Boy or girl? It’s in the father's genes (General)
by slowhands 
, proud of his ancient Dean Forest roots, Wednesday, December 10, 2008, 22:09 (5899 days ago)
http://www.ncl.ac.uk/press.office/press.release/content.phtml?ref=1228928558
Date released 11 December 2008
A Newcastle University study involving thousands of families is helping prospective parents
work out whether they are likely to have sons or daughters.
The work by Corry Gellatly, a research scientist at the university, has shown that men inherit
a tendency to have more sons or more daughters from their parents. This means that a man
with many brothers is more likely to have sons, while a man with many sisters is more likely
to have daughters.
The research, published online today by the journal Evolutionary Biology, involved a study of
927 family trees containing information on 556,387 people from North America and Europe
going back to 1600.
"The family tree study showed that whether you’re likely to have a boy or a girl is inherited. We now know that men are more likely to have sons if they have more brothers but are more likely to have daughters if they have more sisters. However, in women, you just can’t predict it," Mr Gellatly explains.
--
Ἀριστοτέλης A Gloster & Hereford Boy in the Forest of Dean ><((((*>
Boy or girl? It’s in the father's genes
by ChrisW , Thursday, December 11, 2008, 03:09 (5899 days ago) @ slowhands
OK. So why does my friend (who is one of six boys) have four daughters?!
Boy or girl? It’s in the father's genes
by slowhands , proud of his ancient Dean Forest roots, Thursday, December 11, 2008, 04:21 (5899 days ago) @ ChrisW
......thats statistics for you !
--
Ἀριστοτέλης A Gloster & Hereford Boy in the Forest of Dean ><((((*>
Boy or girl? It’s in the father's genes
by djones , Rhondda Valley, Glamorgan, Thursday, December 11, 2008, 11:55 (5898 days ago) @ slowhands
What is this to do with FDFH?
Just a load of rubbish
--
Rhondda Valley Boy
Boy or girl? It’s in the father's genes
by slowhands , proud of his ancient Dean Forest roots, Thursday, December 11, 2008, 19:50 (5898 days ago) @ djones
David
Your feedback is welcome.
The relevance to Family History studies is as ChrisW has already pointed out, each of us can test this conclusion against our own findings, i.e. in our MEEK / BRAIN/ GWILLIAM/ WATKINS/ JONES/ etc trees do we see any tendancy for males with a larger no of brothers to father more sons than daughters. Then again we can choose to ignore this all together.
Personally - no parallels yet - but then it is a statisical finding :-)
regards
--
Ἀριστοτέλης A Gloster & Hereford Boy in the Forest of Dean ><((((*>
Boy or girl? It’s in the father's genes
by Jean Herbert , Leeds Yorkshire, Friday, December 12, 2008, 07:17 (5897 days ago) @ slowhands
I found the information regarding "Father's Genes" in this discussion rather interesting and can empathise with ChrisW's point, it does not always work out that way. So, out of curiosity I briefly used the information given and found to my surprise it was fairly accurate (in some branches of my tree, not all) .
I then applied the same "Father's Genes" theory to occupations. The professional worker's children continued as professional worker, in nearly every census. It could also be said that professional people could afford to educate their children better than the manual workers.
Where a manual worker married into a professional workers family the children invariably became professional workers. I would like to point out that I am not biased towards professional or manual workers - but using the "Genes" suggestion to see if it could be applied to other statistics.
Of course it cannot be relied on 100% but it is an interesting theory.