EVER WONDER WHY...

... some parents have lots of girls?

THE gender of your children is not just the luck of the draw, according to a new Newcastle University study.

Researchers studied the family trees of 550,000 people, dating back to 1600, and found that men were more likely to have more sons if they had several brothers, and more likely to have daughters if they had more sisters.

Bizarrely, the same rule did not apply to women.

Researchers believe that men have an inherited gene that controls whether his sperm contains more X or Y chromosomes, affecting the sex of his children.