Omaha daily bee. (Omaha [Neb.]) 187?-1922, 1918-12-15
By BEATRICE FAIRFAX.
VIZ ERE you disappointed when
M The hahu cntne2

w the baby came?
Had you longed intensely
Ter a son, and did it seem as though
the whole performance had fallen
rather fiat when they told you that
he baby was only a girl?
Did the babys father~very much
want boy to carry on the family
1ame"-though perhaps you never
jared SO much for the name your
self-and were all the grandparents
and lesser relatives for once in solid
agreement that the situation abso-
lutely demanded a boy baby?
The disappointment didn't last
long, OF course. Rabies can usually
be depended on to conquer their
own domestic territory within a
week, and / suppose yours wasn't
in exception. And now that you
are so thoroughly reconciled to her
sex, and are convinced that you
wouldn't have her different i'm the
minutest point, and the relatives are
outdoing each other in fatuous
ecstasy, don't you sometimes Won
der why you wefe so very sure you
wanted boy, and why everybody
else, concerned and unconcerned,
held precisely the same view?
Aren't you even the least little bit
ashamed of that inhospitality OF
yours, so far as daughters were
Concerned? And ,afen't you, as
matter of fact, trying hard to forget
that you ever had any such feel
ing?
Prejudice Against Girls.
The truth is, of course, that you
weren't responsible for that preju-
dice that flickered in you before
your baby's birth. 1t was purely
traditional flicker, a race flicker,
and hadn't anything to do with you
at all. People nave felt that way
ABOUT babies for such untold ages
that it isn't surprising that you
shared the feeling fer little while
The desire for sons' Why, it's as
oh as the world. Whereas the de-
sire for a daughter is something
nobody ever dreamed of feeling or
expressing until very recent times.
There's nothing mysterious about
it. As long as people valued and
respected men great deal more
than women boy baby was natur-
ally great deal more important and
desirable than a girl baby. And |
Suppose you realize that ! am put
ting the case very mildly. His
torians tell US that many ancient
peoples though"it no crime to xe-
bose girl babies to crue death.
For that matte they're doing it
still Girl babies are still allowed
10 die both in China and in India.
The native religions sanction it,
-aad I suppose there's nothing for
the agonized mothers to do but sub
nit.
In fact, we are told that in no
eastern country, even today, does
a girl baby meet any but grudg-
ing welcome. Snubbed at the en-,
trance to life, she is rigidly kept
in \ her place ever afterward. The
Jewish religion doesn't allow
single candle to be lighted at>the
birth OF a girl, though there is
welcoming blaze when boy is
born.
It has been a mans world, hasn't
Il? But it's so much less so nova
days, in our western countries at
least that no rIrNther need any
longer lament that she has brought
a girl baby into existence. Every
day that passes in this swiftly NOV
ing age brings a higher valuation
of women-gives women a better
chance and bigger one.
The world has rhapsodized about
women for some centuries-and
stopped at that. Now its gotten to
the point of taking women serious
~, of acknowledging its need of
them, of slowly unfastening every