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The story
A survey asking people what gender they’d want their ideal child to be found that 82% of women and 54% of men said “girl” — and the result is stirring up debate on 5ch’s “Whatever Live” (なんでも実況G) board.
In the thread, some pointed to boys’ higher risk of autism and illness, a harsher competitive society waiting for them, and the fact that fathers rarely win custody in a divorce. Others pushed back with “boys are cuter when they’re little” and “plenty of mothers end up doting on their sons anyway,” leaving the thread split.
What people said
4x the risk of autism compared to girls
2x the risk of developmental disorders compared to girls
More prone to illness than girls up until age 5
Higher aggression
Sexual urges start kicking in around age 3
6x more likely to become a criminal than girls
Gets thrown straight into a brutal competitive society the moment he's out in the world
Can't help the sex drive thing —
it kicks in instinctively even with zero "education" involved
Way too many flaws on this list
If you're actually going to have a kid you love,
you'd want them to have it easy in life, right?
Nobody wants their kid stuck with the higher suicide rate
Unless a guy's blessed with real talent, he's pretty much guaranteed a life spent in the competitive rat race
That's just reality though —
the suicide and homelessness gender gap is brutal
Plus there's always the chance the kid isn't even yours (托卵 — 5ch slang for a wife passing off another man's child as her husband's)
It's supposed to be a time that values the individual, but biologically men still get devalued
and you end up living inside that contradiction
Ending that devaluation is supposed to be what real gender equality and political correctness are about,
but I guess people are only ever this shallow in the end
Bluntly put, we've had 80-plus years of peace so men are oversupplied and their value has cratered
If a war ever cut the male population in half, men's value would skyrocket
and we'd slide back into a prewar-style patriarchal society
Doesn't matter how sensible or rich the parents are, sometimes the whole family goes down together
With a girl you're basically guaranteed at least a passable life, and she won't drag everyone else down with her
Not sure about developmental disorders, but autism often happens from too much testosterone in the womb, so it naturally skews male
Women can earn their own money now so they don't need a man's income, and men can get by fine without much life skill thanks to appliances and delivery services — the give-and-take is broken regardless of whether it's peacetime or not
Isn't the "broken give-and-take" really just that women earn now but still won't support a man in return?
Fathers don't bond with sons nearly as intensely by comparison, so it swings the outcome less for them
People always say dads want to play catch with their sons, but good luck finding a park these days where you're even allowed to
Also, you don't actually have to play catch
Think about it
a daughter is basically a much younger woman with your own traits
that's some serious same-type aversion right there
You don't know any women? Plenty of grown women still go on overseas trips with their parents
There are tons of women out there griping that their little (or big) brother gets favored way more than they do
It's only natural parents put more into a son's education
that's just a separate issue
My wife says she wants a girl, but raising a daughter sounds boring
Boys are cuter when they're little
but thinking about old age, a daughter's hard to give up too
1. They secretly believe women actually have it easier
2. They don't care how the kid's life turns out as long as they get to dote on them
Isn't it gotta be one of those two?
But you don't even have a wife…
It's because a daughter doubles as a friend
that's the big one
High risk, high reward
Guys aren't exactly driven to support their parents, kind of detached about it, so the upside's thin
So real
that "we'd like at least one boy" mindset
That's because it's the "winning" moms (まんさん — mildly dismissive 5ch slang for women) who post on Instagram
A daughter risks taking after the dad and turning out plain, but looks matter way less for a boy
But by far the most common answer is wanting both a boy and a girl
Background and Key Points
The result comes from a general online survey rather than a government report, but it lands hard in Japan because it inverts a very old cultural default: the koseki family-registry system and traditional ie (household lineage) practice have long favored sons as heirs and name-bearers, especially in rural and business families. A majority now saying they’d want a girl marks a real break from that norm, not a continuation of it. 5ch’s “Whatever Live” board is a huge, anonymous general-chat forum, so threads like this tend to surface blunt, unfiltered reactions rather than considered opinion.
The thread didn’t really argue about the 82%/54% numbers themselves — nobody in it disputed the survey. What it split on was motive: some posters read the girl-preference as protective, parents wanting to spare a child a statistically harder life (suicide rates, competitive pressure, custody loss after divorce). Others reframed it as self-interested, arguing mothers want daughters mainly because a daughter becomes a lifelong companion and “friend,” while sons drift away after growing up — making the preference about the parent’s future, not the child’s welfare.
What’s likely to get missed is that the elevated autism and developmental-disorder rates in boys cited in the thread aren’t message-board folklore — that male skew is a well-documented pattern in real epidemiological research, often linked to prenatal testosterone exposure, so it’s not something to wave off as exaggeration. Also unmentioned: Japan’s family courts have historically awarded custody to mothers in the vast majority of divorce cases, a background fact that explains the custody worry raised in the thread without anyone spelling out why it’s so lopsided.
This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (“Whatever Live”) thread “[Sad News] “82% of Women, 54% of Men” End Up Naming a Girl as Their Ideal Child’s Gender…“.
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