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Frost Family Statistics
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Just for laughs, here are some stats based on the family histories I have so far.
58% of the children are male, while 42% are female.
67% of first born children are male, while 33% of first born children are female.
It should be noted that it is more likely that I have information about the children of a male than of a female. This is not unusual, unfortunately, as genealogists often bias towards following paternal lines, and records (church, government, etc.) were more likely to be kept for males than females.
These numbers, however, are generally reflective of my experience with my aunts, uncles, and cousins that I know of even now.
Finally, although I don't have the references anymore, when I was in graduate school, I found various anthropological and archeological sources that indicated a strong bias amoung Scandinavians to have male children. (OK, I was in engineering school, but Purdue had a great Scandinavian reference section!) This was one of the contributing factors that is believed to have encouraged the so-called Viking invasions - population growing to exceed the arable land, a shortage of women (always a bias toward war - stress/frustration, and a biological need to balance the scales (women are too smart to go to war most of the time!)), the encroachment of Christianity (major religious/social change - stress), and a few other spicy tid bits! At any rate, this bias has existed for as long as reasonable evidence can be traced, and continues to the present. I'm just guessing here, but I'm going to speculate that King Henry VIII of England didn't have much Scandinavian blood!
Last revised December 24, 1998