Looks like there's another piece of evidence for the theory that women who conceive boys, and those who conceive girls, are - somehow - fundamentally different!
Mothers of sons are different from mothers who have daughters: we conceive a gender we're more suited to get!
Women with higher values of a hormone that's considered the male sex hormone, testosterone, are more likely to conceive and give birth to boy babies!
Can mother's hormones influence her baby's gender?
The theory that women with higher testosterone hormone levels are more dominant - and thus more suited to get a male baby - was first proposed by a reproductive scientist with a PhD in psychology Dr Valerie Grant some time ago.Scientists already knew that mothers behave differently towards their babies according to their sex [mothers of boys are more initiating, mothers of girls more responsive], but the conclusion was that this was because of the strength of sex stereotyping. I'd say there was evidence that the mothers were behaving in ways that were natural to them.Some scientists didn't believe anyway that baby's gender is decided by a blind chance because fluctuations in birth ratios are readily observed in historical data.
How to conceive a boy blog, for instance, already wrote about one scientist who questioned: Who determines the gender of a baby? - concluding father's got almost nothing to do with which gender his baby will turn to be.
Far from being a fifty-fifty chance, as many parents are told when they begin to investigate how to conceive a boy or a girl specifically, you are more likely to have a boy than a girl baby - looking solely at statistical data.
That gives those parents who wonder how likely to have a boy are they, an incentive to look further for ways to upper their chance of conceiving a boy. It is often told that it is more difficult to conceive a girl than a boy baby!
How likely to conceive a boy are you?
Dominant women more likely to have boys?
During both World Wars the increase in baby boy's birth was observed. This cannot be explained purely by a chance, can it not?It has already been known in mammals such as deer that female dominance and having male offspring are linked. Is it the same case with humans?
It is interesting how Dr Grant came up with her theory. A mother of 3 boys, Grant found long time ago that she could tell in advance which baby gender her friends were likely to have!
It explains why the ratio of sons to daughters among my female hockey-playing friends is the statistically improbable 34:2 - testosterone and competitive team sports go hand in hand.She came up with the Simple Adjective Test that consists of simultaneously measuring blood testosterone levels and answering how often you feel:
- proud
- vigorous
- rejected
- selfsatisfied
- fearful etc.
- confident
- assertive
- influential
- with a strong sense of self etc.
Mothers of daughters tend to be more:
- nurturing
- empathic
- tolerant etc.
It gets even more interesting: Grant claims you are more likely to get the same gender your friends have!
It's also quite likely that if you have one-sex children, your closest friends will have the same. Not only are you similar people, but you'll probably feel more comfortable with their parenting style.But how is this all scientifically sound?
Well, Grant can for sure prove this model of gender selection works - with cows!
But wait till you hear it: the levels of testosterone in the follicles (which produce the egg) reliably predict the sex of the embryo and, more startling, the egg may well come out already adapted to receive an X or Y chromosome-bearing sperm. In lay terms this means that the female has already “decided” which sex offspring to have before sperm get involved!
Most women with more than one child have babies of both gender - how this fact fits with her gender selection theory?
Actually, it does fit.
Most women have a medium amount of testosterone that fluctuates month to month. That's why the same woman may produce an egg adapted to an X chromosome in one reproductive cycle, and then to an Y chromosome the next. In women, testosterone is also very influenced by external stresses (for an example on the extreme - by war - as we noted above; but "normal" everyday stresses such as a death in family or changing jobs count just the same).
Some women however are, although still within a normal range, with either high or low testosterone levels. Those are the one who will always have boys - or always have girls!
Grant noted that before contraception was widely used, she saw families with 12 or 13 children of the same sex.
The evidence for the theory that women, not men, decide gender selection in order to produce babies whose gender better suits them is, it seems, really mounting.
What if you want to have a baby boy but can not describe yourself as a dominant woman in any way, but a "real girly girl"? Find out how to fool mother nature like this couple did!
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