12 sons expecting number 13

[dragon]

That's alot of boys woner if the number 13 will be a boy as well.

Kateri and Jay Schwandt, the Michigan couple who have 12 sons, are expecting another child. Will baby number 13 mark the end of their all-boy streak?

The couple says they’re not holding their breath.

“I just don’t think it’s in the cards,” Jay told WXMI recently of their daughter-bearing odds.

Last year, the Schwandts made headlines when their 12th child -- Tucker -- was born. The couple said at the time that though they'd been hoping for a girl, they were thrilled when their “perfect baby” was born.

“If we were to have a girl, I think we would go into shock,” Kateri, 39, told Grand Rapids Press after announcing her most recent pregnancy. “It would probably be disbelief.”

Although the odds seem stacked against them, Jay says he would love to have a daughter if he had a choice in the matter.

“I’ve experienced all the boy stuff,” he told the Grand Rapids Press. “As long as we are having all these children, it would be really neat to experience the other side.”

Kateri, however, seems slightly more hesitant.

“Why change things up?” she said to WXMI. “At this point, at this stage in the game, a little girl, we’d have to re-learn everything.”

The Schwandts’ 12 sons range in age from 15 months to 22 years. Kateri, who “loves being pregnant,” has said that juggling such a huge family can be challenging at times, but the family makes it work by sharing the load.

Baby number 13 is expected on May 9, WXMI reports. The couple says they plan to follow their tradition of not finding out the baby’s gender until he or she is born.

According to CNN, the odds of a couple having 13 sons in a row is about 1 in 8,000. That, says the news outlet, is about the same odds as having natural triplets.

link

[The Vortex Empire]

Because we totally don't have enough people on Earth yet.

[Channel72]

Michigan isn't really overpopulated in any sense - it has pretty average population density compared to other US states, let alone other highly-populated nations.

Most of the US is low-population farmland anyway.

[Havok]

You do understand what "Earth" means right?

[Channel72]

No, I've never heard of that term. Please elaborate further.

[AniThyng]

Down that road lies please give the rest of earth your ridiculous wealth, America.

[Simon_Jester]

If there are four thousand families in the world with twelve kids, you'd expect about one of them to have twelve sons. And while twelve kids is a huge statistical outlier, it's hardly unheard of.

[Raw Shark]

"Our superpower is to unleash unlimited testosterone upon the Earth! Mwahaha!" It's like a deformed-but-poorly-defined Captain Planet Villain.

[Guardsman Bass]

Now all they need is for their seventh son to have seven sons.

[Purple]

Now all they need is for their seventh son to have seven sons.

What is up with that anyway? I know that there is some sort of legend or belief about it but I can't find any references as to just what the hell that is.

[fordlltwm]

Now all they need is for their seventh son to have seven sons.

What is up with that anyway? I know that there is some sort of legend or belief about it but I can't find any references as to just what the hell that is.

This by any chance?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seventh_so ... eventh_son

[Purple]

Now all they need is for their seventh son to have seven sons.

What is up with that anyway? I know that there is some sort of legend or belief about it but I can't find any references as to just what the hell that is.

This by any chance?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seventh_so ... eventh_son

Thanks. I swear it was not there last time I checked. Than again, that page was first created in 2007 according to the logs so that is actually quite possible.

[Starglider]

Kateri, who “loves being pregnant,” has said that juggling such a huge family can be challenging at times

This sentiment is now being selected for very heavily, because (in most of the world) the most significant determining factors for how many viable offspring a human has are now (a) how many kids they want and (b) how early they start.

[Zor]

Lady YOU ARE NOT A CLOWN CAR!

Zor

[Borgholio]

Now all they need is for their seventh son to have seven sons.

Sounds like an upcoming sequel to the musical, "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers"...

[Edi]

To actually answer one of the questions earlier in the thread, if they got 12 sons in a row, then number 13 will be a boy as well. Reason being that not all men are equal and some only fire Y chromosomes while others only fire X and since it is the father who determines the gender of any offspring, the more reasonable expectation is that in this case the guy is one of hose who only produces sons. It is more likely than having pulled the same face on 12 different coin flips through purely random chance.

[Nova Andromeda]

Kateri, who “loves being pregnant,” has said that juggling such a huge family can be challenging at times

This sentiment is now being selected for very heavily, because (in most of the world) the most significant determining factors for how many viable offspring a human has are now (a) how many kids they want and (b) how early they start.

True, however the rapid pace of technological development suggests there will not be much time before the 'rules' change again. We'll accidentally and destroy ourselves or most of us at any rate, the powerful will achieve and be able to maintain a lock on their control (i.e., popular uprisings/revolutions become basically impossible), someone accidentally and we end up with an AGI, medical advances reshape the equation you imply above, etc.

Care to guess at where the probabilities are flowing the most strongly currently? It is all very muddy to me, but I fear actively hostile intelligence the most (either technologically assisted human or AGI). I do hope uncaring AGI is significantly more likely as that would be a much better end. Not too much hope we'll get our act together the end result will approximate 'fair'.

[Simon_Jester]

True, however the rapid pace of technological development suggests there will not be much time before the 'rules' change again. We'll accidentally and destroy ourselves or most of us at any rate,

Not grammatical and largely irrelevant.

...the powerful will achieve and be able to maintain a lock on their control (i.e., popular uprisings/revolutions become basically impossible)...

This has very little to do with the question of which people reproduce, since among humans, powerful oligarchies have never shown any sign of wanting to monopolize reproduction. Thus they tend to have no real effect on determining who actually does reproduce.

...someone accidentally and we end up with an AGI...

Also not grammatical and irrelevant. I mean, you might be saying "maybe the human species will cease to exist, making the question of selection pressure on humans irrelevant..."

But seriously, that's kind of a weird tangent to what Starglider was saying.

...medical advances reshape the equation you imply above, etc.

No they don't. They already did, and the situation is not going to change back. Because contraceptives and abortion mean nobody really has to have a baby if they don't want to. And modern economic pressures mean that if you don't decide to have kids, or at least to be open to the possibility, the odds are that you won't have them. Especially if you're a woman.

If having babies is a choice, Darwinian processes strongly favor women who enjoy being pregnant. By contrast, women who hate the very idea of having babies are at the absolute bottom of the list when it comes to selection- if there is a gene that causes them to do that, it's going to be extinct from the population except maybe as a recessive within a few generations.

[Starglider]

Care to guess at where the probabilities are flowing the most strongly currently? It is all very muddy to me, but I fear actively hostile intelligence the most (either technologically assisted human or AGI). I do hope uncaring AGI is significantly more likely as that would be a much better end. Not too much hope we'll get our act together the end result will approximate 'fair'.

Despite rumours to the contrary, I am not actually a button you can press to derail any thread into a transhumanism discussion / rant / etc.

[Havok]

[Guardsman Bass]

You'd need "the desire to have lots of kids" to be something with a hereditary component for it to be selected, otherwise it's just a rare social behavior in a societ where most people have 0-2 children.

[LadyTevar]

Personally, I'm betting once the sons strat getting married they will only want 2-4 kids, because of the chaos they grew up in.

[Simon_Jester]

You'd need "the desire to have lots of kids" to be something with a hereditary component for it to be selected, otherwise it's just a rare social behavior in a societ where most people have 0-2 children.

Put this way.

IF there is a hereditary component to actively desiring to have kids (or, specifically, a desire to be pregnant in women)... then that desire is being strongly selected for as we speak.

If such a trait hasn't almost totally taken over the human population within 10-15 generations under modern conditions, I suspect it means that there is no hereditary component to it.

[Starglider]

You'd need "the desire to have lots of kids" to be something with a hereditary component for it to be selected, otherwise it's just a rare social behavior in a societ where most people have 0-2 children.

Put this way.
IF there is a hereditary component to actively desiring to have kids (or, specifically, a desire to be pregnant in women)... then that desire is being strongly selected for as we speak.
If such a trait hasn't almost totally taken over the human population within 10-15 generations under modern conditions, I suspect it means that there is no hereditary component to it.

'Desire to have kids' is a bit abstract but 'enjoy the physical sensation of being pregnant' (which probably includes stronger selection against morning sickness) and 'release endorphins when seeing a baby face or hearing baby noises' absolutely have direct neural correlates and most likely quite direct gene expression pathways. Plus of course given time (and static conditions) evolution can crank up the sex drive to make remembering to use birth control less likely (and sadly, rape more likely), reduce genital sensitivity to make condoms less pleasant, possibly fiddle with hormones to make the pill less effective etc. The last two can be defeated quite easily with further technical progress but the first one is a problem (unless and until we completely bypass natural conception and selection in humans).

[Jaepheth]

I have wonder if they're one of those "quiver full" families; religious nuts whose end game is to install a theocracy by Zerg-rushing democracy

I really just can't imagine any rational people having that many children.