Rich Women Have More Sons Than Daughters
Posted by: Wendy Atterberry
Filed in:
news
7:45AM, Wednesday July 8th 2009
If you thought the easiest way to tell the financial status of a woman was by the kind of car she drives, the size of her diamonds, or how affected her accent is, guess again. A new “scientific” study claims that wealthier woman have more sons than daughters. Um, ohh-kay. A group of Dutch researchers — it’s always the Dutch, isn’t it? — studied 95,000 Rwandan women to test an evolutionary theory that suggests “when conditions are good, and babies are likely to be healthy, a mother’s best chance of passing on her genes to another generation is to have boys.” When conditions are bad, however, and pregnant women are malnourished and more likely to have sickly or weak babies, it makes more “evolutionary sense to have a girl who does not face competition to become pregnant to continue the family line.” In the polygamous tradition of Rwanda where high-ranking wives tend to have more influence and income, they have, on average more sons than daughters (99 daughters for every 100 sons). Lower-ranking, poorer wives, on the other hand, have 106 daughters for every sons. So, there you have it — scientific proof that Victoria Beckham is rich. [via DailyMail]
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emflow
wrote on July 8 2009 @ 08:53 am: [report]
Ummm. What? Can someone explain what they mean by in bad condition it makes “evolutionary sense to have a girl who does not face competition to become pregnant to continue the family line”? Cause I cannot follow their reasoning at all.
Keesh Mia
wrote on July 8 2009 @ 08:53 am: [report]
I think this should be rephrased as “Rich Men Have More Sons Than Daughters” since geneder is determined by the sperm and not by the egg. What do you think?
bumbler
wrote on July 8 2009 @ 08:58 am: [report]
@Keesh Mia Seems like a pretty big oversight for these scientists, doesn’t it?
Hop2it
wrote on July 8 2009 @ 09:04 am: [report]
This study should be labeled as “inconclusive.” What other factors between the control and experimental groups could account for such a difference? It could very well be that wealty women can afford more children than those who are poor, and thus they have less variation than women who have fewer children. Does Rwanda have any instances of infanticide? How did they select participants? Yes, because your womb knows what your bank account looks like when you conceive and makes a selection accordingly, right? Fat chance.
Keesh Mia
wrote on July 8 2009 @ 09:27 am: [report]
@bumbler Love your nose! @Hop2it I total thought about genecide too! The rich could be aborting when they find out it’s a girl. Make me so mad!
emflow
wrote on July 8 2009 @ 09:28 am: [report]
Well, there could be a connection between income and reproductive trends, because income influences nutrition, health care & education, and social class (which could connect to infanticide or any number of other behaviors affecting pregnancy rates). And it could be a female trend, rather than “rich men having more sons,” if the difference is cause by something like spontaneous abortion (miscarriage) of female babies.
But I still don’t see why it would be genetically favorable to have male children when times are good or female children when times are bad.
nire32
wrote on July 8 2009 @ 09:41 am: [report]
The study was focused on a woman’s ability to carry a child to full-term
Basically it’s saying that males in utero tend to be weaker and vulnerable to problems in pregnancy, so there is a higher rate of miscarriage when the mother is experiencing these things issues. However, if the mother is healthy, the boy-girl ratio is basically even.
emflow
wrote on July 8 2009 @ 09:47 am: [report]
Heh, well it helps to read the original article, oops. The reasoning it gives is:
“Fit, healthy boys will see off rivals and can potentially father hundreds of children, ensuring the survival of the family line.
But if a mother is unfit or malnourished, a baby boy is a poor investment. A weak, sickly male is unlikely to beat off competition from other males and may not become a father or even survive.”
And: “some studies suggest that unborn baby girls are tougher - and less likely to be miscarried if the mother is stressed or ill.”