So I'm a big fan of playing households that start with a couple on their own that then pop out as many babies as they can. I find the chaos and challenge quite fun.

Anyway, I've been doing this for the past few years of playing TS2 but this time in particular, I've found my current sim couple only seem to be having boys. The Mother has just given birth to twins (I chose to make this happen with cheesecake) both of which are boys. Previously, she gave birth to three other boys. In all my time of playing TS2, I've never had sim parents who gave birth to only one gender, ever. I don't really mind it, but it got me thinking, is there a reason why this is happening?

I was wondering if there was any particular "natural" way to determine the sex of a baby. I know in TS3 you can eat certain foods to chance the gender steering one way or another, but I wasn't aware of anything like this in TS2 aside from cheesecake giving the chance of multiple births. Or is one of my mods perhaps causing this? I don't have anything that intentionally causes only one gender births, but I do have maybe two pregnancy/woohoo themed mods, but I've never had this happen before, even with those mods.

Just thought it could be an interesting discussion for those who have experienced this also!

There's no mystery here. Gender selection in Sims 2 is a 50/50 random roll - essentially, a coin flip. This family is having what's called a "statistical cluster."

The thing about randomization is - it's random. Over enough time, a 50/50 coin flip in an infinite sequence will average out to about half of one result, half of another - but inside of any arbitrarily defined period of time or set of conditions, one of two equal chance may well be overrepresented. See, the chance on a coin flip is always 50/50 - having had a run of boys does nothing to increase the odds that the next coin flip will turn up girls.

People are always noticing trends or influences that aren't there. It's part of our basic brain makeup - we look for patterns, and will tend to see them whether they're there or not. We're also super into the fallacy that if something happens before something else, the first item in the sequence is causative. There's good sound evolutionary reasons for both, and they can spark wonderful things like storylines and characterization, but that doesn't give them objective reality.

To add to the above, there is one way to guarantee a baby of a specific gender - and that is to make a sim pregnant by themselves (via the tombstone of life and death or maybe a mod). The baby born will always be the opposite gender of the parent and with the exact same genes. See Brandi Broke's third child who will always be a boy with black hair and grey eyes in the default Pleasantview*.

*If you use a cleaned up Pleasantview, such as Tarlia's, this may not apply as the person who cleaned up the 'hood may have set the parental links up and thus 're-randomised' the gender and genetics.

The game has no given preference for either sex but in human reality, it's a bit different::



Human Sex Ratio

So if we can't figure out human side of this question, it's very likely the game hasn't either.

In other words, 50/50. Sorry, just being a nerd, again.

Not to mention it's far from a simple binary among real humans - plenty of intersex children born every year. But it's a game, so they went with the American cultural binary assumption, and were presumably glad to have one bit of programming that wasn't complex.

I read somewhere that the game tries to keep the 50/50 ratio in the hood, so if you have more female sims in your hood, that might be the reason for why you get so many boys. Not sure if that’s true though, it might be always 50% for each pregnancy independently of the hood.

Female fetuses are less likely to survive, hence the skewed number of boys among the born babies. The x chromosome has a bunch of potential problematic mutations that cause death in utero, and since boys usually only have one it does not affect as many male fetuses as female. I'm sure there are other reasons for it too, but the x chromosome is definitely part of it.

That's actually the opposite of what I read on Wikipeida some years back, which was that male fetuses are less likely to survive. But I guess that's all part of the debate in the scientific community that's mentioned in the link FranH posted.

In my game, it seems that everything gets evened out on a lot basis. If there are more males, the likelihood of the next baby, or even a full set of multiples being girls is very high, and opposite. If there's about an equal number of male and female sims on the lot, single babies are random, and multiples will usually be a mix, or there's two of the gender that's lacking, to even out. This happens to the point where I can with around 90-95% certainty predict the gender of the next single baby in the current play session, and can to a certain degree choose to have multiples of a particular gender. Twins will usually follow the "rule", but triplets and quads are a little tougher to predict (the lacking gender might produce 2-3 of one gender, and 1-2 of the other). Maybe because the first set set is set up as twins and the second is set up as a single baby or twins, and that's where the evening out happens.

Puppy/kitten genders seem to be random, but I haven't played with breeding pets in years now, and didn't do much of it earlier, so I haven't noticed if there's any sort of pattern.

However, if I do the in-and-out of a lot to choose a particular gender, it's a bit more random, and doesn't follow the same rule. Still, I have had sims try several times before they got whatever I was aiming for.

Might just be my game, or perhaps my game has chosen to be random in a very predictable way. It's been like this for several years now, and I'm pretty sure it's happened on all my 3 computers/installs, though I'm not sure about the first laptop. I haven't actually done what might be seen as a formal study of it, but perhaps when I've got some time on my hands.

I have had a couple of instances with 5-7 boys and then a girl, but those are for the most part very rare in my game.

I could be remembering it wrong, it's been a while since we did embryology. I'll look it up tomorrow

Statistically, there are more male babies born, but males are frailer genetically (females having two X-chromosomes makes up for several recessive X-linked disorders, among other things) and males also tend to have a higher childhood death rates from other causes, in addition to being prone to living riskier lives when they're older. Females tend to live longer, and also tend to be a bit hardier in the early childhood years.

There's closer to a 49/51 ratio in favour of the boys, but roughly speaking there's a 50/50 divide, probably not counting the spectre that's in between. This is most likely not counted as the gender someone identifies as later in their childhood/teens/adulthood, but rather the regular either-or bits and pieces seen at birth.

The environment during concieving and in the early development stages can have a say in the ratio of female to male, and even in gender identity and sexual orientation of the person later in life. Temperature in the environment, family situation, stress of the mother and/or fetus, famine or wars, and other stressors can potentially cause changes to genes. The chances of a male being gay can increase with the amount of boys in the family and the general family situation - as early as when the boy is still a fetus. The hightened sense of compassion and other positive traits could genetically be a positive influence when the family situation calls for it. I saw a documentary on it recently, an I'll see if I can relocate it - quite the eye-opener, in a positive way.

Tecnically, we're all girls to start with (that's why men have nipples). The "bits and pieces" are made from the same starting point in both female and male humans, which is why it takes some months to see it on a screen. The Y-chromosome (a deformed X-chromosome from a very long time ago) tells the body to release enough testosterone to make male bits. Enviromental factors can be seen more clearly in various animals. For instance, some animals will have only male offspring if the temperature is so-and-so, and if it's a few degrees higher or lower, they'll only have female offspring. Some animals will have more offspring in good times, and less in bad times.

More males are born because more male babies die. Males are more fragile over all. Both physically (disease/conditions) and mentally. Its harder for a male to grow up well than it is for a female. For those that like numbers I know that there are books and studies on this just don't ask me where. My guess is this is because females have to grow and give birth to the next generation.

As to sim babies it's 50/50 and the gender is determined at birth not before. Save reload the lot until you get the gender of baby you want. Can't do that in real life.

There's a fair few phrases which I don't quite understand, but this was an interesting read nonetheless.

I appreciate all the responses. I was mainly trying to find out why my sim was constantly having boys naturally and I'm probably going to end up cheating in or adopting some girls, but this turned into quite an interesting discussion.

I don't really consider it "cheating" to save right before the birth and reload, but I guess it all depends on how you define things.

What phrases are those? Don't leave us hanging.

I frequently reload, I tend to like havign one boy and one girls so I can see how each gender looks.

Assigned gender at birth, with intersex children, sometimes literally comes down to a measurement on a single organ.

Simmer22, though youir "rules" sound like an example of our tendency to make patterns and assign causation in random events, it may also be true that your randomizer is "stuck," i.e. you have a playstyle that doesn't compensate for the known tendency of the programmers to write randomizer that always start with the same seed number (which is how programmed random number generators work), thus making it more predictable. The tendency of trips and quads to break the pattern may be a result of the additional program shaking up the randomizer.

Do you consistently roll the pacifier before these births? And how do you go about it?

What? Gay guys have more compassion than straight guys? That kinda sounds like a stereotype.

I disagree with that. I don't see any connection between sexuality and compassion/positive traits.

Not in the sense of the stereothypical view, and of course every single gay person is not the same. The video explained it much better than I did. Unfortunately, I can't relocate it. I think I found it on Youtube, but that's probably not very helpful.

Compassion is probably the wrong word to use, but most of the gay men I know of or know personally do seem to be more attuned to emotions in other people. There's got to be a reason it is a stereotype to begin with, suggesting the stereotype sums up a collection of common personality traits of being gay, but that it's not a 'one size fits all' thing. A friend of mine was more or less the very picture of the "feminine male gay movie stereotype", even several years before he came out of the closet and told us, but I'm sure there's a whole spectre of different personalities out there even so. Perhaps media also has a say in strengthening the "feminine male gay movie stereotype".

Anyway, I do think the original discussion has gotten somewhat sidetracked, which was not my intention.

I feel like too much goes on in my family for me to keep making my poor mother sim pregnant and then leave the game unsaved until I get the desired gender every time, unless it's possible to do this and get a different result JUST before she goes into labor? I can't say I've ever tried this method before.

As for the going into CAS to randomize the toddler's appearance, how is this done with natural born babies? Is there a cheat that allows you to go back into CAS? I'm aware of this in TS3 and TS4 but I may have missed it in TS2.

On another note, my sim gave birth to another set of twins last night, one being her first girl! Shame she's almost an elder now so it's not likely there'll be any or many more girls to come naturally. Currently 7 children and I'm trying to fulfill that 10 children want both of the parents have.

We often see or think that women are more sensitive than men, show their emotions more etc...so stereo-typically, when describing/showing gay men, they are way too feminine to mimic this..so here you go about how it began with. All gay friends I had weren't the stereotypical type and frankly..this world is sick. but what can you do.

Ya think? lol

Yes, you can save immediately before the sim gives birth and reloading from that point will produce different randomized results.


No, "rolling the pacifier" is done to unstick the game's randomizer and avoid the "firstborn syndrome." There's an option on the Batbox (FFS Lot Debugger) to do it without having to go into CAS. Neither option lets you customize a born-in-game sim's appearance, but it does prevent the game from creating an army of clones. :p

It's a bit safer to save before the "huffing and puffing" starts. I can't quite remember what I did, but I once had a sim pregnant with multiples get stuck in an infinite birthing loop, where she would have the babies, the babies would disappear, and she'd start huffing and puffing all over. Even if I reloaded the lot she would continue the loop. Eventually, I had to abandon the lot.

Where is the sad button??? Though it is also funny, in a sad way.