Every baby is a blessing, and whether you have a boy or a girl is just a random, unpredictable twist of fate, right? Well, not necessarily, as new research claims that there are definite biological reasons which determine that wealthier women are more likely to give birth to boys, whilst poorer women are more likely to have girls.
So it's no accident that Victoria Beckham has ended up with her three boys Brooklyn, Romeo and Cruz. Her bank balance meant it was always going to be so.
Here's the science behind the theory:
Dutch researchers used a database of 95,000 Rwandan women, and tracked their social status compared with how many boys or girls they had. Their findings, published in Biology Letters, were that women who are poor are more likely to give birth to girls, but women with a higher social standing have more boys. Strong mothers make strong babies, and -- according to this theory -- a strong healthy boy is a mother's best chance of her genes being passed on for several more generations. On the other hand, if the mother is weak, sick or malnourished, a girl is a better gamble. Girl babies are tougher (say researchers), so they're more likely to survive and thrive.
But this is not the only study to come up with a theory as to why we produce one particular gender and not another. In January 2009, research from Newcastle University suggested that men have a gene which decides if they're going to father girls or boys. A 2007 study found that stressed out women are more likely to give birth to girls. And then there's the Shettles method, which claims that gender can be influenced by timing intercourse around ovulation.
So is it lifestyle or biology? And if you want to give birth to a particular gender, will you look to your bank balance rather than your diet? And I'm not sure what this says about people like me who have had both boys and girls - I guess that makes us middle class.
What do you think? Does the gender of your children reflect your wealth?
Source [ParentDish US]