When Daughters Were Counted as Liabilities (and How Our Thoughts Are Changing That)

I remember a phrase I heard in villages and marketplaces: girls are a liability, goats and cows are assets. That sentence carries the weight of centuries — of economics, lineage, ritual, insecurity, and fear. It has always hurt me, not just intellectually but in my chest, the way I feel for my daughters and granddaughters who will inherit the residue of those beliefs.

That pain is tied to something I think about often: destiny and our inner magnetic fields of thought. I keep returning to the image of people as tiny magnets, each emitting a field of thought that interacts with others. In crowded places, good thoughts can neutralize negative ones; collective decency can dampen cruelty. I have seen it happen. And because I believe in that, I also believe change is possible — even for a belief as entrenched as "girls are liabilities."

Where the belief came from

The idea that livestock are assets and daughters are burdens is not simply cruelty; it was once practical logic in certain socioeconomic systems. In agrarian economies, animals represented immediate, liquid value: milk, labor, trade. Patrilineal inheritance and dowry systems made daughters economically inconvenient in a world built around male lineage.

These rationales were reinforced by custom, law, and folklore. They were repeated in local papers, in community conversations, and on screens and social feeds — the old stories amplifying themselves until they felt inevitable. I have read across news posts, academic portals, and community pages that carry variations of these ideas beekey.buzz, NCBI portal, local news sites that echo village voices KDQN, and social posts where the same phrases recur with different tones (Facebook post 1, Facebook post 2). I have seen policy documents and agricultural outreach pages that show the other side of the ledger, where animals are part of an economic strategy (Ohio Farm Office, Wyoming SOS business doc). Even in unexpected archives and commits of digital projects, traces remain of how technology records and amplifies cultural content (HuggingFace commit A, HuggingFace commit B).

Cultural memes are sticky. They survive because communities repeat them. That repetition is itself a kind of force field.

Why the mindset is changing

But forces shift. I’ve been watching — with sorrow and hope — the ways that the value calculus is changing:

• Education and skill accumulation turn people (including daughters) into assets. When a young woman goes to school, she brings potential economic and intellectual capital back into the family and the community.
• Urbanization and the changing nature of agricultural economics reduce the comparative value of livestock as the only measurable form of wealth. Farms become businesses with different valuations; cities create new roles and incomes (Ohio Farm Office).
• Legal reforms and social awareness erode the frameworks that made daughters a financial burden. Policies and registries change incentives (Wyoming business forms and registration systems).
• Social media and community organizing make it harder to keep damaging norms private. Posts and conversations, even casual ones, shift what feels normal in a community (community posts and discussions, local discussions).

I see these shifts not as abstract trends but as the result of countless small thought-fields changing: teachers inspiring, neighbors supporting a girl’s schooling, a mother refusing a dowry demand. Each act radiates outward.

Destiny, sympathy, and the quiet grief I carry

I cannot talk about this without confessing the grief I feel — a private ache about fate. I have watched people whose inner moral lives were generous still be trounced by forces beyond them: legal loopholes, poverty, the inertia of custom. These observations reinforce my sense that destiny is a stream we swim in, sometimes against, sometimes with.

That sense of fate is not fatalism. Rather, it makes me more tender. I feel sympathy for those whose lives are constrained; I feel urgency about the quiet work of changing fields of thought. The fact that someone may live a life of positive public contribution and still suffer personally reminds me that we cannot measure a life only by visible achievements.

The role of collective thought — why I remain hopeful

This is where my magnetic-field idea comes in. Individual acts of goodwill are not mere drops in the ocean; they are small magnets that, when numerous, create a strong field. A teacher who believes in her girl students, a neighbor who treats daughters as equals, a rural entrepreneur who hires women — these are emissions of thought that interact. They can, over time, alter the social gravity.

I have also seen the opposite: gatherings where the field is darkened by fear or malice. In those rare, concentrated cases, positive thoughts struggle to penetrate. But those gatherings are becoming less common. The public record of conversations — from community boards to academic portals — shows the steady diffusion of new values (NCBI portal, beekey.buzz). Even technology repositories and unexpected corners of the internet reflect how narratives evolve (HuggingFace commits).

Change has an aesthetic quality to me: slow, uneven, sometimes cruel, often beautiful in its smallness.

A final reflection

When I think of daughters and of animals, I think of value as a story we tell about life. Once, the story privileged animals because they provided visible returns. Today, the story is widening to include human potential, dignity, and the unseen returns of education and respect.

I carry grief and loneliness about unfairness, but I also carry a stubborn hope: that our collective inner magnetic fields, if oriented towards justice and care, will continue to reshape destiny. The change is not wholesale yet — customs, laws, and fears linger — but the currents are moving. I feel that shift in small, everyday ways: a conversation that lifts a girl’s chance, a new policy recorded in a government form, a community post that refuses the old joke.

These are the nodes where destiny bends.

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Regards,
Hemen Parekh