Family Dynamics

I'm in the middle of reading an interesting article in the latest edition of the Scientific American, but I thought I'd take a break to share it with you socks.

It seems some Finnish anthropoligist finally decided to do what we genealogy addicts have been doing for decades, and is now "data mining" in some old church records to see what she can learn about family dynamics.

Among her findings:

- female twins of a mixed gender set (girl/boy instead of girl/girl or boy/boy) are less likely to marry and have children than single births or same gender set.

- mothers of sons have, on average, shorter lifespans than mothers of daughters.

- children are more likely to survive to adulthood if they have a grandmother living, even if not in the same household.

All this has me a little interested in doing some "data mining" in my own family records to see if these Finnish findings hold true . . .