Job type determines sex of babies

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, a report says.

Equally, those keen for daughters are more likely to have success if they have 'caring' jobs such as teaching or nursing.

The conclusion comes from a survey of 3000 people from various professions by the London School of Economics and reported in the Journal of Theoretical Biology.

The problem of how to ensure a baby is the desired gender is something Donna Groth, of Rose Park, knows all too well.

After three sons, Ms Groth was so keen to have a girl she made her husband, David Godfrey, wear two pairs of underwear, in the hope the heat would kill off the Y chromosomes. She also worked out a calendar of dates Mr Godfery, 44, could and absolutely could not have sex.

After 12 months of 'mucking around', as she calls it, they abandoned the regimen. Two months later, the couple's fourth child was conceived.

Baby Wyl - another boy - was born on Wednesday, at Burnside Hospital, confirming the couple's suspicions from the 18-week ultrasound.

According to the British theory, Mr Godfrey's occupation of mechanical engineer increased the likelihood of having sons.
Calculations by chief researcher Satoshi Kanazawa show that for engineers and other 'systemisers' there are roughly 140 boys born for every 100 girls.

Nurses and the like produce about 135 girls for every 100 boys, the study found.

Ms Groth, 36, was not working at the time of conception but her qualification is in the so-called 'feminine' field of high school language teaching.

'I would have liked a girl but I'm happy to have a very healthy baby,' she said. 'My mum's a bit of a fatalist and she says you get what you get.

'We used to joke that we'd have to change partners.'

Ms Groth said Cowan, 9, Callan, 6, and Rhys, 2, had assumed the new baby would be a boy: 'What other kind of baby is there?'

Mr Kanazawa, meanwhile, predicted a physicist and a mathematician would be the most likely pairing to produce a boy, while a therapist and a chat show host would be odds-on favourites for a daughter.

The study did not say why this phenomenon occurred, but Britain's Sunday Times quoted a specialist in evolutionary psychology as saying it could be because the children of 'systemiser' parents appeared to encounter more testosterone in the womb, making their gender more likely to be male.

[ I just think its funny that they classify accounting as masculine ]