How To Conceive A Girl

How can I conceive a baby girl naturally?

Whelan method – Another method is the Whelan method developed by Elizabeth Whelan. This method is similar to Shettles methods, in that both believe timing is an important factor in sex determination. With Whelan‘s method, you’re encouraged to have sex 2 or 3 days before ovulation or on the day of ovulation to conceive a girl.

The idea behind the timing is that male and female sperm perform differently at different points in a woman’s menstrual cycle, Sperm with X chromosomes (girl sperm) are more likely to fertilize an egg at this point in the cycle. So when you have sex closer to ovulation or on ovulation day, girl sperm has a greater chance of survival.

According to Whelan, the success rate of having a girl with this method is 57 percent.

Can I conceive a girl after ovulation?

Want to have a baby girl? This is what you need to know | Life How to conceive a girl child. Photo: Getty Images

• Are you dreaming of a sweet baby girl?
• Whatever your reasons are for wanting a girl child in particular, it’s a fact that there are no guarantees that you will a baby of a pre-selected gender.
• Also, it’s worth noting that it’s dad who influences the gender of the baby, not the mom.

Sperm, provided by the male, has an X (girl) or Y (boy) sex-linked chromosome. The X chromosome from the father’s sperm combines with the mother’s X chromosome (in her egg) to result in a girl child (XX). Note: The only way to choose your baby’s gender, would be to go for in vitro fertilisation (IVF), where the egg is with the man’s sperm in a laboratory.

1. However, this is illegal in South Africa.
2. In March 2012, the Minister of Health passed regulations relating to the National Health Act of 2003 to make in South Africa.
3. Also read:
4. So how to up your chances of having a daughter?
5. It seems that there are some scientific ways to up your chances of having a girl, so if your heart is set on pink babygrows we have some ideas for you.
6. The Shettles Method

Dr. Landrum Shettles, famous for the “Shettles Method”, says that the male sperm cells (carrying the Y chromosomes) are smaller, lighter, faster and more fragile than the female sperm cells (carrying the X chromosomes), which are thought to be bigger, heavier and slower, but more resilient.

• So if you have sex a few days after ovulation, your chances of conceiving a girl is higher, because the male sperm cells would have expired while the female sperm cell may be resilient enough to make it all the way through.
• Also read:
• The Whelan Method

Dr. Elizabeth Whelan devised the Whelan Method based on the research of Dr. Rodrigo Guerrero which showed that the odds of having a girl were slightly higher if intercourse occurred just before or after ovulation.

1. The Whelan method directly contradicts the Shettles Method, and it is worth noting that it seems that following this sex-selection method could actually decrease your chance of getting pregnant because you’re not having sex when you’re most fertile.
2. Other ways to improve your chances of falling pregnant with a girl
3. Timing: You have sex 4 to 2 days before your peak day.
4. Sperm count: A lower male sperm count could occur naturally or due to certain factors such as heat, particular drugs and toxic substances.
5. Stress: Men with stressful jobs or personal lives are more likely to have girls, in theory, as their fragile male sperm will not be able to survive the stress.
6. IVF: Researchers speculate that more female sperm cells are capable of surviving the stresses of the in vitro fertilisation procedure, which can be quite rigorous.

Some un-scientific methods that parents have tried include:

• Avoiding salt and potassium, and taking extra calcium and magnesium.
• Having sex in the missionary position

Speak to your doctor It’s best to speak to your doctor to ensure you aren’t risking your health or sabotaging your efforts to fall pregnant. At the end of the day, it’s more important to have a healthy mom and baby, and the gender doesn’t really matter.

1. Happy baby making! Did you use one of these methods to fall pregnant with a girl? Or do you have a sure-fire tip to share? Chatback: Share your stories and questions with us via email at,
2. Anonymous contributions are welcome.
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What are the odds of having a girl after 3 boys?

Can you influence baby gender? – Can you influence a baby’s gender (sex)? No, you can’t influence the sex of your baby. Most studies show that males produce and release sperm fairly evenly, as in a 1:1 ratio of X chromosomes and Y chromosomes. This means that the chances of having a girl vs. a boy will be about 50:50.

Is it hard to conceive a girl?

Does your heart melt every time you see a teeny tiny pink frilly tutu? Of course, it does. That’s why you’re here: you’re wondering how to conceive a girl. From the Shettles Method to sex positions, read on for some tips. First, a disclaimer: methods of trying for a boy or a girl don’t guarantee success, and they aren’t always backed by scientific evidence.

Is it 50% chance of having a girl?

Is it a boy or a girl? The father’s family might provide a clue | Your Pregnancy Matters | UT Southwestern Medical Center Everyone wonders: Is it a boy or a girl? The answer is in the genes, and the father’s family history. Is it a boy or a girl? That’s the most common question I hear during ultrasounds. Many couples want to know, And there are plenty of that patients reference when guessing the sex of their baby.

My general response is that it’s a 50/50 chance that a woman will have a boy or a girl. But that’s not exactly true – there’s actually a slight bias toward male births. The ratio of male to female births, called the sex ratio, is about, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). This means about 51% of deliveries result in a baby boy.

While the sex ratio can be distorted by populations that selectively value male over female births, there could be another explanation. Research suggests the slight natural skew of the sex ratio could be nature’s way of adjusting for higher death rates in males due to injuries, accidents, and war.

For example, in England around 1900, 50.8% of births were boys. Following World Wars I and II, the rate of male births increased to 51.6%. This may not seem like a big difference, but it resulted in 32 more boys than girls born for every thousand births. Similar changes were seen in other European countries as well following these wars.

It seems like sex ratio shifts should be a random phenomenon. But from a medical standpoint, perhaps there’s a genetic explanation to changes in the numbers of boy and girl babies at different times in history. : Is it a boy or a girl? The father’s family might provide a clue | Your Pregnancy Matters | UT Southwestern Medical Center

What is the best month to conceive a girl?

Seasons affect sex of babies, study reveals

• Some try crystals under the bed, others a Harley Street doctor but scientists have found the best way of improving the chances of conceiving either a boy or a girl.
• Some try crystals under the bed, others a Harley Street doctor but scientists have found the best way of improving the chances of conceiving either a boy or a girl.
• Couples who want a boy should try to conceive in autumn and those who want a girl have a better chance if they can conceive in spring, a study has found.
• Nature is designed to favour the conception of boys from September to November and girls from March to May because of an evolutionary mechanism aimed at keeping the overall sex ratio as near to 50:50 as possible, the scientists said.
• A team led by Angelo Cagnacci, a gynaecologist at the Policlinico of Modena in Italy, investigated the conception dates of 14,310 births at his clinic between 1995 and 2001 to see if the sex ratio varied substantially.

The normal balance of the sexes is tilted in favour of girls because of a higher mortality of males in the womb and at birth. That was why nature had tried to level the playing field by favouring boys in the best months for conception, Professor Cagnacci said.

1. Research in the journal Human Reproduction shows that 535 males were conceived in the most fertile month of autumn as opposed to 464 females, while only 487 males were conceived, compared with 513 females, in the worst month of spring.
2. “What is fascinating is the degree of disparity in the sex ratio, that the numbers of boys conceived compared with girls was so much higher in the favourable months when overall conception rates were high and so much lower in the unfavourable months when overall conception rates were low,” Dr Cagnacci said.
3. The scientists could not explain the mechanism, but Dr Cagnacci suggested it occurred early in pregnancy.

: Seasons affect sex of babies, study reveals

How to conceive a baby girl Chinese calendar?

This is used to boost their chances of having a boy or a girl, depending on which they prefer. For example, if your lunar age is 29 and you want to try to get pregnant with a girl, you would try to conceive in either January, March, April, October, November, or December.

How do you get more Y chromosomes in sperm?

Megan P., of Brooklyn, New York, always wanted a boy and a girl. Her first child was a girl, so when it came time to get pregnant with baby #2, she decided to try to influence the baby’s gender naturally via the Shettles Method. “I thought ‘If there’s anything I can do to conceive a boy, I’ll give it a shot!'” she explains.

• Within a year, Megan and her husband had their baby boy.
• I don’t know whether the tips we tried had any influence on our baby’s gender, but I’m happy with the results!” she adds.
• Although there have been no scientific studies to prove that natural gender selection methods actually work, there’s plenty of anecdotal evidence to support them.

In the book How to Choose The Sex of Your Baby — which Megan consulted – – Landrum Shettles, MD, a biologist and early pioneer of in-vitro fertilization, offers tips on how to conceive a boy. His suggestions are based on the fact that sperm composed of a Y chromosome (male) are faster but more fragile than sperm composed of an X chromosome (female); he also considered how a woman’s vaginal environment affects the two different types of sperm.

1. Related: 7 Best Sex Positions for Conception If you’re hoping to conceive a boy, like Megan was, there’s no harm in trying a natural gender selection method (or two).
2. Check out these suggestions from Dr.
3. Shettles’, as well as other experts, for increasing your chances of making a baby boy.1.
4. Have him wear boxers,

Loose underwear helps keep his bits cool, which is a good thing since excessive heat in the scrotal area can inhibit sperm production, says Angeline Beltsos, MD, a board certified ob-gyn and Medical Director of the Fertility Centers of Illinois, Though this rule goes for both X and Y chromosomes, it is especially important for the lighter, more sensitive male sperm.

• To keep things cool, ask your partner to wear loose boxers and to avoid hot tubs,
• Urge him to keep his laptop off his lap, too, and his cell phone in his back pocket.2.
• Encourage him to drink coffee,
• According to Dr.
• Shettles, the advantage of male sperm is that they’re fast — and a cup of coffee or a caffeinated soda before sex may make them even faster.

Why not give the Y sperm an extra edge as they swim toward the finish line? 3. Change your diet. Boy sperm might swim better in a vaginal environment with a more alkaline pH, so eat more alkaline-friendly foods, like lentils, nuts, and vegetables. (Your vagina is naturally acidic, which is especially tough for sensitive male sperm to handle.) Some research suggests that women trying to conceive boys should consume more calories, as long as they maintain a healthy BMI (since a normal BMI will help boost your fertility, while a high BMI will only hurt it).4.

Take specific vitamins and supplements. Evening Primrose Oil and Omega 3 fatty acids can help the Y chromosome by increasing the production of thinner cervical mucus (the clear, egg-white consistency), which protects the weaker male sperm so they can penetrate through the cervical canal faster than the female sperm, says Randine Lewis, PhD, founder of the holistic infertility treatment center, The Fertile Soul, in Roscoe, Illinois.

Cough medicine contains the ingredient guaifenesin, which can also help thin the mucus membranes in the cervix, she adds. A high sperm count is thought to give the male sperm an advantage, so if you are ready to step things up a little further, try the vitamin supplement CoQ10, adds Dr.

1. Beltsos. Just remember to consult with your doctor before taking any new supplements.5.
2. Have sex in positions that allow for deep penetration.
3. Male sperm are fast, but they’re also fragile, so you want to have sex in a position that will allow them to be deposited as close to your cervix as possible, says Dr.

Shettles. Skip missionary position, and try standing sex or doggie-style with rear entry.6. Have an orgasm when your partner does. Not only do orgasms cause the cervical mucus to become more pliable and alkaline (which male sperm like!), but the female orgasm causes contractions that allow the cervix to yo-yo in and out of the vagina, making it much easier for speedy male sperm to hit the jackpot.7.

Have sex close to ovulation. The main principle of the Shettles Method is timing intercourse correctly. If you have sex precisely when you are ovulating, it allows the faster Y chromosome sperm to get to the egg first (before they die). Having sex too soon (before ovulation) only helps the girls, who are slower but live longer and might already be there when the egg makes itself ready for fertilization.

Dr. Beltsos suggests using an ovulation prediction kit which can help you figure out the optimal time by detecting a rise in the hormones that trigger ovulation.8. See a specialist. “Without intervention, you have a 50-50 chance of having a boy or a girl,” says Dr.

Norbert Gleicher, MD, medical director and chief scientist at The Center for Human Reproduction in New York City. If you’ve got your heart set on a boy, the most reliable route is in-vitro fertilization (IVF) and preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD). Via hormonal injections, the ovaries are able to produce more eggs which are then fertilized with sperm.

When they become embryos, scientists take cell samples to determine whether the cells are girls or boys. “By transferring only the embryos of the desired gender to the mother’s uterus, we can be close to 100 percent certain that any established pregnancy will be of that desired sex,” he says.

This option doesn’t come cheap, however: IVF with PGD can cost up to $25,000 per cycle. Remember: Having a healthy baby is what really matters (which, for some people, does mean pre-determined gender selection). But, as long as you are healthy and fertile, you may as well try some of these boy-boosters.

More Tips for TTC:

31 Things Every Couple Should Do Before Having a Baby Fertility Diet: What to Eat When You’re TTC 9 Surprising Fertility Truths & Myths 11 Early Signs of Pregnancy You’ve Never Heard Before

Photo: Getty

What vitamins to take to conceive a girl?

Vitamins to conceive a girl – It’s important to start taking prenatal vitamins that contain at least 400 mcg of folic acid when you are trying to conceive, but can other vitamins help you have a girl? The study that looked at diet also had participants take magnesium, calcium and Vitamin D supplements in addition to their prenatal vitamins.

What foods are good for having a girl?

What’s the ‘baby girl’ diet? – We’ve previously spoken to the experts about, and tips to increase your chances of, Now we want to take a closer look at some of the diet tips floating around about natural gender selection of the pink variety. Of course, it’s important to point out that anyone looking to dramatically change their current diet should speak to their doctor or a registered dietician for individualised advice.

Is it better to conceive a girl before or after ovulation?

Whilst it’s a fascinating theory, studies since then have shown that the timing of sex in relation to ovulation doesn’t actually influence whether you conceive a boy or a girl.

Is it harder to have a girl after having a boy?

Is a Baby’s Gender Really 50/50 Odds? – “What we have been taught conventionally is that — bar any genetic disorders that cause early pregnancy loss that only affect girls or boys — there is always a 50/50 chance of one or the other gender each time.

The chance of a girl after three boys is still the same probability.” The reason for this is quite simple: when sperm are produced inside a man’s body half will be formed with an X chromosome and half with a Y chromosome. There is an equal probability of either type of sperm reaching the egg and fertilizing it.

So there is a 50/50 chance of having a girl or boy.

Is it more common to have a boy then a girl?

Research over hundreds of years has consistently found that boys naturally outnumber girls at birth. The speculation is that this is nature’s way of countering the relatively high mortality rates of males, and creating more of a gender balance in the population. This increase in the sex ratio is driven largely by births in China, where sex ratios have declined slightly in recent years but remain the highest in the world. The world’s most populous country has 118 boys for every 100 girls, and accounts for 12% of births worldwide.

However, disproportionately large shares of baby boys are found in other countries scattered throughout Asia and the Caucasus, as well. Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia, South Korea, and the Solomon Islands round out the list of places with the highest sex ratios. India is tied with Macedonia, Montenegro, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Serbia and Suriname for 7th place, with a ratio of 108 boys born for every 100 girls.

Even while some countries seem to have a disproportionate share of boys, others have particularly high shares of baby girls. While there are still slightly more boys born than girls in these places — which are centered in sub-Saharan Africa — the sex ratios are nonetheless much lower than average.

The six countries with the lowest sex ratios include: Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Togo, Zimbabwe, Ivory Coast, and Madagascar. So what explains these differences in the shares of baby boys and girls? Perhaps the best-known reason relates to the practice of sex-selective abortion, which has been identified in Asia, and in the Caucasus, as well.

The ability to determine fetal sex, along with strong son preferences, accounts in large part for the high shares of boys in many countries in these regions. The desire to limit family size, either due to government regulations as in China, or due to global social and economic changes that have reduced the need for large families, seems to further contribute to sex-selective abortion and a dearth of baby girls.

1. But this is only one of myriad factors that may be affecting the sex ratio at birth.
2. Some research suggests that the share of newborn boys declines with older parents, and that the high share of girls in Sub-Saharan Africa may be linked to the practice of polygamy (multiple wives).
3. What do these two phenomena have in common? Researchers hypothesize that both situations are associated with less frequent intercourse,

(For possible explanations of this association, see this article from the academic journal Human Reproduction,) On the opposite end of the spectrum, most research shows that the share of baby boys increases during and after wartime, And once again, frequency of intercourse is cited as the likely reason, at least in the case of post-war reunions. Gretchen Livingston is a former senior researcher focusing on fertility and family demographics at Pew Research Center.

Are you more likely to have a girl after having a boy?

Can genders really run in a family? – But what about when you have more than one child? If you have a girl, are you likely to have another girl? Or if you have two girls, are you more likely to have another girl? All of us know a family chock full of either boys or girls who go for that one last babyand secretly we’re all pretty sure they’re still going to get the same gender they already have.

1. But is that really likely? Yes and no.
2. A longitudinal study in the US looked at 6089 births with a view to discover whether families who had ‘runs of boys’ would be more likely to have another boy with a subsequent child.
3. And they found that there was a small chance that this was the case.
4. Among 132 families that had three children of the same sex, 69 went on to have another child of that sex, and 63 went on to have a child of the opposite sex.

The chance of having a girl after two boys was about 48 per cent and the chances of having a boy after two girls was slightly lower, at only 46 per cent. So you are more likely to have the same gender when you already have two of the same. But only just.

• What they didn’t find, however, was that families with lots of boys or girls throughout the generations were more likely to keep on having runs of all boys or all girls.
• This, they concluded, was a statistical anomaly.
• It was far more common for genders to be mixed up throughout the generations.
• The all-girl or all-boy families simply didn’t show up with enough regularity to be considered anything but a coincidence, at least not in their sample.

All the boys – triplet family. Image: iStock

Why is it easier to conceive a girl?

Know Your Ovulation – You MUST know when you ovulate. If you truly want to increase your chances of pregnancy occurring AND possibly conceive a girl, you need to know the exact day of ovulation – NOT your ovulation/fertile window. Girl sperm are slower and live longer than boy sperm, so being able to time sex to ensure the girl swimmers are already in place as your egg is released will help sway a girl pregnancy.

Basal Body Temperature Charting Ovulation tests (A positive result means that you are likely to ovulate within the next 1-2 days.) Cervical Mucus

Notes on cervical mucus:

Not fertile : The sensation in your vagina is dry, and there is little or no visible mucus. Fertile : You have a moist or sticky sensation. Your mucus resembles milk or starts to look like egg white, but it breaks when stretched. Most fertile : The sensation is wet and slippery. Your mucus is abundant, resembles raw egg white and can be stretched between your fingers without breaking. Post-ovulation (not fertile) : The sensation is dry or sticky. The mucus is thick, opaque or white, and much sparser than before ovulation.

What affects the chances of having a girl?

Which parent decides whether a baby will be a boy or a girl? – The Tech Interactive Neither parent gets to decide. Almost everyone has around a 50% chance of having a boy and a 50% chance of having a girl. What we can say is that dad’s sperm determines whether a baby will be born as a boy or a girl.

About half of his sperm will make a boy and half a girl. The sex of the baby depends on which sperm gets to the egg first. In a perfect world, it would all be up to chance. Both types of sperm would have an equal chance of reaching the egg first. And once fertilized, each type of egg would have an equal chance of developing fully into a baby.

But as you know, the world is not perfect. Certain factors can influence the sex of the child. As you’ll see below, there is much more evidence of this happening in the animal world but it happens in people too. In humans, slightly more boys are born each year than girls.

But it’s hard to say exactly why this happens. One old theory was that sperm that carry the tiny Y chromosome are slightly speedier than sperm carrying the larger X chromosome. So Y-carrying sperm could be a bit more likely to make it to the egg first. But it turns out that this probably isn’t true. Sperm carrying a Y seem to swim the same speed as sperm carrying an X.1 But other factors like how mom or dad lives can affect the sex of their baby.

A number of studies have suggested that factors like nutrition, wealth, and even where the parents live can affect the odds of having a boy or a girl. But none of these effects is very large.2 For example, moms that ate cereal every morning had a boy 59% of the time while moms that rarely ate cereal had boys only 43% of the time.3 However, this doesn’t mean that you should change your diet to increase your odds either way.

• We don’t know for certain that cereal is the cause of the difference.
• Perhaps women who tend to eat cereal have other shared qualities and it’s one of these that affects whether they’ll have a boy or not.
• And as you can see, whatever the reason the effect is tiny.
• This is true of most outside factors like this in people.

For us the sex of the child is mostly determined by which of dad’s sperm makes it to the egg first. Let’s look a little closer at how the X and Y chromosomes determine sex. Then we’ll explore why we see differences in the numbers of girls and boys in many families.

What percent is it to get a girl pregnant?

Getting Started on Getting Pregnant Reviewed by on November 15, 2021 If you’re considering having a baby, you probably have wondered how long it will take to get pregnant, when to have sex, and how often. Find the answers to your questions here. It’s a common question: What are the odds that I’ll get pregnant this month? For most couples trying to conceive, the odds that a woman will become pregnant are 15% to 25% in any particular month.

Age. After you reach age 30, your chances of conceiving in any given month fall, and they decrease as you age, dropping steeply in your 40s.Irregular menstrual cycles. Having an irregular cycle makes it tricky to calculate when you’re ovulating, thus making it difficult to know the ideal time to have sex.Frequency of sex. The less often you have sex, the less likely you are to get pregnant.Amount of time you’ve been trying to conceive. If you haven’t gotten pregnant after one year of trying to conceive, your chances of becoming pregnant may be lower. Talk to your doctor about tests for female and male infertility.Illnesses or medical conditions can affect pregnancy.

Knowing more about menstrual cycles may help. A woman’s cycle begins on the first day that they notice bright red blood – not just spotting – and it ends on the day before the next cycle begins. A cycle can take 21 to 35 days – or more. If their cycle varies in length by a few days from one month to the next, that’s considered irregular – and common.

• Ma ny women don’t have regular cycles.
• It doesn’t necessarily mean anything is wrong.
• Here’s another common question from couples trying to conceive: How often should we have sex? In short, the answer is often.
• A lot of couples trying to conceive spend a lot of energy timing sex, with mathematical precision, to calculate when a woman is prime for ovulation.

Theoretically, the approach makes sense. Recent studies have shown the window of opportunity for a sperm to fertilize an egg is pretty small: Essentially, it’s only 3-5 days leading up to ovulation and the day of ovulation itself. Your best chances are 1-2 days prior to ovulation.

• Doctors recommend intercourse every other day starting the week before ovulation or beginning after the end of your period.
• But while timing your lovemaking exclusively to those few days makes logical sense, it also has some drawbacks – primarily because your body doesn’t always behave with clockwork regularity.

Even if your cycle is regular, ovulation can occur at any time during the cycle. If you’re having sex on the day you think you’re ovulating, and you’re off by a few days, you may be out of luck. So the expert advice is to hedge your bets: Have sex at least two to three times every week.

As long as the man has a normal sperm count, having sex every other day (or every day) further increases your chances of getting pregnant. How long does it take for the effects of birth control medication to subside? It’s actually possible to become pregnant immediately after going off the pill – as soon as the pill’s hormones are out of your system – although it may take a few months before ovulation begins normally again.

Is it safe to conceive right after you go off the pill? Yes. Women who conceive immediately after going off the pill are as likely to have a healthy baby as women who waited a few months in between. © 2021 WebMD, LLC. All rights reserved. : Getting Started on Getting Pregnant

What age is more likely to have a girl?

One of the consistent findings in the field of reproductive medicine is that older parents are more likely to have daughters. Why? Previous studies have repeatedly found that one of the reliable predictors of the sex of the offspring is the age of the parent. Older parents are significantly more likely to have daughters than younger parents. The National Child Development Study replicates these findings from earlier studies. As the following graph shows, the association between the age of the parent and the sex of the first child is not monotonic, but there is a general decline in the proportion of sons as the parents get older. Teenage parents are particularly likely to have sons, with the proportion of sons at,5327, and older parents over the age of 40 are significantly less likely to have sons, with the proportion of sons at,3557. Two-thirds of children born to parents over 40 are girls! The bivariate correlation between the probability of having a son and the age of the parent is significantly negative ( r = -.030, p <,001, n = 9,301). Each year in the parent's age decreases the odds of having a son as the first child by 1%. As you can see in the following two graphs, the association between the age of the parents and the sex of the first child is stronger among women than among men. In fact, the bivariate correlation between the probability of having a son and the age of the parent is only statistically significantly negative among women ( r = -.34, p <,05, n = 4,864), not among men ( r = -.024, ns, n = 4,437). Among women, each year in age decreases the odds of having a son as the first child by 1.2%. However, the graph below clearly shows that fathers over the age of 40 are significantly less likely to have sons, with the proportion of sons at,3592. Given the prevalence of age homogamy, where the age of the mother and the age of the father are generally positively correlated such that younger women are typically married to younger men and older women are typically married to older men, the slight sex difference in the pattern is not important.

1. The overall picture is that the older the parents (both the mother and the father), the more likely they are to have a daughter.
2. The question is: why? Because both the quality of the eggs and the quality of the sperm decrease with age, it is tempting to explain the declining likelihood of having a son among older parents potentially in terms of such quality of gametes (although I’m not aware of any argument that suggests that lower-quality gametes are more likely to produce girls).

However, such explanations, even when correct, are proximate, not ultimate. They answer the question of how ; they don’t answer the question of why, The lower quality of gametes, if it indeed lowers the probability of producing boys, is the mechanism that evolution employs to make sure that older parents are more likely to have daughters.

But such a proximate mechanism does not explain why evolution “wanted” to make sure that older parents are more likely to have daughters, in other words, why it is adaptive for older parents to have daughters, not sons. That requires an ultimate evolutionary explanation. As I explain in an earlier post, parental investment is much more crucial for the future reproductive success of sons than for that of daughters.

Sons’ reproductive success largely hinges on the status and resources that they inherit from their parents, particularly, their fathers. This is why the presence of sons deters divorce and the departure of the father from the family. Sons therefore need parents to invest in them, to make sure that they inherit the status and the resources of the family.

In sharp contrast, daughters’ future reproductive success is largely determined by their youth and physical attractiveness, Once they are conceived with particular genes that influence their physical attractiveness, there is very little that parents can do to increase their daughters’ future reproductive success, beyond keeping them alive and healthy.

There is absolutely nothing that parents can do to affect the progression of time that determines the daughters’ age, nor is there anything they can do after the conception to influence the daughters’ physical appearance (once again, beyond keeping them healthy).

1. The problem with older parents, of course, is that they are more likely to die sooner.
2. If the parents die before the children reach sexual maturity, it will have a greater negative impact on sons’ future reproductive success than on daughters’.
3. This may be one evolutionary, ultimate reason why older parents are more likely to have daughters.

Parents may be evolutionarily designed to have more daughters when they are older, so that, when they die, they are less likely to leave sons who have not sexually matured. Being orphaned young is bad both for boys and girls, but it’s much worse for boys than for girls.

Does mother’s age affect baby gender?

Sign up for Scientific American ’s free newsletters. ” data-newsletterpromo_article-image=”https://static.scientificamerican.com/sciam/cache/file/4641809D-B8F1-41A3-9E5A87C21ADB2FD8_source.png” data-newsletterpromo_article-button-text=”Sign Up” data-newsletterpromo_article-button-link=”https://www.scientificamerican.com/page/newsletter-sign-up/?origincode=2018_sciam_ArticlePromo_NewsletterSignUp” name=”articleBody” itemprop=”articleBody”> Marc Weisskopf, a research associate at the Harvard School of Public Health, explains. In most industrialized countries about 105 boys are born for every 100 girls, for a ratio of 1.05, known as the secondary sex ratio, or SSR; the primary sex ratio is the ratio at conception. This is often expressed as the percentage of boys among all births, or about 51.2 percent. Thus, the short answer to the question is: “On average, no.” The percentage of males among all births is not fixed, however. Since the 1950s and 1960s the overall SSR has been declining in the U.S., Canada and several European countries, but some groups display different trends. In the U.S., the SSR is declining for whites, whereas among African-Americans and other races, the SSR has been increasing since the 1960s. Currently the SSR among African-Americans in the U.S. is only about 50.7 percent. There are also both personal and environmental factors that affect the average sex ratio. The chance of having a boy appears to decline with the mother’s age, the father’s age and the number of children the family already has. These effects are small. One study in Denmark found that the SSR of children born to fathers younger than 25 was 51.6 percent, which decreased to 51.0 percent among children of fathers at least 40 years of age. Therefore it is unlikely that the declining SSR in many countries results solely from large-scale changes in such personal factors. With regard to environmental factors, improved prenatal and obstetrical care during the first part of the 20th century is largely responsible for an increased SSR over this period in many countries. The male fetus is more susceptible to loss in the womb than is the female fetus, so with more conceptions reaching term, proportionally more males are born. It is difficult to discern how much of the decrease in sex ratio since the 1950s arises from contaminants in the environment. What is known is that drug use, high occupational exposures and environmental accidents can affect SSR. For example, hopeful mothers taking clomiphene citrate (Clomid) for infertility bore babies with an SSR of only 48.5 percent. Workers producing 1,2-dibromo-3-chloropropane (DBCP), a chemical used to kill worms in agriculture, experienced even larger decreases in the number of male babies they welcomed into the world. Effects of DBCP on sperm quality were discovered incidentally when male workers found that they were unable to father children. After the exposure ended, male workers experienced some recovery of sperm quality and 36 children were born to 44 workers. Of these 36 children only 10 were boys-an SSR of just 27.8 percent. Decreases in the SSR of offspring from fathers exposed to dioxin and dioxinlike chemicals occurred following an explosion in an herbicide factory in Seveso, Italy, in 1976 and contamination of rice oil used for cooking in Yu-Cheng, Taiwan. The decreases were most extreme among the children of fathers who were exposed at earlier ages: an SSR of 38.2 percent was recorded for fathers exposed before age 19 in Seveso, and fathers exposed before age 20 in Yu-Cheng experienced an SSR of 45.8 percent. These dramatic changes resulting from extreme exposures raise the concern that chemicals in the environment at lower concentrations may also change the SSR by exposing people over longer periods of time. For example, there are reports that parental exposure to polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and mercury, each of which is widely distributed in the environment, can affect the sex ratio. Confirming such effects will take careful work on large populations, but the results may be quite important for other reasons as well. In the general population, sperm quality deteriorated and testicular cancer and abnormalities of male genitalia increased over the same period that SSR declined. Furthermore, for men who go on to develop testicular cancer, both their semen quality and the SSR of their children are significantly reduced, suggesting a possible biological link between these male reproductive characteristics. Thus, effects of environmental contaminants on the sex ratio may be only the tip of the iceberg.

Is it Genetic to have a boy or girl?

– Source: CNN ” data-fave-thumbnails=”, “small”: }” data-vr-video=”” data-show-html=”” data-check-event-based-preview=”” data-network-id=”” data-details=””> After 14 sons, couple welcomes a baby girl 00:55 – Source: CNN CNN — My mother was one of four sisters. I have a younger sister, and between the two of us, we have four daughters. We’re not the only ones who appear to have one sex run in the family. Everyone knows a family who has a boy and a boy and then another, all in a row. But are some families really prone to giving birth to one sex over the other? Some scientists think whether you’re likely to have a girl or boy is inherited through the father, although nobody has identified a gene. Others have suggested that it comes down to heritable traits that could confer an evolutionary advantage on one sex, but not the other, when it’s time for offspring to reproduce. For example, studies have speculated that t all parents have more boys, or beautiful parents have more girls, although the theory has been criticized. Another hypothesis is that parents’ hormones at the moment of conception have an influence. However, a new study that examines the entire population of Sweden since 1932 says that the sex of offspring is purely down to chance. “We found individuals don’t have an innate tendency to have offspring of one or the other gender – instead, the sex of their offspring is essentially random,” said Dr. Brendan Zietsch, a fellow at the University of Queensland’s School of Psychology and the lead author of the study, which published Tuesday in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. “If you have a lot of boys or girls in your family, it’s just a lucky coincidence,” Zietsch said. Using information from Swedish birth registries, the researchers compared whether siblings tended to have offspring of the same sex. Their statistical analysis ruled out the possibility that characteristics of the parents influence the likelihood of having boys or girls. “Because siblings share 50% of their genetics, if there was a genetic underpinning of offspring sex determination we would see an association between siblings with regard to offspring sex,” said Zietsch. “However, siblings did not tend to have offspring of the same sex – the probability of having, say, a girl, did not depend on whether one’s siblings had a girl or a boy.” Zietsch said the enormous size and accuracy of the data they used – 4.7 million births – meant they were “very confident” of the findings: “We analyzed all Swedes born after 1932.” Other research on the topic had used much smaller samples, which could have produced a false positive, said Zietsch. For example, a 2008 study of 927 family trees covering 556,387 people going back to the year 1600 found that if a man produced more sons than daughters, those sons were likely to have more sons. The study suggested that an as-yet undiscovered gene controlled whether a man’s sperm contains more X or more Y chromosomes, which affects the sex of his children. Boys generally have an X and Y chromosome and girls have two X chromosomes. Other researchers have found that when food is in short supply women are more likely to bear daughters than sons. A 2012 study analyzed the Great Leap Forward famine in China, one of the most disastrous in history, and found a sharp dip in the number of boys being born, although the reason for the dip was not clear. And some scientists think climate change could alter the proportion of male and female newborns, with more boys born in places where temperatures rise. “We can’t rule out the possibility that extreme environmental events, like famine, could affect offspring sex ratios. But we can say for sure that the variability of environments that Swedes born after 1932 experienced did not affect their having boys or girls,” Zietsch said.

What affects the chances of having a girl?

Which parent decides whether a baby will be a boy or a girl? – The Tech Interactive Neither parent gets to decide. Almost everyone has around a 50% chance of having a boy and a 50% chance of having a girl. What we can say is that dad’s sperm determines whether a baby will be born as a boy or a girl.

About half of his sperm will make a boy and half a girl. The sex of the baby depends on which sperm gets to the egg first. In a perfect world, it would all be up to chance. Both types of sperm would have an equal chance of reaching the egg first. And once fertilized, each type of egg would have an equal chance of developing fully into a baby.

But as you know, the world is not perfect. Certain factors can influence the sex of the child. As you’ll see below, there is much more evidence of this happening in the animal world but it happens in people too. In humans, slightly more boys are born each year than girls.

1. But it’s hard to say exactly why this happens.
2. One old theory was that sperm that carry the tiny Y chromosome are slightly speedier than sperm carrying the larger X chromosome.
3. So Y-carrying sperm could be a bit more likely to make it to the egg first.
4. But it turns out that this probably isn’t true.
5. Sperm carrying a Y seem to swim the same speed as sperm carrying an X.1 But other factors like how mom or dad lives can affect the sex of their baby.

A number of studies have suggested that factors like nutrition, wealth, and even where the parents live can affect the odds of having a boy or a girl. But none of these effects is very large.2 For example, moms that ate cereal every morning had a boy 59% of the time while moms that rarely ate cereal had boys only 43% of the time.3 However, this doesn’t mean that you should change your diet to increase your odds either way.

We don’t know for certain that cereal is the cause of the difference. Perhaps women who tend to eat cereal have other shared qualities and it’s one of these that affects whether they’ll have a boy or not. And as you can see, whatever the reason the effect is tiny. This is true of most outside factors like this in people.

For us the sex of the child is mostly determined by which of dad’s sperm makes it to the egg first. Let’s look a little closer at how the X and Y chromosomes determine sex. Then we’ll explore why we see differences in the numbers of girls and boys in many families.

Why is there a 50% chance of getting a girl or a boy?

The chances of an offspring being male or female is 50:50 due to several factors. While the movement of sperm is always random, the number of sperm carrying X and Y chromosome respectively is almost equal. This means that both types of sperm have equal chances of fertilizing the egg.

Are you more likely to have a girl after having a boy?

Can genders really run in a family? – But what about when you have more than one child? If you have a girl, are you likely to have another girl? Or if you have two girls, are you more likely to have another girl? All of us know a family chock full of either boys or girls who go for that one last babyand secretly we’re all pretty sure they’re still going to get the same gender they already have.

But is that really likely? Yes and no. A longitudinal study in the US looked at 6089 births with a view to discover whether families who had ‘runs of boys’ would be more likely to have another boy with a subsequent child. And they found that there was a small chance that this was the case. Among 132 families that had three children of the same sex, 69 went on to have another child of that sex, and 63 went on to have a child of the opposite sex.

The chance of having a girl after two boys was about 48 per cent and the chances of having a boy after two girls was slightly lower, at only 46 per cent. So you are more likely to have the same gender when you already have two of the same. But only just.

• What they didn’t find, however, was that families with lots of boys or girls throughout the generations were more likely to keep on having runs of all boys or all girls.
• This, they concluded, was a statistical anomaly.
• It was far more common for genders to be mixed up throughout the generations.
• The all-girl or all-boy families simply didn’t show up with enough regularity to be considered anything but a coincidence, at least not in their sample.

All the boys – triplet family. Image: iStock

How to conceive a baby girl Chinese calendar?

This is used to boost their chances of having a boy or a girl, depending on which they prefer. For example, if your lunar age is 29 and you want to try to get pregnant with a girl, you would try to conceive in either January, March, April, October, November, or December.

Jordan McKenzie