Can Sex Position Affect Your Baby’s Gender?

Can sex position affect your baby’s gender? Can the way you have sex affect how your child develops sexually? Discover what science has to say about various at-home sex selection methods.

Dr. Jeffrey Steinberg, director of the gender selection program at the Fertility Centers of Los Angeles, believes there are no lovemaking positions that can impact the gender of a kid. Humans have been attempting to figure out how to influence the sex of babies for generations. Hence, the position in which you engage in sexual activity has no bearing on whether you will conceive a boy or a girl.

Even though sex selection has a long and interesting history, most of us still let Mother Nature decide the sex of our children, for better or for worse. Consider eating meat and salty cuisine to attract a boy; indulge in sweets to attract a girl. In the same way, if you want a boy, make love while standing up or during a quarter moon. If you want a girl, keep the missionary position and have intercourse during a full moon.

You can also consult a 700-year-old Chinese conception chart that predicts the gender of conceptions based on the age of the gestational parent and the month of conception. Yet, there is no scientific evidence that any of this is effective.

In a study published in the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology, researchers from Massachusetts looked at the birth records of babies born between 1995 and 2008 to see if the claim that these charts were accurate between 93% and 99% was true. But, they discovered that the odds of correctly identifying the sex of your baby were identical to those of a coin flip.

Yet, sex selection is a lucrative industry. You may have seen online advertisements for sex selection kits that promise results with douches, vitamins, or do-it-yourself artificial insemination kits. None of these has been supported by scientific evidence.

In the 1960s, Landrum Shettles, M.D., a pioneer in vitro fertilization, wrote a paper about the differences between X-bearing (female-producing) and Y-bearing (male-producing) sperm. He also put together a list of noninvasive, low-tech ways to prevent pregnancy.

For example, the late Dr. Shettles told couples who wanted a boy to try to have sex as close to ovulation as possible. This is because vaginal and cervical fluids tend to be alkaline around ovulation, which makes it easier for the weaker Y sperm to get pregnant. Yet, additional research has demonstrated that Dr. Shettles’ approach is likely just as effective as the coin toss.

In 2016, researchers found no correlation between the manner and time of sexual activity and the sex of the fetus conceived. And in 2020, scientists disproved the notion that Y-carrying sperm are more frail. They concluded that X- and Y-carrying sperms were identical, except for their DNA content.

Dr. Steinberg summarizes, “You don’t have much control over your baby’s gender at home.” There are more promising medical techniques involving sperm or embryo sorting if you’re determined to produce a female, but their ethics are being contested on all fronts.

Some refer to this practice as “embryo shopping” and assert that manipulating genes to choose features such as sex or eye color is unethical. Some, however, argue that if the research is also utilized to eradicate sickness, then it may be worthwhile.

In addition, while the question of a baby’s sex is typically limited to male (XY) or female (XX), there are additional chromosomal possibilities in nature. In around 1 in 1500 to 1 in 2000 births, the Intersex Society of North America reports, “a kid is born with genitalia so unusual that a specialist in sex distinction is required.” Yet, according to the group, “many more persons are born with subtler forms of sex anatomical abnormalities.”

Intersex is a generic term used by the Intersex Society of North America to represent a spectrum of circumstances in which an individual was born with reproductive or sexual structure that does not match the traditional genders. Identifying who is and is not intersex can be quite difficult because folklore cannot predict it any more than it can predict whether a person is female or male.

Despite the fact that science does not support the beliefs surrounding sex selection and prediction, there is no harm in having a little bit of fun by trying.

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