Attractive Couples Have More Daughters
ByI love reading about any study involving babies, so a recent article in the UK’s Daily Mail caught my eye. Apparently, a team of researchers studied gender and birth patterns and concluded that attractive couples have more daughters than sons. The researchers claim that women need beauty to succeed in life more than men do (men succeed with strength and status). Biologically-speaking, humans naturally pass on their most beneficial traits to their offspring, thus, attractive couples pass on attractiveness. And since women need good looks more than men, attractive parents are more likely to conceive girls. Similarly, couples who are strong and ambitious are more likely to have sons.
This is me with Flavor Flav in 2007. My husband and I happened to run into him while we were on our honeymoon!
It’s very interesting, though I’m not sure I buy it (especially since the article mentions another researcher who analyzed beautiful famous couples and came to the opposite conclusion—that they actually have more sons), but it’s fascinating to think about!
Of course, even if true, the results only comment on society at large—not particular individuals. We can all think of unattractive couples with daughters and gorgeous couples with sons. After all, Gisele Bunchen has a son, and the Beckhams have a trio of boys, yet the less attractive Steven Tyler has two daughters and the homely Flavor Flav has more daughters than sons.
So, while the conclusions of this study may or may not be true, it’s interesting to ponder the implications of the next generation filled with beautiful girls and ambitious boys!
I’m not so sure about this. The author suggests that attractive women are more likely to have daughters than sons, but by what mechanism would this happen? Isn’t the gender of babies determined by the father’s genetic contribution? Maybe the Daily Mail article is just written in a misleading way, but seems like this kind of conclusion might be due to a flaw in the study or something.
But it’s interesting to think about — thanks for sharing!
I read this article and was a bit skeptical myself, but interesting none the less. They point to the results that slightly more people that identify themselves as “attractive” have daughters. I would be really interested to see what value they identified as that which made the results “statistically significant”.
There was a similar type study a few years ago that stated women who ate cereal and had a higher caloric intake around the time of conception were more likely to give birth to boys. The study caused a lot of heads to turn and most U.S. researchers and fertility specialists did not support the theory. The hypothesis had something to do with higher glucose levels in mothers favoring the survival of male embryos. Those UK researchers….