Battle of the Sexes

Some neighborhood kids.

As many of your know we have been trying again to match our family with a child in need of a family and adopt a second child. Originally we said to the orphanage director, maybe we would like a girl this time? But as we looked around the orphanage from the beginning we could obviously see a shortage of girls. At that time all I could think of was that parents wanted to keep girls because they might receive money/resources during marriage proposals? But I began searching to try to find out why less girls seem to be given up than boys. We also broke the news to A Delight that she will probably not ever have a sister :(

In December we visited the orphanage again. I saw those two brothers whose mother died and their father is unable to care for them. We have been in prayer about adopting them for a long time, but one brother is older than two of our children. He would probably be seven by the time of adoption. And these boys in our family would mean five children within 4 years of each other.

But again God put those boys on my heart. I spent days praying for them and couldn't think of much else sometimes. Finally after a week or so of this I had an idea that maybe they weren't on my heart for us to adopt them, but to connect them with a family from our church who haven't been able to have children.

Then the conversations started. Amazing. It came out that boys are just too much work to raise. We also heard that "maybe if it were a boy and a girl maybe, but my wife wants a girl." We would only have money to raise one of the children. So we were not able to find a family for these boys. But what came out of these conversations is how much work at home is expected of girls from an early age. Despite the fact that the parents will have to give their daughter with an expensive dowry at the time of marriage, still girls are highly valued over boys. Those living in the city and raising boys, often bring a girl in from a village and have her work for the family while possibly going to school part of the day. Overall, it's probably not actually a good sign for girls here that fewer of them make it into orphanages.

-- La Maestra