Marriage Counselor Uncle Ebo Whyte has urged parents to accept and cherish all their children, regardless of gender. He said discrimination against female children and preference for their male counterparts was an old fashioned and counterproductive phenomenon in society today. Uncle Ebo gave the advise when he appeared on Joy FM’s Super Morning Show last Friday alongside relationship expert Esi Mensah. Whyte explained that the desire for male children originated before Ghana was founded as a nation - at a time when villagers would routinely war with one another over property, land, and women. While male children were crucial in the defense of villages back then, he said the preference for boys was out of step with the realities of modern Ghana. In his opinion, women can even make better children because they are more likely than boys to care for their parents in their old age in spite of prejudices against them by those same parents. But in keeping with the theme that gender determines practically nothing about a person, he also noted that he and his brothers provide adequately for their ailing mother. Esi Mensah endorsed Ebo Whyte’s claims on the equal potential of boys and girls, adding that as gender barriers in the professional world continue to fall, women are proving themselves as capable as men in skilled and innovation-based professions. Even further, Uncle Ebo stated that given equal opportunities, women are likely to be more successful, and their success tends to benefit a wider range of people than a man’s. He added that across the world and throughout modern history, societies that have excelled economically are those that welcome women‘s professional contributions. While some men dread passing on family businesses to a daughter because the business will no longer remain under the family surname, Whyte insisted that many women are more competent than their brothers and that if people instill their values in their children, the lineage will live on in a modern sense. However, he and Mensah agreed that in today’s world, children of both genders do not achieve their greatest potential by following the dreams their parents have for them. The parents’ job, they said, is to support the children, give them all the opportunities they can (especially equal education for boys and girls,) and allow the children to find their own paths. Ebo Whyte said that parents who think of their children as property, like those who prefer boys to girls, need to update their mentality. Addressing parents who complain of the 'wrong gender' of their children, the counselors reasoned that parents are undeniably better off than couples who have no children at all. At the end of the program, one listener sent a text saying that his parents had seven children because they were trying to bear a child of a certain gender. Now married, the man resents his parents because he has to give a huge chunk of his paycheck to his younger siblings instead of using the money to benefit his own family unit.