Fertilization, say biologists, is a maniacal, winner-takes-all race
between millions of sperm. If the first to arrive bears an X chromosome,
the result is a girl. If a Y-sperm shows up first, it's a boy.
But a New Zealand psychiatrist believes it's more complicated than
that. Valerie Grant, M.D., contends that mothers, not dads, determine the
sex of a baby -- and that a woman's personality may be a window to her
son- or daughter-bearing potential.
Grant assessed the personalities of young women likely to conceive
soon, then checked back nine months later. Those who bore sons, she
found, were more assertive, competitive, and self-reliant than those who
had daughters, she reports in the British Journal of Medical Psychiatry.
Her theory: Testosterone levels influence both a woman's behavior
and the sex of her kids. (Yes, women have testosterone too, though far
less than men.) Grant believes the hormone turns an egg into an active
player in the fertilization sweepstakes, causing it to play favorites as
sperm try to fertilize it. When testosterone is high, for example, an egg
might turn an X-sperm away, letting a nearby Y-sperm sneak in.
As Grant sees it, there's a key testosterone level above which a
woman's offspring wind up a particular sex. But our testosterone levels
aren't stable: Stress and other factors influence its production. So
women with average testosterone might vary on either side of that point
over time, giving birth to daughters or sons as conditions change. But
women with extreme levels may remain on one side of the threshold most of
the time, dooming them to children of a single sex.
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