A study from Harvard University has found that maternal age significantly impacts the sex of children, contradicting the long-held belief in a 50/50 chance for sons and daughters. Researchers analyzed data from over 58,000 mothers with at least two children, examining various maternal characteristics. The analysis revealed a significant correlation in the sex of offspring within families, indicating that certain mothers may be more likely to have children of one sex. The conventional understanding of a 50/50 gender ratio in births is therefore called into question.
The human sex ratio has long been of interest to biologists, statisticians, demographers, sociologists, and economists. Here, we showed that within each sibship size, sex at birth did not conform with a simple binomial distribution and identified a significant intramother correlation in offspring sex.
Several coauthors, however, observed cases of friends, colleagues, first-degree relatives, or themselves that produce offspring of only one sex raising questions about chance.
Collection
[
|
...
]