Slate eBook Club - Best of 2003

by Slate. com

  In the United States, the parents of a girl are nearly 5 percent more likely to divorce than the parents of a boy. The more daughters, the bigger the effect: The parents of three girls are almost 10 percent more likely to divorce than the parents of three boys. In Mexico and Colombia the gap is wider; in Kenya it's wider still. In Vietnam, it's huge: Parents of a girl are 25 percent more likely to divorce than parents of a boy.

  Ever since the economists Gordon Dahl (at the University of Rochester) and Enrico Moretti (at UCLA) established these facts a few months ago, they and their colleagues (and not a few of their colleagues' friends and families) have been spinning hypotheses about what's behind the numbers.

  Children of divorce usually stay with the mother, so the question comes down to this: Why do fathers stick around for sons when they won't stick around for daughters? (Or alternatively, why do mothers stay married so their sons can have a father when they won't do the same for their daughters?) Do fathers prefer the company of sons? Do parents think a boy needs a male role model? Do they worry that boys cope less successfully with the emotional consequences of divorce? Or do they believe that an emotionally devastated daughter is somehow less of a tragedy than an emotionally devastated son?

  Dahl and Moretti make the extremely helpful observation that all theories fall into one of two categories: Either sons improve the quality of married life (say by being more available for an evening game of catch) or sons exacerbate the pain of divorce (say by falling apart emotionally when the father leaves). Theories of the first sort suggest that a boy child is a blessing; theories of the second sort suggest that the same boy child is a curse—or at least has the potential to become a curse if the marriage starts to crumble.

  So, before we decide which theory to believe, we should look for external evidence on the demand for sons versus the demand for daughters. Do most parents prefer boys or girls?

  Of course we all know the answer in China, with its ongoing history of female infanticide. But what about the United States? Dahl and Moretti offer several reasons to believe that American parents also have a strong preference—though not as strong as the Chinese preference—for boys over girls.

  Here's some of their evidence: First, divorced women with girls are substantially less likely to remarry than divorced women with boys, suggesting that daughters are a liability in the market for a husband. Not only do daughters lower the probability of remarriage; they also lower the probability that a second marriage, if it does occur, will succeed.

  Next, parents of girls are quite a bit more likely to try for another child than parents of boys, which suggests that there are more parents hoping for sons than for daughters.

  Once again, the effect is strong in the United States but even stronger elsewhere. In the United States, Colombia, or Kenya, a couple with three girls is about 4 percent more likely to try for another child than a couple with three boys; in Mexico it's closer to 9 percent, and in Vietnam it's 18 percent. In China, before the one-child policy was imposed in 1982, the number was an astounding 90 percent!

  One of Dahl and Moretti's most striking bits of evidence comes from shotgun marriages. Take a typical unmarried couple who are expecting a child and have an ultrasound, which more often than not reveals the child's sex. It turns out that such couples are more likely to get married if the child is a boy. Apparently, for unmarried fathers, the prospect of living with a wife and a son is more alluring than the prospect of living with a wife and a daughter.

  So, what's the bottom line? Dahl and Moretti are quick to acknowledge that they've found no smoking guns; if you're sufficiently clever you can probably concoct alternative explanations for everything they've observed. But the most natural way to interpret their data is that parents, on average, prefer boys to girls. The preference is stronger elsewhere in the world, but it's plenty strong in the United States too.

  That seems to answer one question: Boys preserve marriages by making marriages better, not by making divorces worse. But it also raises a new question: What's so great about a boy? Why do parents prefer boys to girls?

  Maybe boys grow up to be better economic providers for their parents' old age. (This would explain why the preference for boys is stronger in countries where men hold more economic power.) Maybe boys are just more fun to have around. Maybe parents want a child who can carry on the family name. Or maybe there's something deep in our psyches that tells us a family just isn't a family without a son. Which is it?

  Dahl and Moretti wisely decline to speculate, and I will follow their example. I don't know any evidence that could settle this question. All we know is that for some reason, parents prefer boys—by enough that boys hold a lot of shaky marriages together.

  Years ago on the schoolyard, we used to chant that girls are good but boys are better. It looks like our parents agreed with us.

  Tokyo on One Cliché a Day

  By Seth Stevenson

  Posted Monday, Oct. 13, 2003, at 11:37 AM PT

  Japan Cliché No. 1: Wacky Food

  If you visit Japan, you will no doubt come home with your own wacky food stories. Here's mine:

  I ate whale today. Wacky!

  To answer your questions one at a time: Yes, whale is delicious. Yes, it is reasonably priced. Yes, it could use a little salt. No, I was not aware you are in a militant animal-rights group. No, I will not give you my home address once you've finished wiring that letter bomb.

  I acknowledge that some of you may have minor moral qualms with eating whale. But honestly, I find it wholly defensible. Anyone who's eaten a burger has eaten mammal. Is there a difference between land mammal and sea mammal? To wit: Are whales cuter than cows? Perhaps, but this is a judgment call, and I vote cow. Of course, I still eat cow, too.

  I invite you: Come with me to a hip little whale joint in the center of Shibuya, one of Tokyo's neon-est nightspots. Tucked between boutiques selling thigh-high boots to 10-year-old schoolgirls, this small storefront looks like any other downtown restaurant … until you examine the plastic food on display in the window. Next to a tasty looking plate of bite-sized meats, there is an artfully placed whale figurine. This is the tip-off.

  Inside, an elderly Japanese woman at the counter gets a bit edgy as gaijin (foreigners) walk through the door. Clearly, there have been misunderstandings in the past. No one likes to eat whale meat by accident. So her first words are slow and enunciated: "This is whale meat restaurant." She looks into my eyes for signs of recognition and acceptance and then hands across a menu in English. Fried whale meat. Boiled whale meat. Smoked whale meat. Whale meat sashimi. Whale meat sukiyaki. Baked whale meat with curry. Whale meat miso soup. Whale meat cutlet with cheese.

  This is a lot of whale meat options. Also, there is no other meat here but whale.

  We take seats at a bar overlooking the kitchen. At most Japanese restaurants, there are aquariums allowing you to observe and pick out the seafood you are about to eat. So I wonder for a moment if there is a giant, glass-walled tank somewhere in the back. The playful whales frolic, surface, spray water from blowholes, and then are scooped into massive nets as customers point with hungry smiles. But this seems not to actually exist.

  On the walls are many beautiful paintings of whales. Oil paintings, lithographs, impressionistic watercolors. I suppose this is the equivalent of giant plastic cows at steakhouses. But far more elegant. There are also several identical posters hanging above the tables, each with a graphic of the Earth cut in half, with fish pouring out of this Earth into the open mouth of a giant cartoon whale. I am unable to explain this image. I would guess it advocates whale-eating, though.

  Along with a couple of draft Sapporos, our whale dishes at last arrive. Dig in! Don't let your whale get cold! The whale steak is delicious. It tastes exactly like regular steak, except with the barest hint of a fishy aftertaste. I could eat whale steak every day. But the fried whale is less appetizing. Chewy. Fishy and chewy. Not enough breading and grease. But I'm thinking chicken-fried whale could be qu
ite good.

  OK, this is the point where you're wiring the letter bomb. But let's break it down. As I say, most of us already eat mammal, and I find it difficult to rank whales and cows in a hierarchy of edibleness. Hindus would likely chow whale first. So, if we stipulate—and this is under heavy argument—that these whales are not endangered (the Japanese say the minke whale population is, in fact, rising) and that the kill technique is no less humane (exploding harpoon to head versus iron bolt to head), then I don't think there's anything more wrong with eating Willy than eating Bessie. And look at the other tables in here—happy Japanese families bantering while they gnaw. Japanese children laughing as whale juice drips from their cherubic chins. It's hard to see how this could be evil. Remember, whale as food has a cultural history in Japan. After World War II, when protein was scarce, whale meat fed a generation of Japanese kids. One baby boomer friend here says whale meat was a treat in her Tokyo youth. "I love the whales," she said encouragingly when I told her I would be eating them.

  But OK, I won't lie. Although morally I find this entirely justifiable, a few hours after my whale meal I'm feeling some remorse. And a little bit of nausea. I can feel the whale meat inside me. I looked online at some pictures of minke whales in the wild, and they were really cute. I bet they were smart, too, and loved to frolic, right up until a harpoon exploded in their skull. Oh God, stop it, I'm going to puke up my whale!

  But enough about whale. By far the most diabolical dish I've heard tale of here in Tokyo has nothing at all to do with whales. It seems that in some restaurants, they will put live baby eels in a large bowl of water with a big block of tofu at the bottom. The bowl is heated, and as they become uncomfortably hot, the baby eels burrow down into the cooler tofu. There they are cooked alive, and served like an olive loaf. Any discussion of evil cuisine begins and ends with this recipe.

  Also, if you're still hung up on the whale, you should know that you can get horse sashimi here. I have not eaten horse sashimi, but if I do, I am planning this exchange:

  I take a bite of horse, cough, clear throat, cough

  Companion: "Something wrong with your throat?"

  Me: "Just a little horse."

  One final note on food: McDonald's has rolled out its new worldwide slogan here, "I'm Lovin' It!" Good slogan, but not perfect for the Japanese marketplace, as it often comes out, "I'm Rubbin' It!"

  Japan Cliché No. 2: Manga

  Today is all about animated porn. And by animated, I don't mean the chicks are really into it. I mean the chicks are ink.

  Of all Japan's cultural proclivities, the ubiquity of manga (comic books) perhaps puzzles me most. Japan's tightrope formality, its crushing conformity, its really teeny consumer electronics—these all make sense in geo-historical context. But I have yet to see an adequate explanation for why a nation with one of the world's highest literacy rates would become so obsessed with cartoons. Men and women of all ages can be seen on the subway, in coffee shops, or at racks in convenience stores, poring over thick, bound comic books. And Japanese TV is filled with anime shows. Can't get enough of 'em. Besides CNN and CNBC, the only U.S. channel I get on cable here is the Cartoon Network.

  And it's not just the shows and books. Animation pervades the entire society. Buy a subway pass from the machine and a little onscreen animated lady bows deeply in humble thanks, showing you the top of her carefully animated head. Real estate ads will show pictures of apartments, and in the upper corner of each attractively lit room will be, for no fathomable reason, a floating alien creature with cute little antennae and bright orange fur. On the seatbacks in the express train to the airport, there is a three-panel cartoon strip. In Panel 1, a frog is reading a book to a tiny, humanoid hot dog. In Panel 2, the frog is driving a truck. In Panel 3, the frog is sitting on a suitcase, crying, while the hot dog looks on in dismay. What does this mean? I'm not sure. (This is a great thing about Japan. At least once a day you see something, or someone does something, and you cannot for the life of you figure out the purpose or meaning. It's refreshing, at times, to have no idea what's going on.)

  I do very much enjoy the high value placed on cuteness here. My favorite pop culture character (please, Hello Kitty is over) is Sirotan. Sirotan is a plush stuffed seal, which is cute in itself, but the killer app is that Sirotan dresses up as other animals. After you buy Sirotan, you can buy all his different costumes. He dresses up as sharks, turtles, lobsters, and sundry other aquatic creatures. I still can't figure out why Sirotan disguises himself like this. Maybe he's playing with our conceptions of the seal paradigm. Maybe it's just for yuks. Either way, damned cute, and that's the important thing. Wackiness level: yellow, or "elevated."

  Also cute is a giant robot panda character, of which many toys and T-shirts have been made. This is, as you might expect, a giant robot panda, which I guess might do battle with other robots or something. The beauty part is that when you lift the top of the robot panda's head, it reveals a control room, from which the robot panda is operated, and sitting in a chair in the control room, pushing buttons and pulling levers, is a real, non-robot panda—presumably one gifted with superb mechanical skills and a deep understanding of robotics. I take strange glee in imagining this clever panda constructing himself a giant robot panda with which to dominate other robots. Wackiness level: red. Severe!

  Less cute, though equally wacky, is the cartoon porn. I began to notice, walking around town, all sorts of little storefronts with crowds of young, Japanese men out front, closely examining the backs of DVD boxes. Further reporting revealed that these stores sell anime pornography. This was intriguing from a sociological standpoint. I felt this could be a unique window into the unfettered Japanese id. Entirely unburdened by reality, what do horny Japanese guys really want to see? Think of the possibilities: laws of physics suspended, human anatomy not just amplified but wholly re-imagined!

  I felt duty-bound to rent several anime porn DVDs. And so to my local video store in the Roppongi district of Tokyo. Getting a rental membership at this place was a challenge as no one spoke much English, so we had to communicate the membership agreement terms with hand gestures. Every time I rent a DVD, there is great effort made to tell me when it's due back, but little success in having me understand. It's a struggle. But now that I've decided to rent porn, the language barrier is my friend. Less embarrassing when the nice young woman at the counter rings up my rentals. Hey, maybe I just didn't quite gather that this was porn. My mistake! Won't I be surprised when I get home!

  I wish I could tell you the titles of the DVDs I rented, but they were all in Japanese. Instead, I will tell you the titles of the porn films available through pay-per-view at one hotel I stayed in here: Raw Mouth Secretary, Burst Boobs 3, Panty Hose Mania, The Wives Who Torture Very Well, Tits Petting, and Be Smeared With Semen. Sadly, I did not watch any of these. As for the animated porn I did watch in hopes of gleaning some insight into the Japanese id? I have this to say: Go away, Japanese id! You are scary! I am scared of you!

  The first cartoon featured a schoolgirl being raped by giant alien wolf creatures. Then she masturbated and this somehow summoned evil aliens who raped all her schoolgirl friends with thick, slimy tentacles. Then there was a cute, talking bat on the schoolgirl's shoulder, and then it morphed into a giant bat that killed a wolf creature that was trying to rape her. Later she was tied up naked and raped by regular wolves who lapped at her crotch.

  The second cartoon was more of the same.

  In the third cartoon, once again a schoolgirl is repeatedly raped. But this time, it is by her middle-school teacher. Nice. In one scene she is suspended naked from the ceiling by thick ropes, sodomized with a test tube from the classroom, and then forced to urinate on herself. Dirty, dirty cartoons. In all honesty, this made me feel really gross. It has also made me look at every Japanese man I know with suspicion that underneath that pleasant, placid exterior is a dude who likes watching schoolgirls get raped.

  Even in the regular, non-cartoon soft-core tha
t shows up on Tokyo cable at night (think Cinemax), there is a whole lot of non-consensual sex going on. Highly non-consensual. Much female flailing, kicking, and high-pitched shrieking, all to no avail. The default situation is a man subjecting a woman to treatment she does not want or like, while the man remains utterly calm and appears not even to derive any pleasure from the act. Seems like some power/control issues going on. Especially when you consider the dream girl is always tied up, a very young schoolgirl, animated, or often all three. Icky.

  Still love that robot panda, though. Damned, damned cute.

  Japan Cliché No. 3: Inane Protocol

  This is how I will remember Tokyo: I am about to be late for an appointment. It is scorching hot and humid as I come up out of the subway. There is wincing glare off glass skyscrapers on every side. Instantly, sweat begins to blot through my shirt in widening circles that will soon meet.

  I am terrified of offending the person I'm about to meet, as it has become clear to me that "on time" here 1) means 10 minutes early; and 2) is a religion. Well then, you say, I really should have planned ahead. Yes, but can I explain to you how fricking hard it is to find anything here? This is the place where, quite literally, the streets have no name. I'm not sure why they still haven't bothered to name them, but they haven't. Seems not to be a priority. Consequently, people don't give you addresses here to find things (because there are no addresses). They give you schematics.