Women with high testosterone may be more likely to have sons
(sz) Something that you’ve probably known intuitively for years is finally official: mothers of daughters are different to mothers of sons, and we produce the sex of children we’re most suited to bring up.
Traditional perception is that the sex of your baby is pure toss-of-the-coin chance, but ten years ago, Dr Valerie Grant, a reproductive scientist at the University of Auckland, came up with the theory that dominant women have high levels of testosterone (often considered the male sex hormone) and are much more likely to give birth to boys.
A small group of researchers, from anthropologists to evolutionary biologists, have known for years that something other than chance affects the human sex ratio which, rather than remaining at a constant 50:50 male to female, is prone to fluctuations; during both World Wars, for example, there was an increase in the number of male births. Grant, who has a PhD in psychology, was the first to suggest that it was down to the character of the mother. “Scientists already knew that mothers behave differently towards their babies according to their sex [mothers of boys are more initiating, mothers of girls more responsive], but the conclusion was that this was because of the strength of sex stereotyping. I’d say there was evidence that the mothers were behaving in ways that were natural to them.” more…
From: »The Times«