Sex preferences in Brazil

• Autor(a) principal: Raquel Zanatta Coutinho
• Data de Publicação: 2016
• Tipo de documento: Artigo de conferência
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Institucional da UFMG
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/1843/40511
• topic: Latin America; Sex preferences; Fertility; América Latina; Saúde pública; Fecundidade humana

In Brazil, any form of disclosed child neglect or violence based on sex would be condemned. Abortion is legally restricted to a few situations, such as rape or risk of death for the level. This is because in the absence of prenatal or postnatal practices, women who are unsatisfied with their composition can either change their minds about what is ideal or progress to future births. So, sex preferences act on children composition by increasing one’s fertility in order to achieve the desired sex composition. To my knowledge, throughout more than 20 years, only three articles touched on this topic with a demographic focus, although only the first listed was in fact focusing on sex preferences (Arnold 1992; Souza, Rios Neto and Queiroz 2011; Carvalho 2014). Based on parity progression rates and in-depth interviews, they suggest that there is a even more. Therefore, this is a phenomenon that deserves to be further explored, particularly if put in a sociological perspective by stratifying the analyses by social groups. Most cross sectional studies use parity progression rates to analyze sex preferences. While these studies have the greatest advantage of observing the impact of preferences on fertility, the DHS is a unique opportunity to to characterize the women with different preferences to understand how social structure has been shaping sex preferences and fertility ideals. It is also important to understand who the women who are pursuing their compositional goals in spite of the low fertility targets.