Trope Title:
Laconic:
Related:
Indices:
Examples:
Trope Title: Prenatal Gender Picking
Laconic: Expecting parents use magical or scientific means to choose the gender of an unborn baby.
In real life, the gender of a baby is determined by the sex chromosomes from its mother's egg and its father's sperm; the mother contributes an X chromosome, while the father contributes either an X or Y chromosome (the former will make a girl, and the latter will make a boy). Fiction throws this out the window with either magic or super-advanced technology that expecting parents can use to ensure the baby is their preferred gender. Most often (but not always), the parents-to-be will want a boy because of the assumption that only men can inherit.
The mundane version of this trope: use a scan to reveal the gender of the baby before birth, have an abortion if it's not the preferred gender, and keep trying until you get the desired results. In some parts of the world where baby boys are preferred, a couple trying for a child will abort the fetus if it is a girl and do this as many times as it takes to get a boy, with the consequence that many of those countries now have lopsided gender ratios in favor of men.
Related:
- Designer Babies: Genetically-engineered offspring.
- Heir Club for Men: Only men can inherit.
- Wanted a Son Instead: A parent or relative is disappointed at someone for not being the gender they assumed they'd be.
Indices: Pregnancy Does Not Work That Way, Babies, Babies Everywhere
Examples:
- Our Lady Suspiriorum
: Elia is the mortal form of Mother Suspiriorum, one of the three mother-goddesses of Valyria. Her husband Rhaegar wants a son to name Aegon after his famous ancestor, but Elia bears him two daughters instead, Shiera and Aelinor. Her inner monologue makes it plain that she could have a son if she felt like it, but she feels Westeros has been male-dominated for too long. - Triptych Continuum: Mytilene's Truest Love, or The Most Special Spell, is a spell that allows two mares to conceive a foal. One side-effect of it is that any foal conceived by the spell will be a filly.
- Wish Carefully: When a Dark pureblood couple has their first child, male selection spells are used on the wife to ensure that their firstborn is a boy. Pansy has trouble conceiving a child with Draco when his family insists on using the spells. Without them, she is able to conceive a daughter. In hindsight, her father-in-law Lucius notes that they should have been grateful the child was at least a witch, considering the Generational Magic Decline in their society that followed. Widespread use of this spell also causes problems for Voldemort-ruled Magical Britain on a wide scale; most of the Dark pureblood families conceived their sons using the same spells and had no further children, with the consequence that there weren't enough women of childbearing age to marry when that generation reached adulthood.
- Fire & Blood: It is lightly implied (but never confirmed) that Queen Visenya used magic to conceive her son, Maegor. After ten years of being married to her brother-husband King Aegon without ever getting pregnant, people start whispering that she is infertile (and bringing up the possibility of marrying their daughters to Aegon instead), but suddenly she is pregnant and correctly predicts that she is having a boy.
