Now You Can Tell the Sex of Your Unborn Child, After Ten Weeks!

Today's news brought me the snippet that there is now an over-the-counter test, called Intelligender, that can tell the sex of the fetus a mere ten weeks after conception. The manufacturers are careful to point out that the test, which measures hormone levels in the mother's urine, is about 70% accurate, and that major life decisions should not be based on the test's accuracy.

'Major Life Decisions" presumably means aborting a fetus if the sex is not what one wishes, rather than simply decorating a room in blue arther than pink. This gave me pause for thought.

Fortunately I don't live in a social community that seems to care much about that, although I do know the woman up the street longs for a girl after having three boys, so perhaps, reluctant as I am to admit it, I do live in just such a community. Perhaps we all do.

Not so long ago it wasn't possible to tell the sex of a fetus before it actually emerged into the light of day. How did we get to be so anxious that we can't wait to know what nature has in store for us? Why is it that we need to know now, rather than being able to be patient? What I detect in this is an enormous amount of anxiety about what the future will hold, and whether or not we'll be ready for it. We are encouraged to start saving for a child's college fund from the moment he or she is born - that's a TV ad that's airing these days. We're frantic to have our child ge a genius so we invest in early learning devices of all kinds. Are we, perhaps, moving towards a world where we need to know the outcome before we even start?

A friend of mine shed some useful light on this. She pointed out that we're so eager to plan ahead for our children and get them into various 'programs' that we don't allow them to be quirky, odd, unusual, or just plain different. This is the same 'difference' that labeled Einstein as a hopeless case in his teens. It called Edison a dreamer. It wrote off the Wright brothers as lunatics.

When we can't control things we're more likely to relax and accept what comes. Then we allow whatever happens to take its own course; and that's when miracles can occur. JFK was the second son. No one expected him to achieve much, so they allowed him his space and perhaps that was his salvation. Churchill was a second son, too.

Leave a little space in life for the spontaneous.