A study last spring suggested (though a follow up doesn’t agree) that a woman’s diet before conception plays a role in determining if she’ll concieve a son or a daughter. Women who ate breakfast, lots of bananas and consumed more calories are theorized to have boys more often than girls.
But what about men? Has any study ever shown there to be something that might contribute to men producing more X or more Y sperm? Perhaps related to diet, physical condition, or body temperature?
While there are certain “techniques” that some claim can influence the gender of babies, I can’t find any diet that males can use to influence gender. Others may be luckier than I was…
http://www.googobits.com/articles/p0-1011-can-gender-be-preselected.html
X sperm cells have a slightly larger head than their male counterparts, so I suppose you could try mooshing the semen through a fine grade sieve.
There may be something that influences x/y fertilization, but there can’t be anything easily done to influence x/y creation. They’re made in pairs, as the male’s XY somatic cell splits in two with one chromasome going to each sperm cell during meosis. The only thing that could change that would be crazy surgery that changes the man’s appropriate cells to effectively female (XX). I have no idea if that would render them useless though. I suppose the other method would be a nutball (heh) scientist creating a tricked-out enzyme to seek & destroy all X or all Y sperm before they completely develop.
In short, no.
That would be a Professor of Urology?
It’s been hypothesized that men who regularly experience high g forces, such as fighter pilots, are more likely to have daughters. My half-assed Google search turned up this abstract. There doesn’t seem to be much research in this particular area.
Being rich.
Right, but as Chessic Sense points out, you’re looking at the results of fertilization, pregnancy and childbirth, not creation. You’d have to go in and count the sperm ripening in the testes to determine that fewer “Y-sperm” were actually being created, instead of a myriad of other possibilities why there were more female *offspring *observed. A whole lot can happen to a sperm (and a fetus) between creation and childbirth.
Because of the haploid nature of gamete production, I’d be surprised if anything short of genetic tinkering could significantly alter the production of one chromosomal holder over the other. But men’s reproduction is not my field of specialty, I’m only beginning to learn about it.
I have a cousin who has 8 boys.
8 boys.
They tried for a girl since the second one.
Obviously, the force is strong with him.
Nice boys, all of them.
Which is pretty remarkable – not many people have 8 children. However, out of those that do have 8 children, just by chance they’ll be all boys about one time out of 250.
Given the number of families in this world, I think we’d expect to find a few 8-boy families just by chance.
Chessic Sense’s revelation that they’re made in pairs is sort of disappointing, but there is already a method to do something like you’re suggesting - sperm spinning, which uses a centrifuge to seperate Xs and Ys. Unfortunately, it works better for people who want girls than boys.