Bearing Sons Positively Affects the Mental Abilities of the Mother.

Bearing Sons Positively Affects Mother's Mental Abilities

Canadian scientists believe that women pregnant with boys are less forgetful and absent-minded than those who are pregnant with girls, reports Reuters. After studying 39 women from Vancouver for a year and a half, specialists from Simon Fraser University found that psychological tests for auditory, visual memory and mental arithmetic ability were performed much better by women who carried boys.

The study group included both women in early pregnancy and those who had already given birth several months ago. They were asked to perform the same set of eight tests throughout pregnancy and also in the postpartum period. In three of these tests, women who carried and gave birth to sons showed significantly better results.

Professor Neil Watson, who led the research, said he was somewhat shocked by the results. Whenever we talk about the impact of pregnancy on mental abilities, we usually do not attach importance to the sex of the fetus, he noted. In this case, an unknown factor intervenes, specifically related to the child’s gender, but too few experiments have been conducted on this problem to draw any global conclusions, scientists say.

The study results are published in the May issue of the journal NeuroReport.