is it raining men?
I've noticed lately that many of the progeny that I see of about the same age group as my three children are overwhelmingly female in numbers. I've noticed this most strongly at the swim lessons my children are signed up in. Looking at all of the other swim classes that are going on at the same time as the lessons of my children, I'd say about half of the classes are all girls while the other half are on average 3 to 1 girls to boys.
We had a birthday party for V-8 this weekend (she is now 3 years old), Saturday night, and there were mostly our friends who also happen to have kids over. The girls (M, a, c, v, m, h, g) 7, out numbered the boys (b, j, c, g) 4.
I don't know if this is a real trend, or just a coincidence in that these particular circles are skewed one way, but other circles are equally skewed in the opposite direction.
4 comments:
I no longer mix with people with babies and small children so I couldn't tell you what it's like here. There are 2 young boys in this street and 2 girls. There are also 2 teenage boys and 1 teenage girl, 2 if Teeny Tiny is around.
I have 3 girls.
I am one of 3 girls.
There were 3 girls and 3 boys in my mother's family.
There were 3 girls in my grandmother's family.
Girls rule in my family.
We'll be adding a girl to the mix in April, I wonder if this is to counter other parts of the world where girls are being 'selected against'.
Alternatively in the animal kingdom there are sometimes some environmental factors that can skew gender selection, in particular in amphibians - favoring females over males.
http://m.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/03/atrazine-and-disease/
And then there's reptiles whose gender is selected by the temperature at which the eggs are incubating.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=experts-temperature-sex-determination-reptiles
It would be really interesting to see if there is a reason, or trend towards more females in North and South America, Europe, Africa, Asia and Oceania - but I imagine there are so many complicating variables that it would be difficult.
Does anyone know a population ecologist/biologist who might be available for such a task?
Uneven distribution. Among the orthopedic residents and surgeons I work with, there are quite a number of small children, and nary a daughter to be found.
Deb: Thank you for your report.
Merc: It is not entirely surprising that you would use amphibians and reptiles as a comparison class.
Zhoen: as I figured - my not infinitesimal sample is unrepresentative.
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