Too Many Boys

[Devin]

I just went to make a bug report about the inability to fulfill the "Read One Book at the Library" task in the writer Aspiration, and I found a thread about the game generating too many sims of a single gender. This has been happening to me: I have far more boy children in my game than girl children, both player sims and townies. It's been killing my matriarchies and is one of the reasons that I've given up on three legacies without even bothering to post pictures.

Crin said in one post that the gender of the baby may be determined by the time of day that the baby is conceived. I'll be experimenting with this to see if I can generate a couple more girls for the Drakes (who I had originally intended to have four children, anyway) and let you know how I get on.

[Dellena]

I tested the time of day idea that someone sent to Crin and it's false.  I tried various times and still needed up with 5 girls and just one boy.  I just think it's a 50/50 chance, as the gurus have said.  If you need more girls, make a household of girls, children teens and young adults and either stick them in a house (recommended) or make them homeless townies.

[Devin]

The problem isn't that the game isn't producing girls, the problem is that my sim couple for a matriarchy aren't generally producing enough girls to carry on the family line. Four out of every five children the active sims give birth to are boys.

In fact, I'm not having this problem with townies. Boys, girls, men and women. I don't have many teens, but I'm taking care of that by nabbing any I meet and moving them into homes so that they don't wind up vanishing.

The only time this affects me is when active sims breed, and it's a new problem (for me) with the last three families. Before that, I didn't have any problems.

It's possible that it's nothing but odds, but it seems that most people reporting this issue have more boys than they do girls.

[Stormi71]

I've only had three children in my games, all boys. My daughter's household managed to have two girls (different save game).

[Tilia]

Every single baby I've produced in this game (which has to be over a dozen at this point) has been female with the exception of ONE boy that was twin #2 in a set.

[stitching_JA]

Of the various games played at my house,  we've had a family that had 5 boys then a girl; a family with 4 girls; a family with 3 girls; a family with 2 boys and then a girl; and a family that had girl, boy, girl.  With the first couple of games I had thought there was a glitch with whichever method of random generation the game uses, as the families seemed to have only one gender for a long time, but now I think its working.  Sometimes when you flip a coin, you do get clusters of one outcome over another and it's only with a large sample size that the outcomes are balanced.

[Devin]

Every single baby I've produced in this game (which has to be over a dozen at this point) has been female with the exception of ONE boy that was twin #2 in a set.

The twins just born in my legacy are boy/girl. Otherwise, I've only had boys for generations of three families. It's possible that it's random because probability isn't perfect, but it seems to me that this ought to be a lot more random than what it is, and clearly I'm not the only one who's complaining about the way that it's happening.

On the flip side, running a matriarchy is interesting if the only time you're likely to get girls is when you have multiples. It means that every generation has to have a set of twins or triplets somewhere in it.

I also think that if this was a matter of probability not being all that precise, that it would go both ways. Most of us having problems seem to be having issues with too many boys and not with too many girls (though there are obviously exceptions to this rule as well).

Since this started for me, I've yet to have a family where the ratios are even remotely even. It has consistently been about 3/1 boys. Eventually probability should start to even out. I'm keeping a family tree on the Drake's, so it should be visible over time. Time, therefore, should tell and eventually it should be close to 50/50.

[Dellena]

If I count all the children I've had born in Sims 4, I've had 9 girls and 1 boy.  So I really think it's just the nature of probabilities.  You're not going to see a straight 50/50 split with so few pregnancies.  It's going to take a LOT of pregnancies to show the 50/50 split.  For instance, if you put me and another forum member together that's had all boys, you'd have around the 50/50 mark.

[Devin]

As though to prove my assumptions entirely wrong, I've just had the following happen in my legacy. Spoiler used for those who may be reading it.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I've now had two sets of twins back to back. That's five children, including two sets of twins and one singleton. The first set was boy/girl fraternal and the second was girl/girl.

It might be making itself right over time. Thank goodness. Matriarchies die with too many boys born in their generations.

[Tipi]

My game seems to be even at this point: out of 11 babies 6 are girls and 5 boys.