Month: August 2006

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Psychology Today: A Nation of Wimps

This article on child raising that I read yesterday resonated with a lot of things I have noticed lately, Psychology Today: A Nation of Wimps.  The article says a lot of the things parents do these days are bad for our kids long term.  I’m not sure whether I agree or disagree with that but I had noticed them and marked them as "strange."  Kids sitting in car seats until they are six, wearing helmets to ride their trikes, and not being allowed to run around outside without a parent right behind them.  Parents who pick up anything that falls on the floor and sanitize it before they allow their kids to touch it (my floor, at my house), but it’s ok for their kid to slobber all over my sunglasses which have to be much dirtier than some floors as I don’t think I’ve ever washed the things! 

Anyways, the article has a lot of food for thought from small kids to teenagers and how our current society, rules, cell phones, etc may or may not be affecting how they grow up.  Worth reading.

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Why we are having a boy

I really liked the book Freakonomics, so I follow the authors’ blog, Freakonomics.  I also find genetics fascinating, so this post caught my eye: Why Do Beautiful Women Sometimes Marry Unattractive Men?.  Taking it all with a grain of salt it makes for some fun reading.

Selection pressure means when parents have traits they can pass on that are better for boys than for girls, they are more likely to have boys. Such traits include large size, strength and aggression, which might help a man compete for mates. On the other hand, parents with heritable traits that are more advantageous to girls are more likely to have daughters.

And it goes on to say that beautiful parents are more likely to have girls because being beautiful is a bigger advantage to girls.  And engineers and mathmaticians are more likely to have boys because it’s a bigger advantage to a boy to have those talents.  So, again, taking it with a grain of salt (or perhaps a shaker of salt!), I figure that since Frank and I are both engineering types and Frank is definitely big and strong, we were destined to have a boy!

(So to the answer to the blog’s title, why do beautiful women marry unattractive men?  According to this theory it’s because there are more beautiful women in the world because beautiful people tend to have girls just like strong people tend to have boys.  Don’t forget that grain of salt. 🙂