Sex preference and the Role of Gender Attitudes on its Shaping

Sex preference is one of the concepts that its differences among the world's countries is very wide. While in some countries still having a son is a priority for parents, the dominant pattern in some other countries are either, no sex preference, sex balance preference and girl preference. The purpose of this paper is to describe sex preference and the role of gender attitudes on it by sex. Survey statistical population, was married people in Tehran and 1272 married men and women were selected with multi-stage cluster sampling. The findings indicate that the dominant pattern in both men and women is sex balance preference. Son preference has been reported in men more than women and girl preference in women more than men. Gender attitudes is accepted as a factor in shaping sex preference in both sexes.There are correlations between traditional gender attitudes with son preference and egalitarian gender attitudes with no sex preference and sex balance preference in both sexes.In general we can say that changing traditional attitudes toward egalitarian gender attitudes, has changed sex preference from Son preference to sex balance preference that have followed sociological and demographic consequences.