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Can a mother decide whether a baby will be born male or female through careful control of her diet?

Nick Stauner
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blueberryfields
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    Decide is an unfortunate choice of wording. We rarely deal with such certainties. In science, it is always all about significant statistical influences on outcome. Just as when you put on your seat belt, you don't decide that you shan't die from a car crash, you just influence the probability that you will. Change is an even worse choice of wording. Clearly, the sex isn't going to change after conception - I don't even think that's what you had in mind to ask...? Would you consider altering the question to accommodate this? – David Hedlund Mar 01 '11 at 10:54
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    Perhaps a more interesting question (than the current, which can only be answered "no") would be something more along the lines of "Can a mother's pre-conception diet influence the sex of the child?" Or rather, since you've referenced the study making just that assertion, a better question might more down the lines of "How reliable or valid is this study, really?" or "Here's an interesting study: what could be the mechanisms driving this outcome?" (in less generic terms) – David Hedlund Mar 01 '11 at 10:56
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    Steve Irwin thought that changing the temperature of his testicles would affect the gender of his children. I love him, but I wondered if he's more familiar with crocodile biology than human... – Golden Cuy Mar 01 '11 at 12:52
  • I modified the title of the question to avoid @David's concern. – Oddthinking May 25 '11 at 05:41
  • To talk about a decision of the mother, whether a baby will be born male or female she would need nearly certainty. If I understand the study correctly she may influence the odds a little. – user unknown Mar 01 '11 at 09:09
  • Your headline even asks to change the gender (the gender? the sex!) of the baby, which would mean it starts as a girl, and ends male (or the opposite way). That's not a question of the study which focusses on the days before/day of conception. – user unknown Mar 01 '11 at 09:26
  • The original author didn't correct it for 2 months, while he knew my doubts. Now you're changing the meaning of the question to fit better for a given answer, while the edit rules say clarify meaning without changing it and always respect the author. – user unknown May 25 '11 at 08:29
  • Sorry, I didn't notice this objection until now. I think the meaning was perfectly clear; the author just didn't know the subtle distinctions between gender and sex. You pointed out the mistake. I fixed it. I don't think I either changed the original meaning nor disrespected the author. – Oddthinking Feb 10 '12 at 16:20
  • @Oddthinking: My fault, I missed to put your name into my comment. While it is true that I pointed out the error between sex and gender, my complain is, that the question was: Is it possible to cause a baby's gender to change by controlling the mothers' diet? and should be Is it possible to cause a baby's sex to change by controlling the mothers' diet?. Changing the sex means: It is a girl, and you change it to boy - or vice versa. Influence could mean that before there is any child, you change the chances for one sex or the other. – user unknown Feb 10 '12 at 16:46
  • @Oddthinking: Please note too: The most upvoted answer uses the word 'influence' (May 1/11) before your edit (May 25/11), but the former headline speaks about change and the body about decide - both being very strong claims. But the modified one speaks about a weak claim, fitting to the answer, which talks about the same claim. – user unknown Feb 10 '12 at 16:51
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    @userunknown: A classic case where a citation for notability would have helped - we could have gone to the source of the claim to see what was meant. I can see your point that I have changed the strict definition of the question. I hope you will agree that the idea of CHANGING the sex (or even gender!) of a foetus is absurd. If that was really the question, we should close it until there was evidence that anyone believed it. However, I have occasionally heard people talking about diet selecting/influencing the sex of a future child, so I'm confident that is what the author really meant. – Oddthinking Feb 11 '12 at 02:36
  • @Oddthinking: I'm not confident, if you talk about affecting the chances - maybe from 51%:49% to 40%:60%. ...decide ... will be born ... sounds deterministic. Since there are animals, which change their sex during live, the idea a foetus could do this doesn't look too silly, to find some believers. If you ask me what I think is absurd - most of the questions here are absurd. Changing the sex would just be another one. – user unknown Feb 16 '12 at 14:42

1 Answers1

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In short: no.

There is, as you point out yourself, some research shows that (pre-conception) diet can be an influence, but nothing more than that. The mother definitely can not decide the gender.

I had a hard time finding research that replicated this result, only links of more news-like sites that refer to the paper you already linked.

From a BBC news article (emphasis mine):

Dr Allan Pacey, an expert in fertility at the University of Sheffield, said there was good evidence that nature had subtle ways of changing the sex ratio of a population in response to a variety of circumstances. However, he said: "I would urge women to not to start starving themselves in order to try influence the sex of their baby. "It has been observed in some animal studies that even small changes in female diet can affect the life long health of the offspring, so it is important that the mother has appropriate nutrition at the time of conception and throughout her pregnancy."

So from this single article alone I would conclude that although there is an influence of certain factors on the sex of the child (food being one of them), there is no way (and certainly no safe way) to decide the sex of your child.

Borror0
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Nanne
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  • The claim that "there is no way (and certainly no safe way) to decide the sex of your child" appears to be false, since you can filter sperm by weight (XX is heavier than XY), and then perform artificial insemination with only the preferred type. – Jayson Virissimo Aug 11 '16 at 19:35
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    The context here is still diet, so that sentence is meant as "no way trough diet". Filtering sperm is obviously not a diet. – Nanne Aug 13 '16 at 06:36