People urgently need to catch up on their grade school science education* to avoid coming up with weird statements like these:
It is a curious scientific fact (explained in evolutionary biology by the Trivers-Willard hypothesis — Willard, notice) that high-status animals tend to have more male offspring than female offspring, which holds true across many species, from red deer to mink to Homo sap. The offspring of rich families are statistically biased in favor of sons — the children of the general population are 51 percent male and 49 percent female, but the children of the Forbes billionaire list are 60 percent male. Have a gander at that Romney family picture: five sons, zero daughters. Romney has 18 grandchildren, and they exceed a 2:1 ratio of grandsons to granddaughters (13:5). When they go to church at their summer-vacation home, the Romney clan makes up a third of the congregation. He is basically a tribal chieftain.
Professor Obama? Two daughters. May as well give the guy a cardigan. And fallopian tubes.
The suggestion that a high social standing or a huge amount of money somehow make a man’s sperm more likely to produce a male baby is so bizarre that it makes me wonder whether the author has been skipping his anti-psychotic medication. Coupled with the comments about women’s bodies being incapable of conception during rape, I’m starting to get worried about the future of this nation.
Of all the reasons to vote or not vote for a candidate, the gender of their children is among the most idiotic ones. I understand that many people are too dumb to develop opinions on politics and economy. This makes them look for more understandable ways of managing the complexities of our shared social reality. My question is: why do we, people who actually possess working brains, have to be exposed to the arrant idiocy of these losers? If they aren’t even smart enough to pick up a book on human reproduction for 3-year-olds (of the kind that say things like, “When Mommy and Daddy really like each other and want to make a baby. . .”), then they should just shut the fuck up and listen to people who are not complete idiots.
For shame, people. This is the XXI century. We can all read, there is an unprecedented access to all kinds of information. We should not be reading and discussing this kind of egregious ignorance in this day and age. Our Medieval ancestors are laughing at us from their graves. This election cycle is bringing out really weird things. And this is still August. I’m afraid to imagine what we will see and hear come October.
On the positive side, I once again want to remind you of my prediction that we are witnessing the agony of the ultra-conservative fanatically religious movement in this country. It is flailing and thrashing because its days are numbered and it is well aware of that. After it dies out, we fill finally see an intelligent, reasonable, logic-loving and educated Conservative movement. We will disagree with it but we will be able to respect it and listen to its views with interest. I know I said this before but I feel that this kind of reassurance is needed.
* Yes, I know there is no grade school science education. And that is precisely the problem.
Clarissa's Blog 
Actually I have heard a theory that seemed to have scientific backing that the higher the stress you had in your job, the more likely you were to have a girl. I did a quick search and that theory is still prevalent on the Internet.
QUOTE:Stress at work
Men who have jobs with high levels of stress reduces testosterone levels, and increase opportunities to produce a baby girl, according to researchers
at Ninewells Hospital in Dundee. Research shows a normal ratio of 100 baby girls born for every 105 male babies, 135 babies have been turned into a woman out of every 100 male babies, for fathers who have a stressful job.
http://www.parentsexpert.com/how-do-i-get-a-baby-girl
So, macho men would be more likely to produce a girl.
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I had heard that the more often you have sex, the more likely you are to produce a girl. I do not understand how that would work and I forget why it was supposed to be true. However, I see now that famine is also supposed to produce more girls.
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2012/03/30/natural-gender-selection-starving-women-seem-to-give-birth-to-more-daughters/
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“* Yes, I know there is no grade school science education. And that is precisely the problem.”
Hey, I had some, though we didn’t get into genetics until High School.
I have to wonder how being president of the United States doesn’t qualify Obama as a “high-status animal” in this person’s view.
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The quote scares me. Status cannot be encoded in genes.
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You are right, it is scary that we are discussing this outside of a comedy club.
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Moreover, even if we were to accept this hypothesis, why would anyone assume that the traits which would make an individual an ideal leader of a troop of gorillas would be the same traits that would make him an ideal leader of a modern nation state?
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So high-status men have more sons than daughters, except when they don’t, in which case they shouldn’t be where they are. Just as apples are green, unless they aren’t, in which case they should be reshaped into bananas. Makes sense.
And does the author really see it as emasculating for Obama that his 13 and 11 year old daughters don’t have children of their own yet?
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He seems to be basing this on an actual scientific paper: http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0004195
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To follow up on my own post, I would like to point out the following quote from that article: “While studies on mammals in general provide support for the hypothesis, studies on humans provide particularly inconsistent results”.
In short, it has not been established that the Trivers-Willard effect is true for humans, but at least it is not as stupid as you might intuitively believe.
The article he built on this, however was rather strange. I guess he was trying to be funny (?)
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Also, even if we grant that voters endowed with uteri (and presumably who are also pre-menopausal) choose candidates based on who would be more likely to impregnate them with a healthy, viable fetus — which is itself a bizarre proposition, and not one I think anyone would ever entertain if the sexes were reversed* — wouldn’t we prefer the younger candidate if that were so? Mitt Romney is in his sixties, while Barack Obama is 50 or 51. Men’s reproductive capability declines with age, too, ya know.
*Imagine women announcers on CNN or Fox News sagely debating whether those fickle men voters would opt for, say, Hillary Clinton or Sarah Palin based on each woman’s reproductive potential!
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“Mitt Romney is in his sixties, while Barack Obama is 50 or 51. Men’s reproductive capability declines with age, too, ya know.”
– Good point. 🙂
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“Imagine women announcers on CNN or Fox News sagely debating whether those fickle men voters would opt for, say, Hillary Clinton or Sarah Palin based on each woman’s reproductive potential!”
– Unfortunately, I can easily imagine that. 😦 There is nothing new in women only being valued while they are capable of serving as baby-incubators.
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Yeah, that occurred to me after I typed my hypothetical. What would be new about it would be the assumption that women voters are making rational decisions about whose policies they think would be better, while men voters would choose based on less rational, more superficial criteria (the stereotype currently held of women voters, particularly single ones). But you’re right, ignoring everything about a woman except how many children she is likely to give you is just business as usual in a patriarchy. So my reversal isn’t all that funny, I guess.
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