Your job can dictate what sex children you have....LSE report

[lemonice]

Read it here

What do you think?

I worked processing mortgage applications for a large bank, which isn't a caring job and had a girl.
Load of rubbish I think.

Is Bruce Willis really a empathiser? He does so many testosterone movies... but then again its his wife or wives so this report says determines this via testosterone!

I vaguely remember hearing theories alittle similar to this many years ago.

So who has a long ring finger??????

Not me and we have one dd so far.

When I had ds1 & ds2 I was a SAHM to my dd- wouldn't this theory mean that all SAHMs would have dds after the first one?

What a load of bilge!
I am a TA in a primary school, am nursery nurse qualified & I have 2 boys!

this is what determins gender, nothing else!!!

ahem, Bruce has only had one wife (have you seen him lately, do you think he's aging well?)

These kind of reports are just time fillers for the researchers, after all let's face it; it's always a 50/50 chance for either sex.

You watch, Zebra will come out of lurk mode and explain the theory of statistics to me and make me look a fool

But it isn't 50/50, is it? It never is, quite. And this report doesn't say all nurses will have girls and all accountants will have boys, just that they are more likely to have boys or girls. So individual experiences do not negate the research. I think it is quite likely. there is plenty of research that shows the effect of hormones in the womb.

I worked in IT. I have two sons.

I did nothing and had a boy.... now I want to be a nurse... will this one be a girl? Lol!

But isn't it the sperm that determins the sex?

or even aloha will come and give me a basic lesson in the theory of statistics

geey Suzy I really don´t know much about the man and his RL except for Demi who I hope is still shagging the saucy Ashton.

I think it's the combination of both partners ie sperm and the womb environment hormone wise

Girly sperm are slower but last longer, boyish sperm is speedy but tires easily. It depends on when you ovulate and when you have sex. There are other factors like things that change the ratio of girl sperm and boy sperm. Like if you're a male fighter pilot - this kills off some of the speedy sperm therefore you're more likely to have a girl if you've been doing lots of G-force stuff....

I thought it was all about sperm and OVing times I don't get how hormonal things and being a 'carer' etc would make any difference!

Yes, but the egg chooses the sperm.

Maybe being a nurse makes you eat loads of sugary stuff for the energy and therefore makes your mucus sweeter? Lol...and a nicer environment for girly sperm!

Its not,
the woman has 2 X (female)chromosomes
the man has 1 X (female) and 1 Y (male)
If the X joins with the mans X then its a girl
if the X joins with the mans Y its a boy
and this happens at the time of conception so it makes no difference what so ever were the woman works!!!!
Its 50 50

?High testosterone levels before birth cause a slight excess of sons, but we don?t know why.?

I hate to disagree with an expert in evolutionary psychology, but what determines maleness is the presence of a Y chromosome, which is determined at the moment of conception. The very slight excess of boys in the population is determined way, way before birth. The people quoted in this study seem to be very muddled thinkers; fathers can obviously have a big effect on the sex of their children (in terms of X-bearing or Y-bearing sperm production), and there may well be unknown factors in that, but the only way a mother can affect the sex of her children is by miscarrying one sex but not another. Certainly testosterone has an effect on sex determination, but if this research were true with respect to mothers then you would expect them to have boys who were actually XX, or girls who were XY (ie. sex-reversed). The mechanisms at work would be completely different for mothers and fathers, and yet they're being lumped together here.

Why do we want to know what factors in our lives make girls or boys anyway? If we were that fussed we could all go and have IVF and get designer babies ....it's exciting not having a clue!

I really don't think it is that simple at all. The is tons of research showing how the production of boy babies v girl babies changes according to various factors. Also, as I said earlier, the egg is not just the passive recipient of sperm. It can choose the right sperm. A nice feminist angle, I think.
And as the original article points out, it is never exactly 50.50 in the first place.
Nobody knows quite how the mechanism works, but it does appear quite strongly that gender is not always simply a matter of chance.

exh parents had 5 boys and 1 girl his father an engineer

dp parents 5 boys and 1 girl his father a builder

exh forensic scientist we have 2 girls and 1 boy (me definitely an "empathiser")

I'm with aloha here - sperm competition is pretty complicated stuff - the ph of the vagina is meant to make a difference, for one thing. Male sperm are faster, but female sperm are hardier.

Sex selection in other mammals (never mind bugs, who are really impressive with this stuff!) is pretty complicated, and in primates is often closely related to maternal status.

(I've been rereading Sarah Blaffer Hrdy lately, who is very interesting, on these sorts of subjects.)

I do think tamum has a point, though - the mechanisms for sex selection in males and females are totally different, and are very unlikely to be related, at all.

Istr a report a few years ago which claimed that men who had 'macho' jobs, such as being in the armed forces, were more likely to have girls and that the higher up the promotions ladder they were, the more pronounced the effect. Isn't there also an ageing effect, with older parents being more likely to produce a certain sex?

Dh and I have two of each, so I'm not sure what that means!

If you google Dr Valerie Grant and sex ratio you can find out some very interesting things IMO.
Dominant female red deer most definitely have more male offspring than female.