Monday, August 03, 2009

Battle of the Sexes - iii

I'm doing a groundbreaking research on South Indian children birth weights for the last six months or so as every person contemporary to me is becoming a parent. Whatever I have read over the net indicates that on an average boys' birth weights are higher than that of girls'. Not so in the case of South Indians if my data has to be believed.

Girls:
4.1Kg
3.7Kg
>4Kg

Boys:
2.5Kg
2.75Kg
<3Kg All of them belong to middle class. All mothers are working women. Then I come across this study:

Previous research has offered evidence of a genetic struggle for supremacy only during fetal development: In the womb, some genes of paternal origin have been shown to promote increased demands on mothers, leading to fetal overgrowth, while genes of maternal origin tend to have the opposite effect. This new work suggests maternal and paternal genes continue to engage in internal genetic conflict past childbirth.


I couldn't anyway apply this study to my observations. But I felt a connection.

Via Science Daily

No comments: