I wonder if there were more girls conceived during the Great Depression

[annabel♥lee]

I tried to Google it, but didn't come up with anything.

If there's any truth to the "low nutrient, less food, weight loss, etc" theory, then wouldn't there have been more girls conceived during that time?

Anyone know?

[CapricornAquarius]

Dont know about that one, but I do know in WWI or WWII alot of boys were born, maybe somwthingto do with stress??

[zanacal]

I don't know about the Great Depression specifically but at times when food is limited I imagine there's also the possibility of increased testosterone levels as women (and men) are forced to fight for survival!

[atomic sagebrush]

I don't know about the Great Depression specifically but at times when food is limited I imagine there's also the possibility of increased testosterone levels as women (and men) are forced to fight for survival!

THIS. There is one study on this, where researchers studied the births during this famine in the Netherlands during WW2 and they found if anything, more BOYS conceived. You can read this study here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...f/15252965.pdf

This would seem to not support the Trivers Willard hypothesis BUT I personally think it still does, and it also supports my "Fertility Theory" and the Maternal Dominance hypothesis. They had no way of measuring what these individual women were eating, they were assuming that ALL women were eating very low calorie but I suspect that wasn't the case. Some families would have had more, some families less, that's the way of the world. I suspect that only women who were eating a fairly high amount of calories were even able to conceive to begin with (let alone be eating enough to have any interest in having sex/conceiving a baby during a freaking famine ANYWAY because even back then people had their ways of not conceiving), so right away the cohort of women who became pg during that time frame is selected for women who were prob getting more calories and had a higher standard of living than the average person.

Basically, the women who conceived then (as demonstrated by virtue of their being ABLE to conceive at all, which as the experiences of some people on this website has shown, even relatively slight changes in diet can cause people to stop ovulating within the span of a month) had to be eating ENOUGH cals to ovulate and conceive and carry a baby to full term, almost certainly had a higher social status and access to resources that others did not, and may have even had a higher BMI/more muscle mass to begin with, so that they happened to conceive more boys is really NOT that surprising. PLUS, wartime has been shown to trigger a rise in testosterone and more boys born so that is a confounding factor.

Secondly, nature "wants" us to keep on conceiving both boys and girls even when times are kinda hard and she has her ways of making that happen. If your body "thinks" you need testosterone to survive (because you have a lot of conflict, challenge, struggle - such as not being entirely sure where your next meal is coming from and Nazis are occupying your entire nation), it WILL make testosterone out of anything it can. As I've said before, even if you cut back on diet, if your lifestyle is still "telling" your body that you need testosterone just to survive, let alone conceive, it will keep on churning out that testosterone, and if your diet is plentiful enough so that you can conceive, your body may "decide" that a boy is "needed" and conceive one.

The Oxford Study, which WAS measuring the individual diet and caloric intake of the women who went onto conceive boys and girls, DID find that moms who conceived girls ate hundreds of fewer calories and less nutrients across the boards, than moms who conceived boys did.

So, I suspect that during the Great Depression, both boys and girls were still conceived in roughly equal numbers overall, BUT some women who may have been having boys before might have begun to have girls, while others who were having girls might have then been unable/unwilling to conceive at all. So the birth rate might have fallen but still stayed at 50-50. The most well-off women had boys (maybe even MORE boys due to rise in testosterone) some middle-class women might have had more girls than they would have otherwise had, some poorer women who had been having more girls, might have stopped having kids all together either by design or by diet, but the gender ratio of the population as a whole still stayed at 50-50. (hope that makes sense.)

[TTC5]

I know I conceived after losing weight. 2 of my girls specifically were conceived while I was on weight loss shakes and I was not even big to begin with LOL!!