(given our species’ practical limitation to single births). Rumour has it that
the actor Warren Beatty and the athlete Wilt Chamberlain each bedded
multiple thousands of women (something not unknown, as well, among rock
stars). They didn’t produce children in those numbers. Modern birth control
limits that. But similar celebrity types in the past have done so. The forefather
of the Qing dynasty, Giocangga (circa 1550), for example, is the male-line
ancestor of a million and a half people in northeastern China.^78 The medieval
Uí Néill dynasty produced up to three million male descendants, localized
mainly in northwestern Ireland and the US, through Irish emigration.^79 And
the king of them all, Genghis Khan, conqueror of much of Asia, is forefather
of 8 percent of the men in Central Asia—sixteen million male descendants,
34 generations later.^80 So, from a deep, biological perspective there are
reasons why parents might favour sons sufficiently to eliminate female
fetuses, although I am not claiming direct causality, nor suggesting a lack of
other, more culturally-dependent reasons.
Preferential treatment awarded a son during development might even help
produce an attractive, well-rounded, confident man. This happened in the
case of the father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, by his own account: “A
man who has been the indisputable favorite of his mother keeps for life the
feeling of a conqueror, that confidence of success that often induces real
success.”^81 Fair enough. But “feeling of a conqueror” can all too easily
become “actual conqueror.” Genghis Khan’s outstanding reproductive
success certainly came at the cost of any success whatsoever for others
(including the dead millions of Chinese, Persians, Russians and Hungarians).
Spoiling a son might therefore work well from the standpoint of the “selfish
gene” (allowing the favoured child’s genes to replicate themselves in
innumerable offspring), to use the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins’
famous expression. But it can make for a dark, painful spectacle in the here
and now, and mutate into something indescribably dangerous.
None of this means that all mothers favour all sons over their daughters (or
that daughters are not sometimes favoured over sons, or that fathers don’t
sometimes favor their sons). Other factors can clearly dominate. Sometimes,
for example, unconscious hatred (sometimes not-so-unconscious, either)
overrides any concern a parent might have for any child, regardless of gender
or personality or situation. I saw a four-year old boy allowed to go hungry on