Verificación del supuesto tres

In the Igbo families, children are the cream of life. Any family that lacks children seemed not to have

blood of children. Zero child birth was a very worrisome situation and condition of childlessness put a woman into perpetual agony. In most Igbo families, men have become polygamous because they needed to have children who will take-over the homesteads when they were gone. Child bearing gave feelings of importance to woman. Apart from the joy of being pregnant, child bearing conferred special status to married women and consolidated the marriage. In some communities, a childless woman was not given any traditional title. Some cases of infidelity have been associated with childlenes. In the cases of women, there may be suspicions that the man may have been impotent and his wife (ves) may be adviced though secretly to seek children through other men who may be potent.

Again Igbo families attached very much importance to male children more and less of female children. Igbo man prefered to have male children because it is believed that the male ones occupy the Obi the male portion of the homestead. This ensured the life of the family. The females were regarded as aku onye ozo( another mans property/ wealth). Inasmuch as female children were not wished away the male ones were highly preferred.

Ohagwu, Eze, Odo, Abu and Ohagwu (2012) during their research on male gender preference discovered that more than half (58.6%, 463/790) of the women desired to have male babies in their present pregnancies while 20.1% (159/790) desired female babies and 21.3%(168/790) did not care if the bady was male or female. Some of the women (222%, 175/790) wanted to have male babies in their present pregnancies for various reason predominnat of which was protecting their marriages and cementing their places in their husbands hearts.

According to this finding:

Male gender preference was strongly perceived by all categories of respondents… Anxiety levels associated with prenatal gender determination and loss of interest in the pregnancy associated with disclosure or undesired fetal gender… Anxiety level increased with increasing age, improved formal education, increasing number of wives married by the husband and increasing number of

female children already had (p.5).

There are other reasons why Igbo families prefer male children apart from marrying and populating the homestead.

In the first instance, husbands are the heads of their different families. This is the view of Abara (2012) who insists that husbands are mostly heads of the families and their decisions are final while women must respect and obey their husbands at all times. Nigeria is a partriachal society where men control and dominate all areas of a woman’s life. Women play subordinate roles particularly at the community and household levels. The impact of the mother and the father is particularly powerful in shaping and continuing patriarchy. The mother shows the role model for daughters while the father demonstrates to the son how to be a man. Ideas about manhood are deeply embedded. From early age, male children may be socialized into gender roles aimed at keeping men in power and control. Many grow up to know that dominnat behavior towards girls and women is part of being a man. This idea is therefore constructed in the minds of the women as dependent and inferior partners who need to listen to and follow the mens spousal leadership and instructions.

Igbo families prefer male children more probably because of family pressures and peer influence. Olubayo (2013) opines that in Igbo families, a custom of Irachi/Nrachi nwanyi prevails.

This custom prevailed in circumstances where a man died without a male child, the family selects one the of his daughters to remain in the homestead, chose a male friend with whom she cohabits with to raise male successors.

There could be religious reasons to male choice in Igbo family system. A critical survey of all the major religions in the world reveals that they are controlled by the men folk in the level of clergy and religious authorities. It is also easy to discover that most of the religions have male-dominated imagery and language about God. Onwutuebe (2013) opines that religious understandings of certain

some of these religious texts and doctrines have, particularly in recent times, become highly disputed.

However, the sustenance of patriarchy mostly through religious conservation still very significantly influences the persistence of unequal gender relations and son preference. Many religious leaders who are mostly Christians and muslims have for example espoused teachings and dogma that acknowledge women as minors in the spheres of religion. These forms of religious understandings often emphasize certain portions of religious texts while disregarding other areas in a bid to sustain the foundation of patriarchy which ultimately is one of the salient factors causing male child preference in Nigeria (Igbo), economy and family system.