those wanting a girl. The average age of the wives was 34.0 years. These figures were not significantly different in any ethnic subgroup. Out of all the couples, 80.6% stated that they would have had another baby even had sex preselection not been on offer; 37.5% of the couples interviewed have been treated so far. The figures among those treated are substantially the same as those for the whole group. Asian and Middle Eastern couples overwhelmingly wanted boys, whereas European couples showed a slight preference for girls. These results suggest that, given certain guidelines, sex selection is unlikely to lead to a serious distortion of the sex ratio in Britain and other Western societies, but may need careful monitoring in other parts of the world.