Our parents and grandparents are usually full of advice when it comes to conceiving one gender or the other. The trouble is, not all of this advice is really terribly useful. Desperate wives and husbands concocted a lot of folk remedies that were supposedly “sure fire” ways to ensure the conception of boys over girls, or vice versa.
One way that women were told to ensure the conception of boys is to eat plenty of meat, salt, and fatty food during pregnancy. This doesn’t work, if only for one simple reason- the sex of a baby is determined at conception, so anything a mother does during her pregnancy isn’t going to change her baby’s sex to anything other than what it is. Sperm carry either X- or Y-chromosomes. Once a sperm reaches the egg and imparts the chromosome that it’s carrying, the zygote’s sex is set.
Another way was for the husband to initiate sex for a boy, and the wife to initiate sex for a girl. A variant on this says that the man should climax first for a boy, and the woman should climax first for a girl. What’s interesting about this myth is that it may actually be the other way around. A woman’s orgasm causes subtle changes to the pH of her vaginal mucus that actually favor the conception of boys.
Another way claims that having intercourse during the night will produce boy babies, while having it during the day will produce girl babies. Both X- and Y-chromosome carrying sperm are expelled with each ejaculation, the time of day when ejaculation occurs doesn’t really matter.
Some people swear that more boys are conceived on odd-numbered days of the month than girls. This is silly, because it’s often impossible to tell exactly which day a baby was conceived on. The days of the month are also a man-made invention, so there’s no reason to think that they could influence a biological function like conception. Instead of worrying about the number of the day of the month, couples should focus on the point during a woman’s cycle during which they have intercourse. Some specific parts of her ovulation window favor sperm with Y-chromosomes, while others favor sperm with X-chromosomes. By picking and choosing which part of ovulation she has intercourse during, she can subtly influence the sex of her future child.
Some old beliefs actually believe that a baby’s sex was determined by things that had nothing to do with intercourse or pregnancy at all. Certain civilizations believed that a woman could become impregnated by sitting under a tree, being exposed to the rays of the full moon, or eating a magical salmon. These were also thought to influence the sex of her child. Now that we know about gametes and chromosomes, it’s easy to see why this practice isn’t effective for choosing the sex of a baby.
Though a lot of old folk remedies seem silly to us now, some of them contain an occasional nugget of truth. It’s important for any couple researching folk remedies for conceiving boys or girls to compare their findings to evidence-based science, to help separate those remedies that may actually be helpful from those that simply won’t work.
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