There doesn’t seem to be any online data regarding predispositions in a family one way or another towards girls or boys. And I find the question interesting enough to do a little statistical sampling of my own. So here’s the poll:
[ul]
[li]think of all the families you know with 3 or more kids, born to the same 2 parents.[/li][li]Throw out all cases where you don’t know all ages and sexes, or where the first two are different sexes (keep in cases like BBGB or GGGBG)[/li][li]List the rest. Just for extra interest, bold your and/or partners birth family, and italicise family of which you are a parent, if relevant.[/li][/ul]
If there are enough responses, I’ll do some analysis after a while and see if we come up with anything interesting.
I know a bunch of 3+ families (sometimes +++). Many of these are from my mom’s family - has twelve siblings (the top list), who average nearly six kids apiece plus many grandkids - so this is in no way a random sample. The 172 direct biological descendants of my grandparents whose gender I can think of (I’m a little hazy with about five of my cousins’ kids, and I’m leaving out the adoptees and stepkids) are 52.9% male, 47.1% female. None of these are my or my husband’s immediate family, and we have no kids as yet.
The requirements exclude a bunch of heavily-weighted-towards-one-gender families that I know, such as that of a former roommate who was the eldest child of eight, and the only girl.
What’s wrong with those where the first two are different genders, why throw out all those? Is it “just” to shrink the sample? To me, it appears to be skewing it as well. Even if the original question was about third child gender with two repeats, we’re throwing out the “GBBBBB” cases.
BBBB
GGGGGGGGGGBB – she had a lot of abortions between 6 and 7, no idea of genders
GGGGB
BBBBG
BBB – if you add the stillborn girls, it becomes GBBGB
BBB
BBGG
BBBGBBBBBG
GGG
GGGGB
Those are the ones I can remember with 100% certainty off the top of my head.