*winces*

[conuly]

Bad, bad, *bad* writing here.

Somebody asked about the odds of having a third boy (instead of a girl for a change) and I responded that they're the same as they ever were. But just in case, I googled - I mean, I don't know, I suppose it's likely that some men are prone to make more X sperm or more Y sperm, but even then the odds are the same, they've just always been skewed, right?

So I read this site that claims:

One sample, containing only the “small, round-headed sperm” presumed to be X sperm, belonged to a man whose family had produced only daughters for over 250 years.

The site goes on to explain how this idea was mistake, etc. etc. etc., but I'm still hung up on the fact that apparently this man's family had produced only girls. He must simply not exist! Nor his father, nor his father's father....

Sheesh.

Comments

[leora.livejournal.com]

Any abnormality that caused women to only produce girls isn't likely to involve an abnormality in the sperm, since that wouldn't affect any of those women who had been producing daughters. Women always produce sex cells with no Y chromosomes (and by always I mean any exceptions are too exceptional to bother with in this sentence), so no change in the ratio of sex cells in the gametes would help a female line to keep having daughters no matter which males they mated with.