Slashdot Mirror
Engineers Have More Sons, Nurses More Daughters
Bifurcati writes "While it might be irrelevant for many /.ers, a recent study has shown that people in stereotypically male professions (engineering, IT, mathematics, etc) are more likely to have sons than daughters, while nurses, therapists and teachers tend to produce more girls. Based on independent survey data, engineering types produce 140 boys to every 100 girls, while nurses and the like produce 135 girls to 100 boys. The explanation is unclear, but it might have interesting long-term social implications. A more detailed summary of the journal article is available on Illuminating Science."
Studies have shown that a mother-to-be's diet high in calcium and magnesium including milk, beans, cereals, cheese and nuts may favor a baby girl, whereas a diet high in pizza and coke apparantly favors the conception of a baby boy.
That's why they do the graduate engineering/nursing mixers!
The Raven
Repeat after me: "Correlation does not imply causality."
I think it's far more likely that it's not what job you're doing, it's what job you tend to want to do.
Just the news I need to hear in order to start my line of supersmart offspring that will form the ultimate Revenge of the Nerds. Mwuhahahahahahahha
Oh wait, according to my calculations the probability of me getting laid is 3x10^-8
Duh! It's because boys have boys and girls have girls. Oh, wait...
I'll turn into a supernova and burn up everything. Well I'll turn into a black little hole and you'll turn into string.
More testosterone in the womb leads to boys.
What does this have to do with the father? What does this have to do with which sperm gets into the egg?
Transcend Humanity. Please.
Does it come out as a trannie?
Do you mean "comes out" as in born or "comes out" as in closet?
Hopefully (we dont have children yet), I'll have a healthy boy or girl, who will take great care of me AND my source code in my very old age.
...both interiorlly, and exteriorlly.
There are proponents of different techniques that supposedly let you choose the sex of your child. One interesting technique is called the Shettles Method. One family that I know swears by this method. They are four for four in getting it to work.
At any rate, perhaps different personalities or lifestyle conditions between engineers and nurses would help to explain this data - if indeed there is any credence to Shettles or similar methods.
Ha, ha! Nobody ever says Italy.
From the first link: The study did not say why this phenomenon occurred
From the second: They're very cautious about interpreting the cause of their results, and what conclusions could be drawn.
Read past the first line teaser. The meat of the article isn't nearly as bad as one would like to pretend.
Video Phone Blogs send video messages straight to the web.
Of course, the media has promptly taken things one step further and suggested that "Couples desperate to produce a son could boost their chances if one or both of them switches to a "masculine" profession such as engineering or accountancy". Perhaps this is true - but that might be reading more into the report than is good for it.
Realities just a bunch of bits.
Easy explanation: people in stereotypically male professions, except for jocks, are less able to attract an attractive mate. This sad fact leads them to disproportionately engage in sex using the "doggy" position to avoid looking at each other's ugly faces. And, as has been proven, this results in semen getting in closer to the egg where the male sperm can impregnate. Face-to-face intercourse requires sperm to swim farther, giving the advantage to the female sperm, which have greater stamina and can impregnate after all the wimpy male sperm have died out.
The actual article (Journal of Theoretical Biology, 233, p589-599 "Engineers have more sons, nurses have more daughters: an evolutionary psychological extension of Baron-Cohen's extreme male brain theory of autism" by Satoshi Kanazawa and Griet Vandermassen and available through Elsevier's Science Direct) came out in December 2004 an is available online for those whose institutions subscribe, notes the following correlations:
This is based on survey data from US professions of around 1500 people. Only some of the professions are categorized as "systemizing" and "empathizing" so presumably the sample size is much smaller than that . The sample size isn't listed directly in the article but it appears to be about 20% of the 1500 with at least one parent so categorized profession, for around 300 people or so. Most professions are neutral in the "systematizing/empathizing" continuum, apparently.
Amoung those with "systemizing occupations" had regression coefficients of
From the classification of professions:
Systemizing occupations
Empathizing occupations
Presumably other professions are regarded as neutral in this spectrum.
It's psychosomatic. You need a lobotomy. I'll get a saw.
Have you ever wondered why fat parents have fat children? Or why Chinese parents have Chinese children? It's no coincidence.
I already have a girl, so apparently I need to have 1.4 boys. The whole boy is gonna be fine but what am I gonna do with 40% of a boy? I mean, aside from encouraging him to be a high school social studies teacher.
You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake -- but you could be if you got off your ass.
For the "masculine couple" (please note that the following are not equal in probability!):
BOY, stop
GIRL, BOY, stop
GIRL, GIRL, BOY, stop
etc.
A similar (substituting BOY and GIRL) sequence can be made for the "feminine" couple.
It is easy to see how this would lead to more BOYS or GIRLS in each respective case (on average).
This is one possible explanation of cause.
What happens if *gasp* an Engineer marries a Nurse? So they both want to be on top right? What you get is the barrel-roll position. Occasionaly you end up with the RODEO position as well as the one on bottom tries to buck off the partner currently on top. WWF meets the bedroom sorta.
Blessed are the pessimists, for they have made backups. -- 0 1 My two bits
I love this game.
Repeat after me, "I'm a bit daft, and I like to think others will repeat silly things I say from time to time."
Now, go have a beer.
It is easy to see how this would lead to more BOYS or GIRLS in each respective case (on average).
Not so. Assuming you have a 50-50 chance of it being a boy or a girl, you will end up with 50% boys and 50% girls no matter what contortions you go through to try to influence the outcome.
Look at it another way: pretend these are coin flips rather than childbirths. Your suggestion (that you can alter the odds by when you choose to stop trying) is equivalent to saying that you can bias to heads or tails by deciding when you stop flipping the coin. And, of course, that isn't true -- no matter how many trials you perform or in what order, a fair coin will (on average) deliver 50% heads and 50% tails. One more 50-50 flip won't in any way alter the expected outcome.
It's exactly the same way with childbirth. The first child (we would expect) would be 50% likely to be a boy. The second would be 50% likely to be a boy. The third would be 50% likely to be a boy, and so on ad infinitum. Adding another trial (childbirth) onto the end of the sequence does not change the odds, and on average you would end up with 50% boys and 50% girls.
Of course, this research shows that that naive assumption isn't true, and apparently something is altering the odds. We just don't yet know what.
(And, amusingly enough, I'm to find out my baby's gender in two days. Evidently it's more likely to be a boy...)
ZFS: because love is never having to say fsck