Originally Posted by
glowbug
This drives me insane too. All of the research on the topic has disproven Shettles. Every single study. Either they find no difference or they find the opposite of Shettles is true. Sex on ovulation day leads to more girls while sex farther from ovulation favors boys. When I was trying to conceive my first I read this book called The Impatient Women's Guide to Getting Pregnant (great book, by the way, for getting pregnant and has a great chapter on gender selection), which is written by a psychology professor, who basically does statistics for a living. She did a meta analysis of all the studies and did find a statistically significant difference favoring the opposite of Shettles. The theory posited in the book is that most embryos conceived on ovulation day were miscarried so it makes sense that the girl embryos, which are heartier, would be more likely to survive under circumstances when miscarriage is likely.
I also agree that most people don't know when the ovulated so they just assume their baby was conceived in line with Shettles' theories. Even with temping and ovulation prediction kits there is room for error. This is also why so many people believe moon sign theory works, another thing that drives me crazy. As difficult as it is to pinpoint ovulation, it's even more difficult to pinpoint conception because conception happens within 24 hours of ovulation. So people have a 48 hour window for ovulation (if using OPKs) and then a 24 window for conception, which means there's a 3 day window and with moon signs a difference of hours, let alone days, can change what you're supposed to be having. But people swear up and down that they're sure they conceived under the correct sign for the gender of their child.