The old-fashioned woman : primitive fancies about the sex / by Elsie Clews Parsons.

  • Elsie Clews Parsons
Date:
1913
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The old-fashioned woman : primitive fancies about the sex / by Elsie Clews Parsons. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    II GIRL BABIES “ T AM just as glad to have a girl as a boy, ” says the mother who from piety or sentimentality, thinking she ought to be or averse perhaps to commiseration, fails to realise how much by her own words she gives herself away. “I suppose you are glad it is a boy, ” is another remark judged fitting to the occasion. Do I merely imagine I discern disparagement, concern, or mockery in the intonation of “all girls,” or “only girls” in references to a maleless progeny? One admits to being fanciful in thinking of such turns of speech as survivals of female infanticide. And yet, were there survivals, they would prob- ably be as slight. So many of the reasons for female infanticide no longer exist. Except in melodrama, marriage by capture has gone out of vogue, hence from this point of view girls are no longer a source of weakness to kindred or tribes- men. Courtship itself, to be sure, may be a
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