Either the biology has changed or Tomlinson has made his first attack.

[cornermouse]

Report this morning.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4712203

Fewer Boys Being Born in America

Who generated this report and what scientific facts is it based upon?
According to Knox, either the basic biological facts has somehow changed or this is a case of a White House/Tomlinson production.

According to the report, less boys are being born and its the fault of single mothers. Reasons given were that single women's body somehow realizes that there is no father in the house, boys are larger, and boys require more energy to raise with the implication that the woman's body somehow changes the gender.

I can see several problems with those reasons, not the least being the fact that according to my high school biology class, gender is determined by the sperm not the egg.

[Kraklen]

1. If the world was created 6,000 years ago...

why not?

[SoCalDem]

2. Ahhhhhh, but what if the mother's body is subconsciously

REJECTING boy-embryos, and aborting them spontaneously..

ARREST THOSE WOMEN......:silly:

[one_true_leroy]

3. BINGO!!!

yes, it is the sperm... WOW... i can't believe they are re-writing the laws of genetics

[satya]

4. Well, there you have it--the sperm KNOWS there won't be a man in the house

so it makes a girl.

Obviously, you've forgotten some of your biology lessons.
:sarcasm:

[lapfog_1]

5. If true

It probably has a lot more to do with

1) the age of men who are fathering children

2) Clothing options for men, specifically briefs v. boxers v. other

3) Diet and health habits, possibly including percentage body fat

4) Environmental changes

Determining which, if any, of these factors contributes to the
ratio of boys to girls is a good question. But first we need to
know the stats.

[htuttle]

7. I blame the whole thing on men wearing briefs

Damn you BVD! Damn you!

[sinkingfeeling]

6. Jesus, what is wrong with this country? I'm a single mother and guess

what, I have a son!! When will the Dark Ages II be over?

[cornermouse]

19. I don't know.

I thought the boys are larger and require more energy than girls statement rather bizarre.

[EC]

8. Haven't there always been more females

for the continuation of the species...

[sinkingfeeling]

9. Man this could really prove natural selection as a fact instead of a

theory. Females are superior!!

[sinkingfeeling]

10. Delete - dup due to error message!!

[Bunny]

11. I was once taught that the ratio of newborn boys to newborn girls

is 106:100. There is a higher birth ratio for boys because they have a higher infant mortality rate.

And no, I cannot produce a link for this statement. I remember hearing this many years ago, I don't know from where.

[SoCalDem]

13. I have also heard that following war, MORE boys are born..

:(..gotta replenish the "stock" for the next war, a generation away.

[cornermouse]

16. Well, since I refuse to listen to that audio again...

They gave the ratios.

[cornermouse]

12. Yes, but the gap is growing.

Less boys are being born.

[havocmom]

15. That was my understanding too. More males concieved. More females

make it to year one.

For a species to survive it does not require a one to one ratio of males to females. That premise is cultural. On male can create a lot of offspring with many females, as most state welfare workers will assure you.

[cornermouse]

17. They made that point.

But they also said that less boys are being born now.

[Deja Q]

14. Does he want boys so he can enlist them? Or molest them?

I don't see what the point is to keeping "score" like this.

Maybe it's God's revenge qagainst the neocons?

[cornermouse]

18. I think its a case of future cannon fodder.

[ecstatic]

20. I've been wondering about all those studies too!

That say that the woman's confidence, financial wellbeing and happiness determines the sex of the child. I always thought it was about the sperm too--but the only thing I can come up with is that maybe the masculinization hormones are not released when the mom is under too much stress and the baby, which was supposed to become a boy, just remains a girl.

[More Than A Feeling]

21. This could actually be a good thing!

There was a book called "A surplus of men, a deficit of peace" which hypothesized exactly that equation. The reason is that the extra men have little chance of mating, so they can't play the role that they otherwise would in society. Then they get very violent in order to get the respect that has been denied them. Society usually deals with this by putting them in the army, or in our case, prison.

If we have fewer men anyway, that could mean the beginning of a more peaceful society.

[Niccolo_Macchiavelli]

23. i doubt matriarchy would make the world peacefuller.

the amazons around the black sea weren't really peaceful. they eventually were destroyed by the greeks/macedonians or morphed with the scyths.

But i honestly don't think it would be much better. Shit swims atop no matter the gender.

[Hamlette]

22. more boys are born than girls

and yes, there has been a drop in the percentages.
http://my.webmd.com/content/Article/107/108543.htm
June 15, 2005 -- It may be one of America's longest-running baby trends -- the birth of more boys than girls.

The CDC's latest records are for 2002, when newborn boys outnumbered girls by more than 94,000 infants. The trend dates back to 1940. That's before the attack on Pearl Harbor, when the baby boom generation was just a twinkle in their parents' eyes.

Every year from 1940 through 2002, an average of 91,685 more boys were born in the U.S. than girls. That adds up to a difference of more than 5.7 million boys, says the CDC.

There are plenty of folk tales about what determines a baby's sex. The CDC's report doesn't get into that. But it does list some factors related to the boy-girl ratio, looking at all years combined:

Mother's age: The ratio was lowest for women in their 40s and highest for late-teen moms.
Child's birth order: The more babies a woman has, the more likely she is to have equal numbers of boys and girls, says the CDC.
Mother's racial/ethnic background: Chinese women had the highest ratio of boys to girls, for all years combined. Filipino moms were a close second. The lowest ratios of boys to girls were seen in black mothers and American Indian moms.


Although this report below is 10 years old, it makes more sense to me than "no father in the house".

http://www.sciencenews.org/pages/sn_arc98/4_4_98/fob1.htm

During fetal development, however, "the male sex is clearly the more fragile one," observes Bruce B. Allan, an obstetrician-gynecologist in Calgary, Alberta. While some 125 males are conceived for every 100 females, he notes, only about 106 boys are born for every 100 girls. In other words, he explains, stillbirths and miscarriages disproportionately cull boys.

In the April 1 Journal of the American Medical Association, Devra Lee Davis of the World Resources Institute (WRI) in Washington, D.C., and her colleagues analyze recent surveys by Allan and others who have looked at trends in sex ratios and congenital male reproductive problems in several countries. They find a broad pattern of waning male births and increasing reproductive defects. "There are compelling biological reasons," Davis' team argues, for suspecting that these troubling trends trace to a common problem -- disruption of normal male fetal development by environmental agents (SN: 1/22/94, p. 56).