Much of RP's theory is based on the idea that social and cultural practices arise from primitive, biological sources. One such idea is that women are valued more by society than men due to their relatively limited reproductive capacity.

In some ways this fits with what we see. Women are often granted special protection, like children, but men are not. Women are not encouraged to take on dangerous jobs or go to war. Boyfriends often make small sacrifices to their own safety (like walking on the more dangerous side of the side walk) in order to protect their girlfriends. At first glance, it seems that the lives of women are given priority over men.

However, if a person is more valuable due to some characteristic, then it would follow that people, when given a choice, would choose the person who has the most value. To be more specific, wouldn't parents choose to have a girl over a boy if girls are more valued?

Instead we more often see the opposite. Most famously in countries such as China and India, sons are strongly preferred. Even in America, boys have been consistently preferred over girls and this preference has remained relatively constant over time.

Of course we can list many cultural reasons, but what is the evolutionary, or biological source of widespread preference? Boys usually come with more status than girls, but why does this matter? If girls are more valued in general, then why do they seem to be less wanted, at least in certain circumstances?

The answer seems to be that the ability to produce resources is actually more important than reproductive capacity. Few families will produce the most children possible, because they simply can't afford to feed and raise that many children. The bottleneck in our reproduction is not the lengthy pregnancies of women, but the limited resources necessary to raise a healthy child that can successfully compete with other children. If you look at our species, this is clearly the strategy we have chosen. We don't have 10-20 kids and hope for the best. At least when given the option, we dump all our resources into 1-3 kids, a number significantly below a woman's reproductive maximum.

My view is that the bottleneck on reproduction due to limited to resources is much greater than the bottleneck due to women's limited reproductive capacity. As a result, men will be valued more than women unless women contribute to resources equally. This is the biological reason behind cross-cultural practices such as female specific abortions, female infanticide, and dowries. Especially when resources are scarce, girls are considered a burden and their capacity to have children provides little to no value.

RPillers, do you have a different biological explanation for the preference for male children?