Baby Gender Predictor

The Chinese pregnancy calendar is one baby gender predictor that has become a popular and widely-used tool by pregnant mothers and also by families planning pregnancy. Some women trying to conceive a boy (TCB) or trying to conceive a girl (TCG), place a central emphasis on the planned lunar month of conception correlating to the mother’s age according to the Chinese pregnancy calendar. Similarly, newly-pregnant mothers quickly turn to this baby gender predictor calendar to see whether the little impending bundle of joy is destined to be dressed in pretty pink or baby blue.

So does this baby gender predictor merit such attention? Or should this tool be placed firmly on the shelf of other old-wives-tales to be plucked down only for amusement purposes only? Let’s go back and dig a little deeper into that ancient Chinese tomb to find out.

A notable 52% of Chinese pregnancy calendar predictions produce the result of boy, whereas the outcome of only 48% of tests result in a girl. But before we criticize the Chinese pregnancy calendar for straying from the expected 50:50 ratio of boy to girl, let us first compare this to gender of actual births recorded. Taking the US as an example, there are 1.05 boys born to every girl, which is equivalent to a percentage of 51.2% male births to 48.8% females. Also the calendar ratio is the summation of number of lunar months by gender, not the actual occurrences of births. This means that even though fewer months produce girls, these months may contain more births and therefore give a different percentage.

Next we can take a look at which months are more likely to result in conceptions of a boy or girl:

What is striking with this are the number months that are considerably more likely to produce conception of boys. January, February and particularly July have a strong tendency to conceive boys. In contrast, those months favouring female births do so only to a smaller degree and still involve significant probability of the conception being a boy. The exception is the month of April which the Chinese pregnancy calendar says has a strong tendency to conceive a girl.

Now let us consider how the age of the mother determines the gender:

The horizontal axis shows the mother’s age against the vertical axis which shows the number of months that will produce a boy. The graph shows that a young mother of 18 or 20 years of age is more likely to conceive a boy for 10 out 12 months of the year, and a similar trend reoccurs at the age of thirty.

The corresponding graph for the likelihood of conceiving a girl shows the best age to conceive is at age 21 and 22. If this period of fertility is missed then the age of 29 also has eight months of high probability of conceiving a female child.

If the Chinese pregnancy calendar is true…

So what can we determine from the Chinese calendar baby gender predictor? If it is true then there are clearly defined strategies for women who want to conceive a boy or girl. For a boy, a mother’s age of 18 or 20 and attempts to conceive during the months from April onwards are optimum conditions suggesting a 94% probability of conceiving a boy. Similarly, anyone wishing for a girl should concentrate their efforts during the ages 21 and 22. Attempts from March onwards at this age should result in an 85% probability of conceiving a girl. Not fair for those of us who are a bit longer in the tooth? There are still excellent opportunities to conceive a boy at ages 30 and 31, or a girl at 36 and 37.

Problems with the Chinese pregnancy calendar

The Chinese pregnancy calendar puts baby gender prediction a little too much into the black or white (or at least pink and blue). If it was true,  then there would be substantial supporting records of periods of the year that women of a particular age conceive nothing but girls, or nothing but boys. The sensible among us know that this does not happen.  Hospitals in the West (or anywhere else for that matter) do not annually report anomalies of flocks of nineteen-year-old women giving birth to nothing but boys.
 
Defendants of the Chinese pregnancy calendar could argue that the blocks of consecutive months that produce either a boy or girl actually have a low output in terms of numbers and are balanced by the remaining months of the year that have a high output of the other gender. Again, however, this is a peculiar trend and an anomaly that is not empirically reported by hospitals or any other institutions. There are no reputable gender studies that isolate a statistical significance to the number of conceptions of a particular gender in correlation to the lunar month of conception.

The calendar also struggles to satisfactorily explain other situations such as the occurrence of mixed gender twins and other multiple conceptions. Although the statistics vary by ethnicity and location, around 1% percent of births are multiple births. The Chinese pregnancy calendar does not provide a method to predict mixed gender in these cases.

Chinese pregnancy calendar conclusions

Mothers with their scientific hats on would probably just consider the calendar as just a bit of fun and not attach more than an entertainment value on any of the results. However if you are more in tune with you spiritual feelings and instincts, you may be able to gain a deeper insight into the accuracy of the Chinese pregnancy calendar. Either way, there is no harm in factoring-in the lunar month and your age from conception in any conception family planning.

Whatever your own conclusions on the calendar, if you are already pregnant and wish to know your baby’s  gender, our recommendation at baby-gender-predictor.net is for you to seek advice from your general practitioner regarding other identification methods that you can also read about elsewhere on this site.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, June 27th, 2009 at 1:36 am and is filed under Baby Gender Predictor. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.