Inspired by this thread - Gender probability discussion.
It looks like it might be possible at some time in the near future to test men to see if they favour fathering one gender over the other genetically. As a woman or a man, would this affect your child-bearing decisions?
hmmm, that is interesting and tough to say. I have 2 sons now and I have never been a person who desperately wanted one gender or the other, but I do have friends who also have 2 boys and both are now in process of adopting their 3rd (girls.) I also have some friends who had 2 of one kind, then ‘went for the third’ so to speak, trying for the other sex, one went as far as timing sex to supposedly boost the odds of having a girl.
For me, I don’t think it would change anything. I wanted at least 2 kids and was not particular about boy or girl preference. We have talked about having a third later, but decided to adopt anyway if we do decide to add another. It would seem odd to me to know ahead of time what you are likely to have, but I guess it’s not much different than finding out the sex of a baby by ultrasound…and it doesn’t guarantee anything. I think if people need to have one or the other 100% certain, they only way is adoption (well I guess you could fertilize a bunch of eggs and only implant the preferred sex, but I don’t know of any doctors that will do that process for the sole reason of sex preference.)
It might boost adoption rates for couples who have one child and want another of the non-likely gender.
I think strongly expressed gender preferences for future kids is a terrible thing to do for anyone at anytime. There is no good that can come from it and a lot of hurt that can. It is as sexist as sexist gets by definition and I do not approve of people that pump out child after child hoping to hit the “jackpot” that the previous ones apparently didn’t get them. I always wanted a daughter just because I have two brothers and two stepbrothers and very few girls in my family overall. I ended up with two daughters and that was fine by me although two boys would have been fine as well. I only wanted two children and I had justification built in my head about why any combination would be great.
Men marrying into my mother’s family knew there was a strong likelihood to get daughters, daughters, and oh yeah, some more daughters. My own generation ended up being 3 boys (all from Mom and her sister) and over 30 girls.
Marrying into my father’s family meant a strong likelyhood of boys, boys and boys. My generation ended up being 3 girls and 27 boys.
Just sayin’, you don’t need genetic analysis to figure something like that out: just a look at the family tree.
That aside, in my case I was terrified I’d be a lousy mother, but that applies equally to sons and daughters. Thus, probable gender of the offspring wouldn’t be something particularly important.
Wait, that doesn’t make sense, does it? Men marrying into your mother’s family would be likely to have daughters because previous generations had daughters? It’s the men who provide the X or Y chromosome, not the women. Perhaps you mean women marrying into your mother’s family would be likely to have daughters?
It would have been very, very difficult for a woman to marry into my mother’s family, given the lack of men.
But while men provide the gender-defining chromosome, there are some genes which are transmitted in those and which lead to problems… think hemophilia, for example. It’s perfectly possible that my mother’s family has one or more genes that lead to less boys being born due to genetic defects which are OK so long as the other X-chromosome compensates for them.
There has only been one boy born into my extended family (my mother’s side - father is the product of a closed adoption) in 80 years, I assume I will continue the pattern. Most of the women in my family marry men who come from families heavy on boys, but they always have all daughters (my mother almost had a boy, but he died in the womb 1 day before his due date from mysterious causes - so there might be some sort of genetic issue at play here). If I could choose I would have at least one daughter, but if I have only sons I can’t imagine caring too much. I just want kids (hopefully healthy long-lived ones). So no, if I knew the potential father of my children had mostly male sperm or if I could see the future and know we would have all boys it wouldn’t matter to me.
There are a lot of anectodes, like my BF’s father who had 7 daughters with his first wife and 6 sons with his second, which can’t be explained very well by roughly even chances or some men producing a higher proportion of Y or X sperm. But, it does seem to be proven that the chances are close to 50/50 for most.
From MicroSort (only reliable method of pre-conception gender selection) website:
I’ll admit it, finding out that a man would be more likely to father sons might be a plus and I already find the idea of sperm sorting appealing. I like little girls, but I’m afraid to have one because I’m not sure I’d be a good role model for a daughter, not having the best one myself given how my mom’s chronic illness and hospitalizations made my dad the primary caretaker in my own early childhood. I’d be much less anxious a parent if I have sons instead of daughters.
I hadn’t even thought of how certain genetic diseases would factor into this. Maybe at some point in the future all guys will have their sperm typed, and it can be included in your characteristics in dating sites. 
My boss has 5 daughters and three of them are teenagers. :eek: I really don’t know how the man remains sober.
I don’t see anything wrong with say for example a married couple would like to increase their odds of having a boy and a girl.
My mother is happy with her two sons but she had said often how much she wanted a little girl. Fortunately I provided her with a grand daughter to spoil.
But it’s the women who actually carry the fetus, and whose body or whose X chromosomes may be prone to destroy XY conceptions. And yes, it’s my understanding that the X and Y are “at war” like that; since they are the only chromosomes that aren’t inherited by everyone, they are the only ones for which there is a Darwinian advantage to suppressing the other.
If I had known back then that I only shot/shoot boy-makers, the only difference would have been ditching the gender-neutral stuff from the trim on the nursery.
There is a traditional test for this you know; first popularized by Henry VIII.