Mrs Bennet may have lamented having five daughters and no son in Pride and Prejudice, but it appears that Lizzy and her sisters would be unlikely to produce a similar set of children: research suggests having multiple offspring of the same sex does not run in the family. In the largest study of its kind, researchers have found that whether a family is dominated by boys or girls — or has an equal mix — is simply down to chance. The team say the new findings scotch — at least for humans — a long-held theory that the sex-ratio of offspring is not random and that biases are heritable. But, he added, the idea had problems. Writing in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B , an international team of researchers report how they scrutinised records for all people born in Sweden in or later and had at least one child before Overall, the study included more than 6. The team then carried out an analysis to explore whether first cousins tended to be of the same sex. The results reveal that there is no such link — a result that held even when the team looked only at first-born children. However, looking within a nuclear family of parents and children, the team found that families with just two children tended to have a boy and a girl — a split that occurred more often than expected by chance — while families with more children tended to have a skew towards either boys or girls.


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The media is full of confusing messages about sex — it can seem like everyone is doing it all the time. Talking with their parents helps young people to feel safer and less anxious, allowing them to make up their own minds about the choices they take. It also gives them the confidence to talk to future partners about their relationship, sex and contraception.
Contraception and safer sex
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