Everyone knows that boy/girl twins can’t identical right? Wrong!

[Tincytot]

Here is my Friday night rant as a mum of twins teenagers who still gets asked if they are identical when the girl/boy twins are standing right in front of them, looking not one bit alike let alone identical. Plus they’re different sexes!

typical conversation-
“oh you have twins, what are they?”
”a boy and a girl”
“lovely, are they identical?”
”no they’re a boy and a girl”
”yeah but are they identical?”

🙄🙄

Because two eggs have been inseminated in the same way that siblings would be inseminated - just that the twins were born at the same time - but they aren't any different from siblings in genetics

it is also a possibility that fraternal twins could be inseminated by different males

They came from a single fertilised cell which is what makes them identical, then in rare cases a chromosome error happens after the embryo split

To be fair, if they're babies, it can be difficult to tell whether they're boys or girls, identification or non identical

How so?

Right. But that's nothing to do with what I said, is it?

For yeaaaars I genuinely thought they could be. In the year below my in primary school there was a set of boy girl twins. They looked EXACTLY the same, just that the girl had long hair.

then I met another set of boy girl twins in high school. Both goth/emo so both had long hair and dressed exactly the same. Both looked exactly. The. Same.

so imagine my surprise when I learned at like 16/17 that boy girl twins can’t be identical?! It still baffles me. Why were those sets identical then 😭🤣

It's absolutely this.

People see twins then have to almost reflex say something, and lots of times most people think of twins being identical so that's the first thing they say without even thinking about genetics. In the movies etc, it's always "identical twins."

The first time I took mine to the supermarket, it took perhaps 2.5hrs to get round because every person that sees them (ok, every well meaning little old lady in Waitrose) stops you to say:

"Are they identical?"
"Do they run in the family"
"Oooh, double trouble"
"Which one's the boss/the well behaved/the naughty one"
"I always wanted/I'm so glad I don't have twins"
"Oooh bet you've got your hands full"

Or my personal favourite, is when someone just comes over to tell announce that they, indeed are a twin. Or better still, "Oh, twins! My brother's neighbour has just had twins.". Thank you, I'm not sure what you want me to do with that information.

It's really not that deep.

What is with the repetitive "it's not that deep" statements. I'm not sure anyone has suggested it's "deep". It's dumb though. And annoying.

Brilliant 😂

So what are they asking? They could just ask if they look similar, but any siblings could look similar. They’re fraternal twins, I’d be raising an eyebrow at anyone who unironically asked that question. Assuming they know they are a boy and a girl.

I'd never heard of "mirror twins" until recently. I was told they look similar, but are opposite in many ways: one left-handed, the other right-handed, and so on.

The other thing in fiction (I'm not sure if anyone's said this yet) is that when non-identical twins appear, they are always boy and girl; although in real life, they can be both boys, or both girls.

The website TV Tropes has a list of fiction with identical twins which are somehow boy and girl. Half-Identical Twins - TV Tropes

It does - you’ve been banging on about the idiocy of people asking this type of question. Just saying, it’s not necessarily an idiotic question. I’m sorry you get into a rage when people speak with you and hope you feel better soon

Sinister? Who said anything about it being sinister? Have you been watching creepy movies about twins?

No, your point is absolutely irrelevant to anything I have said. Are you triggered because you have a tendency to bother twin parents with inane questions and now you're embarrassed that we think you're an idiot? Because we do. And based on your poor comprehension skills, I think we may be on to something.

My eldest DD is nearly 3 years old than her B/G twin siblings. On holiday we’d mentioned “the twins” to the villa owner and whilst talking to him it became clear he thought the two girls were the twins and DS the younger brother! - her growth spurt was a good 18 months before his. For years it seemed like we had 3 children of different ages, the only clue they were twins was them being in the same school year (but in different schools).

< and breathe >

I don't know anyone with twins so can't gauge if they're all angry 😉

Only in the same way siblings can look incredibly similar and not be twins, it’s not that unusual for siblings to look the same.

I don't have any twins but had a boy and a girl with less than eighteen months between them. They didn't look much alike but people would assume, simply because they were sitting in a buggy together, that they were twins. The idea of having children close in age just never seemed to occur to them.

To be fair, once past immediate babyhood they were similar in size, but even so...

When we had IVF we were told it also slightly increases the likelihood of identical twins. The process ups the chance of an egg splitting because it is in contact with things that a naturally conceived zygot isn't.

I think people who think b/g twins can be 'identical' are the same pool of people who think giving their DC an unusual name is giving them a 'unique' name. They have fundamentally miss understood a word.

I think a lot of people just feel a bit sorry for those with twins and spout something to make conversation, even if it’s a bit dumb.

Have you never seen siblings that look very similar each other? Often with siblings though there will be an age gap which does make them look a bit more different. But non identical boy/girl twins are the same age. I guarantee though that once they hit full puberty and adulthood they’d look very different.

My husband did one of those app things that turns you “into” the opposite sex. We all screamed with laughter as the picture that appeared was his pretty much his sister. 🤣 This app had no idea he had a sister obviously. But apparently making him a girl that’s what he would look like according to the app. (On a side note I did the one that makes you older. It literally turned me into the spitting image of my mother.)

Yes and if my understanding of Turner syndrome is correct, the foetus isn't truly female because the second X chromosome is missing. It's a kind of "default female" because of the first X that all foetuses have, and would be female in appearance. Please someone correct me if I'm wrong but I dont think Turner syndrome is compatible with life so we aren't taking about a scenario where (once) identical twins would grow up as male and female alongside each other.

I suppose it's a rare situation in which a fertilized XY egg split into two identical embryos but then one lost the Y. At that point they'd no longer be identical, because one would be male and one would be default female (but originally male), albeit they would share other matching chromosomes and DNA.

Yes people can be a bit thick. It always annoys me in novels or in TV programmes when the writers get the inheritance of twins wrong - as when the big reveal is that so and so must be the father because he is a twin and his GF has just had twins. It doesn’t work like that. The only inheritance for twins is that non identical twins are passed through the female line and skip a generation. It is fascinating to follow it back through your family tree as I have done.

That’s not how people converse about twins off the cuff though. I’m sure they feel silly when people correct them. Or maybe they just think ‘huh, you’re right, I never actually thought about it’. Who cares? Twins probably occupy 0.1% of people’s thoughts unless they are one or have them.

If you want to be disdainful about a completely well-meaning non-event, then go ahead I guess.