# Do most male children grow up to be taller than their mothers? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 22, 2011, 12:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-most-male-children-grow-up-to-be-taller-than-their-mothers/579345 "2011-04-22T12:09:31Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2011, 10:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-most-male-children-grow-up-to-be-taller-than-their-mothers/579345/21 "2011-04-22T22:04:38Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > My dad’s 5’10", my mom’s 5’8", so I should be just under 6’ by the formula. I’m 6’3". > > My sister is 5’7", but she had knee surgery in sixth grade and had to have her growth plate closed before surgery. According to those tests they do when you are a kid, she was supposed to be 6’. (And it predicted me at 6’2", which is pretty good.) How woud that work unless they operated on both knees? ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2011, 10:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-most-male-children-grow-up-to-be-taller-than-their-mothers/579345/22 "2011-04-22T22:17:43Z")
> [@astro](#): > > How woud that work unless they operated on both knees? Presumably they’d do just that even if the other knee was healthy, in order to prevent one leg ending up longer than the other. ---
**Author:** ![Renton\_lvr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/7feea3/32.png) [@Renton\_lvr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Renton_lvr)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2011, 10:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-most-male-children-grow-up-to-be-taller-than-their-mothers/579345/23 "2011-04-22T22:42:55Z")
My mother is 5’5", my father is 5’7" and I am 5’10" (female). Of all my family, only my maternal grandfather can be considered tallish at 6’. ---
**Author:** ![Mosier](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ea924/32.png) [@Mosier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mosier)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2011, 11:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-most-male-children-grow-up-to-be-taller-than-their-mothers/579345/24 "2011-04-22T23:29:09Z")
> [@Quintas](#): > > My father and mother are both 5’6" , give or take a 1/4 inch. I’m 6’ 2" . How did THAT happen? How tall is your mailman? ---
**Author:** ![gurujulp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/ba9def/32.png) [@gurujulp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gurujulp)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2011, 4:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-most-male-children-grow-up-to-be-taller-than-their-mothers/579345/25 "2011-04-23T16:50:28Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > Of course it’s not 100 percent accurate. It’s based on averages. I’m almost exactly the average of my parents’ heights- if the formula were 100% accurate, I’d be about two inches taller. > > There’s probably more recent data by now, but this [2002 CDC report](http://usgovinfo.about.com/gi/o.htm?zi=1/XJ&zTi=1&sdn=usgovinfo&cdn=newsissues&tm=19&gps=268_140_1259_875&f=00&su=p284.9.336.ip_&tt=2&bt=0&bts=0&zu=http%3A//www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/ad/ad347.pdf) [PDF warning] says the average adult U.S. male is 5’9.6" and the average woman is 5’4.2." (They did stop collecting data when the subjects were 19.) That makes it pretty obvious most guys are going to be taller than their mothers. If you apply the formula posted upthread and assume two average-height people have one child of each gender who is also average-height, you get a son who will be 5’9.2" and a daughter who is 5’4.4." That is, you’d have a son who is a little shorter than his father but much taller than his mother and sister, and a daughter who is much shorter than her father and her brother and just a little taller than her mother. It seems odd that the data collection would stop at 19- I know three men who grew several inches between 19 and 25 yo. And that’s just the very few people whom it was noticeable enough to bring conversation in regards to it! I think every woman I have known during that time in their lives had stopped growing, but I haven’t had the discussion with many- and, as I say, no girls grew in that age range… Could be confirmation bias on my part, however. Anybody else see growth there? ---
**Author:** ![kittenblue](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ba8739/32.png) [@kittenblue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kittenblue)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2011, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-most-male-children-grow-up-to-be-taller-than-their-mothers/579345/26 "2011-04-23T20:29:56Z")
My ex-husband was/is 5’3", I am 5’4". My son was very worried he was going to be short like his dad and was overjoyed when he sprouted up to 5’ 9", which is more in line with the men on my side of the family. Caused no end of problems with his dad, though, since they have had a rather contentious relationship for years…it does not help to have an angry,stronger son towering over you when you are plastered, but that’s for another thread. Oh, and my daughter ended up about 5’2". ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2011, 10:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-most-male-children-grow-up-to-be-taller-than-their-mothers/579345/27 "2011-04-23T22:18:37Z")
> [@BrotherCadfael](#): > > My daughter is exactly my wife’s height. My son is exactly my height. > > Both are pissed off about it - my daughter would love to be taller (my wife is not tall), and my son doesn’t like being the tallest person around. Ha ha - I saw the opposite, a co-worker who got very upset when her daughter ended up the same size and started wearing all her clothes (serves her right for watching her figure and having good style sense). She was so happy when the girl finally ended up 5 inches taller. Hmm… I’m shorter than my dad, but taller than my mother. (5’10 vs 6’2" and 5’3"). ---
**Author:** ![whiterabbit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/cab0a1/32.png) [@whiterabbit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/whiterabbit)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2011, 1:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-most-male-children-grow-up-to-be-taller-than-their-mothers/579345/28 "2011-04-24T01:06:18Z")
My mom is 5’9" and my dad was 5’5". My brother is right between the two of them, 5’7" or so. ---
**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2011, 1:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-most-male-children-grow-up-to-be-taller-than-their-mothers/579345/29 "2011-04-24T01:22:08Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > For a girl, the most likely height is (x + y - 5)/2. Well, I got screwed then. Mom was 5’4.5" (but is shorter now due to spinal issues) and Dad is 6’2". I’m not quite 5’4" myself. My mom and her sister are both shorter than their mother was too: Grammy was 5’6" and Grampy was 6’ but my aunt is only 5’2". I’m not hoping for daughters myself, but I’m interested in seeing how nieces turn out. Hopefully the women in my family won’t continue to shrink. **gurujulp** , I grew the final inch half way through college but I don’t know if I was 19 or 20 at the time. ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2011, 1:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-most-male-children-grow-up-to-be-taller-than-their-mothers/579345/30 "2011-04-24T01:24:03Z")
> [@bump](#): > > And the formula doesn’t imply that there’s any specific height gain from having a tall mother or father. > [@astro](#): > > Strictly unscientific, but for whatever reason based on the informal observations I’ve made re parent/child pairs I’ve seen in my life, it always seemed to me that if the mother being tall had more impact on the son being tall. > > Put another way i almost never saw tall mothers with short sons, but did see tall mothers with short daughters. I’ve never seen any evidence that it matters which parent is taller. All these observations can be explained simply because males are hormonally taller. For a male to be 6’ tall he only needs to have “growth genes” that are trivially better than the average population. IOW he genes only needed to make him 2" taller than average. For a woman to be 6’ her genes must have been much better than average, since they made her fully 6" taller than average. So a child of a 6’ man will inherit fairly average genes from his father, and if the mother is also of average height the child will also be of average height. In contrast a child of a 6’ woman will inherit genes from his mother that will result in him being 6" taller than average. Even if the father is of average height the child will still be 3" taller than the average population. IOW it doesn’t matter which parent is taller. all that matters is how much taller than average the parent is. ---
**Author:** ![Cub\_Mistress](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ea666f/32.png) [@Cub\_Mistress](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cub_Mistress)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2011, 3:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-most-male-children-grow-up-to-be-taller-than-their-mothers/579345/31 "2011-04-24T03:01:06Z")
this is a good place for a funny story. My grandson is 8 and he is off the chart for height for age. His father, my son, is 5’10’ or 5’11’, his mother is 6’, maybe a little more. When my DIL was looking over my grandson’s medical chart she found the following notation explaining my grandson’s height: "Father tall for family, **mother tall for people"** :)🙂 I tease my DIL now about being “tall for people.” ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2011, 3:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-most-male-children-grow-up-to-be-taller-than-their-mothers/579345/32 "2011-04-24T03:37:00Z")
First, since the difference between the average height for adult American men and adult American women is (5’9.6" - 5’4.2") = 5.4", let me adjust my formulas as follows: Let the father’s height be x and the mother’s height be y (in inches). For a boy, the most likely height is (x + y + 5.4")/2. For a girl, the most likely height is (x + y - 5.4")/2. So if your grandson’s father’s height is 5’10.6" and his mother’s height is 6’, the most likely height he will grow up to be is (5’10.6" + 6’ + 5.4")/2 = (12’4")/2 = 6’2". [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-most-male-children-grow-up-to-be-taller-than-their-mothers/579345.md?page=1)