Boys, Girls & Hormones

If father is bald, the baby is most likely to be a boy. But if father has gout, the chances are it will be a girl. These are the conclusions of Marianne E. Bernstein, a former Fulbright fellow who specializes in reducing the facts of life to cold figures.

Biometrist Bernstein does not believe that baldness or gout have a direct effect on the sex of children. Her theory is that the sex ratio is tied up with the parents' hormone balance: she regards baldness as a sign that the father's male hormones are especially dominant, while gout suggests a shortage of male hormones.

Similarly, she believes that the "degree of maleness" which decides a man's choice of career will influence the sex of his children. Among 5,400 children whose fathers were members of the armed forces, business executives, politicians, lawyers, farmers, or abstract scientists, she found that boys outnumbered girls six to five. But, she reports in Science, the ratio was exactly reversed in those families where the fathers had taken up professions in which women often excel men--as actors, social workers, teachers, fiction writers and artists.

By this theory, gout should be commoner among teachers than tycoons. Marianne Bernstein neglects to say which side will win if a child is fathered by a bald-headed man with gout.

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