The ability to give birth to only boys or girls: truth or myth?

You can often hear amazing stories, like the one that a man had three daughters from one wife, then he married another - and she also gave birth to only girls.

And, in principle, everyone is inclined to believe that there are families in which in each generation children are born of the same sex, or that a man can have the same girls like this, even from different mothers. We will not check the reliability of such stories now, but let's turn to science.

Swedish scientists conducted a huge study: they studied the birth data of citizens of their country, starting in 1932. The focus was on 3.5 million Swedish adults, who gave birth to 4.7 million children.

Scientists have studied what gender the children were born, and who they gave birth to when they grew up. Data on hundreds of thousands of brothers and sisters were studied - but the regularity and consistency of the birth of children of a particular gender was never found.

In fact, scientists have come to the conclusion that the genetic predisposition to have children of a certain gender is zero. So the sex of the child is always an accident. Cases when there are a lot of boys or girls in families are considered by researchers to be nothing more than a coincidence.

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