A current thread asks about improving the chances for a boy or a girl. That notion prompted me to wonder if there are situations (families more like) where some extended number of generations has produced all boys or all girls. Offhand, I can’t think of any.
Father’s side first cousins (including my brother and me): 6 boys, 5 girls
Mother’s side first cousins (ditto): 5 boys, no girls (2 of Mama’s siblings were childless)
How about your own family or some friend’s family?
Anybody have two (or more) generations of all boys or all girls?
Anybody have a string of only-children?
(And, please, I’ve heard that old adage about “If your parents were sterile, chances are you will be, too.”)
A friend had one brother. He had 3 daughters and his brother had 9(!) daughters.
John Lennon’s father had two brothers, John’s father had two other sons, and John had three (one dead at birth) sons. Three generations with no daughters.
Sex is determined by the father contributing either an x (female) or y (male) chromosome. Mother always gives an “x,” and is meaningless in these types of discussions.
I don’t know any multiple generations. I do know one family that had 7 sons and no daughters.
I also know a family that had 10 grandchildren from 4 different children before the first boy was born. (They now have 16 grandchildren, 4 of whom are boys.) They are also somewhat notable in that 6 of the 7 kids have been married for more than 10 years without a single divorce. The other “kid” never married at all.
There was a study released last year in England, IIRC. It would appear that when a couple has a large age difference, the first child born to them is most likely to be the same sex as the older parent. Children after that are pretty evenly spread between boys and girls.
My paternal grandparents had three sons. Those three sons had two children each. Five were sons. My father had me (male) and my brother. Between my brother and I, we have eight children. Seven are male. There is nearly 50 years between my female first cousin and my daughter.
My best friend comes from a family that has consistently defied the odds. All the women in her family, for at least 3 generations, have produced only girls. She has 3 daughters herself. Her sisters, her mother and aunts, and grandmother all had several children each, and all are girls.
She claims (jokingly) that their estrogen is so strong that it simply won’t allow boy babies to grow.
I have heard that acidity levels in the uterus can influence a child’s sex; if it’s more acidic, then girls spermies are more likely to survive. But I know nothing about this–if anyone has any information, I’d be very interested in learning more.
I had a science teacher who said she knew of a woman who miscarried every male pregnancy because her body couldn’t tolerate something so different in chromosomal make-up.
Both my mom and my dad come from a family of three children, and all of them (my parents plus aunts/uncles) had two children apiece. That’s unusual in that it’s consistent, I guess. Though most people have two children nowadays, so maybe not.
My great grandfather was the oldest of three boys.
He had three girls. My grandmother was the oldest of three girls.
She had three boys. My father is the oldest of three boys.
He had three girls. I am the oldest of three girls.
I have a little boy and a little girl. Breaking the pattern. After we adopted my son and I discovered my surprise pregnancy, I knew it HAD to be twin boys, because that was the only way I was going to have three boys.
My grandmother is an identical twin, and she is one of four sets that her mother had. The next two sets were boy/girl combinations, and the final set died with the mother when her heart gave out on her. Poor woman (and orphans…)
My uncle and his sister are twins, and my brother and I are twins.
Luckily it seems to have stopped there, as I have two boys, and my brother has two girls, born one at a time thank goodness!
My Uncle and his wife (of course!) wanted two children, a boy and a girl… They had a girl… and a girl… and a girl… and a girl… and a girl… and a girl… Then they stopped. I guess they figured out what was causing them. Their oldest daughter got pregnant at 14 :rolleyes: and had twin boys, then two other boys. Her oldest son got a girl pregnant at age 16, and had twin girls. I haven’t heard from that side of the family in a few years now. (I guess the three name changes and 10 moves finally worked.), so I don’t know if the trend continued.
The difference in the number of sons between my parents was a result of my older brother being born before my parents met. My mother’s then boyfriend split when he heard she was pregnant.
This issue may be a case of confirmational bias… the families which don’t have a big bias towards one gender are forgotten, while the ones that do are the ones which are remembered.
Having no statistical proof of that, I submit my family’s bias towards boys:
With only the usual four grandparents, I have 12 uncles and 3 aunts.
I have 4 brothers
I have 3 nephews and 1 niece.
Their oldest daughter got pregnant at 14 :rolleyes: and had twin boys, then two other boys. Her oldest son got a girl pregnant at age 16, and had twin girls. I haven’t heard from that side of the family in a few years now. (I guess the three name changes and 10 moves finally worked.), so I don’t know if the trend continued.