When the nurse stepped out of the delivery room, her face turned somber as she approached with a baby in her arms wrapped in a blanket. Her voice dropped to a hush, almost like she was ashamed, as she announced to the family: “It is a daughter.”Nothing about the nurse’s negative demeanor surprised Sunil Jaglan, the newborn’s father. Growing up in the northern Indian state of Haryana, he was accustomed to parents’ strong preference for having sons over daughters. But something within him snapped, he said, when he offered the nurse money as a thank you gesture, and she refused because she had not handed over a boy. “Are you also ashamed of yourself?” Mr. Jaglan recently remembered asking the nurse when his daughter was born 11 years ago.

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Persons: Sunil Jaglan, Jaglan Locations: Haryana