Boy or girl quiz: the old wives' tales test

How the quiz scores you

Each question is one tale, and each answer gets the vote the tale gives it. Carrying high votes girl, a heart rate of 140 or under votes boy, a ring swinging in a circle votes girl, and so on. Skipped questions don't count. If the votes are level, the result is a tie, which is a fair summary of what the tales can actually tell you.

One question doesn't vote at all. Heartburn is part of the same folklore, but the traditional saying is about the baby's hair, not the baby's sex. It is also one of the few tales that has been tested, with a surprising result (below).

Where tales come in versions that contradict each other, we used the most common one. Your answers stay in your browser. The only thing saved is your last verdict, on your own device, so you can compare if you take it again.

What the research says, tale by tale

We looked for a published study on every tale in the quiz. Here is what we found. "No study found" means we could not find research that tested the tale against babies' actual sex. It doesn't mean the tale is half-right; it means nobody has shown it works.

The heartbeat myth

The 140 rule is the most repeated tale of all. A 2023 systematic review pooled five studies with 4,308 fetuses and found no significant difference in first-trimester heart rate between boys and girls. If anything, the boys ran very slightly faster, the opposite of the tale, but the gap was too small to mean anything. The authors' conclusion: heart rate is not a reliable test for sex. It tells your midwife about the baby's wellbeing and stage of pregnancy instead.

The one tale with a real signal

Severe morning sickness is the only tale where the data lean the way folklore says. A 2011 meta-analysis found that women with hyperemesis gravidarum, the severe form, were more likely to have a girl (odds ratio 1.27). In Danish hospital records covering 6,227 births after a hyperemesis diagnosis, there were 0.87 boys for every girl, against 1.04 in the general population.

In plain numbers that is about 53.5% girls instead of about 49%. That applies to women sick enough to be admitted to hospital. For ordinary nausea, a small American study of 104 women found no link at all. So even the best tale in the quiz moves a coin toss by a few points. More on this in does morning sickness mean a girl?

Heartburn: right idea, wrong prediction

A 2006 study asked 64 pregnant women how bad their heartburn was, then had independent raters score their newborns' hair from photos. Heartburn severity was unrelated to the baby's sex. It was, though, linked to hair: most women with moderate or severe heartburn had babies with average or above-average hair, and most women with none had babies with little or no hair. The researchers suggested pregnancy hormones may play a part in both. It's a small study, but a nice reminder that folklore sometimes notices something real and then attaches the wrong meaning to it.

Why the quiz feels right

Any guess about a baby's sex is right about half the time, so every tale gets plenty of hits that people remember and retell. Several tales can agree just by chance too, the way three coin tosses can all land heads. Adding up votes from signals that don't work doesn't make them work.

One curious finding: in the same 1999 study of 104 women, those who went by dreams or feelings guessed right more often than those who went by folklore such as bump shape. Women with more than twelve years of education were right 71% of the time. The study was small and the authors couldn't explain why, so don't read too much into it, but your own hunch did no worse than the tales.

When you want more than folklore

For every tale in more depth, read our old wives' tales guide. The calendar methods are folklore too: try the Chinese gender calendar or the Mayan gender calendar, both of which do no better than chance. Methods that look at the baby itself are a different story, such as nub theory at 11–13 weeks and ultrasound signs. The anatomy scan, or a blood test offered by your doctor, is what actually tells you.

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