The reason only male offspring are considered as a pension plan is that the female offspring is expected to support the family they marries into. Things would b

The reason only male offspring are considered as a pension plan is that the female offspring is expected to support the family they marries into. Things would be more equal if both the male and female offspring was expected to stay at home and support their parents, and preferential abortion of female fetuses would stop, but marriages would then be a bit of an issue. For cultural reasons people do not flip a coin and have the male offspring being expected to be the pension plan 50% of the time and female offspring the other 50%. A married couple is also unlikely to be able to stay at the homes of both families and support both at the same time. But the crux of the discussion is that we want humans to be treated like humans. Having both men and women being walking pension plans in the possession of their parents is not a big improvement all things considered. A better solution is to enable people to survive growing old without depending on offsprings to support them, and that require us to look at the money issue. A solid pension system and universal health care does wonders to a lot of issues in society, and looking at countries with both these I see a distinct decrease of problems that occur because parents uses their children as financial support systems.