ARRRGH!! Sick of Blue Nurseries!!!

[Kristalrose]

My neighborhood is a tiny custom neighborhood that I used the DeleteAll Characters cheat on and started it with 30 sims.  Half I made playable, half are townies.  They have married and reporduced and are now entering the 3rd generation.  BUT, about 2/3 of the births are boys.  Since I started playing this neighborhood in August, I've only had 10 girls born from 33 births.  In the past few weeks, I've only had one girl and 6 boys!  Right now my town has a group of teenagers that only has 1 girl in it.  My boys are going to have to date and marry townies, I just know it!  Problem is, there's a very small selection of townies thanks to JMP.    I loathe townies, dormies, and the rest of those Maxis-made riff-raff!    My Sim-sons are too good for them!  LOL 

I know this is common and happens a lot.  I guress I'm just venting.  Or maybe someone knows an easy way to pick the sex of the baby while Mom is pregnant?  Or maybe give a male baby a sex change?  LOL  I tried with SimsPE once, but the baby kept tranitioning male anyway. 

[J. M. Pescado]

If you're getting a severe imbalance, you can try saving right before births and reloading if it doesn't produce an outcome that is satisfactory.

[ZiggyDoodle]

Out of curiosity, do you save just before the birth occurs and then if you don't like the sex of the baby, exit without saving then reload and go through the process again?  And maybe again, and again, until you do get the sex you want?

This generally has worked for me - and did again last night when my Bisgrove newlyweds had their first child.  A boy, but I wanted a girl and after the second try, Claire was born.

[J. M. Pescado]

I usually just let it roll. Males tend to have a longer shelf life if you expect to breed them in a time-synchronized neighborhood, and stick around for a bit longer. Ultimately the excess sims become vampires.

[buddha pest]

What exactly causes this? I just started a new neighborhood a couple months ago and only 2 births out of 21 were male. Insane. I never reloaded because I wanted to see how carried away the game could get.

I heard it happens when one sex outnumbers the other in a hood, but how off balance can a new hood be? I only made 6 CAS's to start out, 3 male and 3 female.

[Kristalrose]

Yes, I've done this.  On one poor birth I did it 6 times before my husband said, "Honey, how would you feel if someone shoved your baby back in and told you to do over until it's a girl."  LOL  I've tried it several times, and they are ALWAYS born boys.  I've tried using your randomizer too, JMP, before the birth, in case part of the pattern was the "twining" effect going on.  Didn't help.

[eaglezero]

What exactly causes this? I just started a new neighborhood a couple months ago and only 2 births out of 21 were male. Insane. I never reloaded because I wanted to see how carried away the game could get.

It's a statistical effect of randomness. Each birth has, I'm assuming, a fifty percent chance of being male and a fifty percent chance of being female. This does not mean that half of your births will be female and half will be male (which is, for some reason, what most people think it means) but rather that, well, each birth has a fifty percent chance of being male (or female). It's the same principle behind coin-flipping (if you assume that you're flipping in such a way as to create a roughly 50% chance of either side landing up) -- if you flip a coin only ten times, you're very likely to come up with one result quite a bit more than the other, but if you flip a coin ten thousand times, your results would look a lot more even. It has to do with the population size -- if you have a larger population, you're less likely to have sampling errors.

Personally, I've never had that lack of gender balance in my game. In the short run, yeah, there's usually a bit of imbalance, but it has always corrected itself over time.

[Sandilou]

Old folklore from the BBS argued that the baby is always the opposite sex to the one who decides to try for a baby - so daddy asking begets girls, mommy asking begets boys. When I think about it, I had a Legacy family who's mother was a family sim (Marylena Hamilton).  She had the 10 children want, and each time she threw the have a baby want, I got her to ask.  She had seven sons (including one set of boy twins) and no daughters.  Her hubby was a knowledge sim, he never had the baby want, so he never asked.  That's as close as I've got to testing the theory.   

The few times I've had to replay a birthing scene in the ordinary game, the baby's sex usually alternated, (so the first time a boy, next time a girl).  Even when I rolled same sex twice, the babies were different, so I do think that the genetic coding is random. 

[angelyne]

Old folklore from the BBS argued that the baby is always the opposite sex to the one who decides to try for a baby - so daddy asking begets girls, mommy asking begets boys.

Sounds like an old simwife tale to me.  I am convinced it's simply random. It could also be that their random generator suck.  Not all software random generating routines are equal

Kristal why don't you just made yourself a bunch of new townies.  Or create a new family of roomates, put them on a empty plot with a phone and computer.  I spent something like 4 days trolling the net, looking for good looking sims to put into my game (lyran.net and MTS2 were my main source).  I don't just put them in my game. I extract the content of the file into a folder, load them up in BodyShop and remove all the custom content (they would be appalled seing all their hard work being discarded no doubt), replace them with default skin, hair and eyes (not Maxis) and then create them in CAS. 

Just think of it as immigration

[IgnorantBliss]

Yes, I've done this.  On one poor birth I did it 6 times before my husband said, "Honey, how would you feel if someone shoved your baby back in and told you to do over until it's a girl."  LOL  I've tried it several times, and they are ALWAYS born boys.  I've tried using your randomizer too, JMP, before the birth, in case part of the pattern was the "twining" effect going on.  Didn't help.

You have to save before the window comes up that says "There is a new family member on the way" or something similar. Otherwise the gender has already been decided.

[ElviraGoth]

For me, it seems that the closer it is to the birth time when I last saved, the more difficult it is to get the opposite sex.  If I last saved, say 4 to 5 sim hours before the impending birth, I seem to stand a better chance of getting the gender I want on my first reload.  But if my last save was within an hour or two before the birth, I may have to reload 5 or 6 times and STILL might not get the opposite sex.  So, from my experience, leave a little time between the last save and the time the baby is born.  I use the Insim to keep an eye on how many hours my sim is pg, and usually save when she/he is about 70 hours along.

And, of course, the lot debugger is essential for randomizing the attributes of the baby.  Once I found out how to use it, I can't have a pregnant sim who's close to birth do without it.  I had too many "clones" in my famililies before I started using it.

[IgnorantBliss]

Hmm, I don't know, I always save right before the birth, often at the last few seconds possible, and I still get a good variety of genders at reloading. I don't know how the longer wait would affect it in any way? Probably just coincidence.

[ElviraGoth]

Probaby right, IgnorantBliss.  It just happened often enough and was really frustrating reloading over and over again trying for the opposite sex, so when I tried this and it worked I just stuck with it.  It may be a glitch in my game that's causing it, but I figured it was worth mentioning just in case it's happening to someone else.

My Ecological Gurus don't get paid vacation time for days they're pg that they wouldn't normally work, either, but it seems like everyone else's do!  So ... you never know ...

[twojeffs]

Hmm, I don't know, I always save right before the birth, often at the last few seconds possible, and I still get a good variety of genders at reloading. I don't know how the longer wait would affect it in any way? Probably just coincidence.

I do this also, and will eventually get what I want, or give up and decide that the fortunes have other ideas from mine for the sims involved. Saving with more time before birth could possibly affect the seed for the random number generator if you do different things in that 'window' of time. But no one except Maxis really knows how their random generator works. If even they do. 

It could also be that their random generator suck

That, I'm afraid, is the basic problem. And there is no way for us to fix it.

[ZephyrZodiac]

Just so you can have some pink nurseries, why not create a couple of CAS families with a couple of girl toddlers each?

[Zeljka]

I had a Legacy family that spawned 7 generations of girls as firstborns and sons as secondborns, but I figured it was just the balance thing and luck. Not sure who did the trying for babies, though it was always the family Sim if there was one and my stupid Legacy Sims all ended up being Fortune, so I guess it may have been the dads!?

This one (balance theory) was disproved when I started a Prosperity Neighbourhood (del all ugly characters first) and rolled a neighbourhood of 18 Starting Sims, only 5 of them male (3Teens,2Elders) I didn't respawn anyone but had female maids despite calling back (tried immediately and later, neither worked) and paperkids of each. Imagine my shock when the first 3 babies born were boys.

The only times I've reloaded for a specific gender is if I've lost a baby already born due to a crash and I want the same kind back, but perhaps I should do it more often.

[ZephyrZodiac]

Somehow I've found that custom hoods are weird where maids are concerned, I had one with two male maids (unusual) and one with no male maids.  I wonder why it seems to affect custom hoods?  when I moved Kaylynn into the game once, she was replaced by a female, so the balance of 2:1 in Pleasantview was maintained.

[SJActress]

BUT, about 2/3 of the births are boys.

If it makes you feel any better, my Brandi Broke now has 11 children (5 births, 1 married in, and 5 adopted).  They are ALL boys.  And I'm not retiring her uterus till she gets a danged girl.

[BeckerCheez]

I've had times when I'd get all girls, and times when I'd get all boys.  This has resulted in second generation boys marrying and having children with third generation girls in my neighborhood.   

[ZephyrZodiac]

Well, you could put all the boys into gay relationships, use TJ's mod for all sexes pregnancy, and see what happens then!

[IgnorantBliss]

Somehow I've found that custom hoods are weird where maids are concerned, I had one with two male maids (unusual) and one with no male maids.  I wonder why it seems to affect custom hoods?  when I moved Kaylynn into the game once, she was replaced by a female, so the balance of 2:1 in Pleasantview was maintained.

In my first Pleasantview, Kaylynn was replaced by a (ugly) male maid, though.

[Ancient Sim]

In my original Pleasantview the births alternated without exception until twins were due, then I had 2 of the same sex together (one being the first twin).  The same pattern then continued again and this happened the entire time.  Now I've restarted Pleasantview, exactly the same thing is happening.  Seems that everybody's game is different, although I have no idea why.

[ZephyrZodiac]

Maybe it's Maxis attempt to randomize?  so the balance of male:female is maintained, but not necessarily in the same game or on the same PC!

[Kristalrose]

I usually save at bedtime on the third night of pregnancy, so I know that she's going to give birth sometime in the middle of the night.

I've only created CAS sims twice since starting this neighborhood.  The goal was to keep the population down.  In my prior exploding-fireball neighborhood, I had been happy enough to create a new CAS family when the whim hit me.  I think that the unchecked population growth contributed to the neighborhood's quick demise.  So I have been very careful with family planning, killing off the Maxis-made sims and running JMP's no-regen hacks, and not opening CAS.    But, if this continues, I'm going to have to do it. 

[C.S.]

I pause and save the moment the sim goes into labour, then reload if the baby born wasn't of the sex I wanted. If it's still the same results after a few tries, I use the lot debugger, re-enter lot, let the labour proceed a couple of seconds from the last save, then pause and save the game again. Repeat if necessary. That usually worked for me before the new family member message pops up, and I've had the good fortune of not being stuck with a baby of the wrong sex and having to re-plan future marriages .