"Boys take after their moms, girls take after their dads"? Who do children inherit their IQ from? Experts say...

You can often hear people say:

“Boys take after their moms, girls take after their dads”?

“IQ comes from mom, personality comes from dad”?

Is the power of genes so magical? Can genes really be perfectly replicated? Today, let's take a deeper look.

1

Boys look like their moms and girls look like their dads?

In fact, the inheritance of our appearance and figure cannot be explained in just a few words!

As we all know, each of us develops from a fertilized egg. From the formation of the fertilized egg to becoming "us", it will go through multiple random combinations, divisions, exchanges, and mutations of genes and chromosomes, forming unpredictable and unique new individuals.

Therefore, from facial features such as eyes, nose, mouth, ears, eyelashes to body features such as height and weight, who we will tend to be depends on what kind of genetic factors we are allocated from our parents.

color

Skin color is mostly inherited by neutralizing the skin colors of the parents. If one parent is white and the other is black, the next generation may have an intermediate color that is neither white nor black, but occasionally a skin color may be more inclined to one side.

But if both parents have dark skin, their children's skin color will often not be very white.

Double eyelids

Double eyelids are a "lucky gene". If both parents have double eyelids, their children will most likely also have double eyelids. Even if they have single eyelids when they are young, they may slowly develop into double eyelids as they grow older. Of course, it is also possible that they will always have single eyelids.

If both parents have single eyelids, the probability of the child having double eyelids is very small.

In addition, big eyes, high nose bridge, long eyelashes, dimples, etc. are also like double eyelids. If one parent has them, the child is very likely to inherit them. However, premature graying of hair is a typical counterexample, which is a gene that is not easily inherited.

height

You should know that children's height is determined by the height of their parents.

The FPH formula is now often used in clinical practice to predict the adult height range of children: target height for boys (cm) = 45.99 + 0.78 × (father's height + mother's height)/2, target height for girls = 37.85 + 0.75 × (father's height + mother's height)/2.

It should be noted that genes only determine the trend and range of height growth, and height is ultimately determined by factors such as living environment, sleep conditions, physical activities, and nutritional diet.

Therefore, parents should pay more attention to their children's reasonable diet and moderate exercise.

obesity

It has to be said that obesity is the most likely to be inherited, because many obesity-susceptible genes are important causes of the development of obesity.

Although we cannot change our genes, we can reduce the chances of obesity through our own efforts, such as increasing physical exercise, reducing high-calorie food intake, and refusing to sit for long periods of time.

Baldness

Baldness is a relatively special genetic condition. Usually only boys have the symptoms of "baldness", while girls only have the genetic trait and do not show obvious "baldness".

2

IQ comes from mom, personality from dad?

It can be clearly stated that IQ can indeed be inherited.

"Frontier Science" once published a study that suggested that intelligence is a core component of cognitive ability and has a high degree of heritability.

However, the distribution of genes is random and complex. It is impossible to predict whose IQ will be inherited, and it is even impossible to guarantee that genes with high intelligence will be passed on to the next generation. Although the IQ of parents cannot determine the absolute value of the IQ of the next generation, it affects the potential of the child's IQ. If this potential is stimulated through postnatal education and cultivation, it is not impossible to maximize its benefits! The same is true for personality. Postnatal cultivation even plays a greater role than genetic inheritance.

3

Beware these diseases may be hereditary

Shortsighted

The principle of myopia is that long-term excessive use of the eyes causes the ciliary muscles to be in a spasm state and cannot relax to their original position.

A 2018 study published in the journal "Chinese Laboratory Diagnostics" found that the prevalence of myopia among 10-year-old school-age children in Shanghai, China is 52.2%, and the average prevalence of myopia among adolescents aged 6 to 18 in Beijing is 70.9%.

The study believes that high myopia is a multifactorial and/or single-gene genetic disease, and its inheritance modes include autosomal dominant inheritance, autosomal recessive inheritance and sex-linked recessive inheritance.

In addition to genetic reasons, excessive use of the eyes, reading too close to the book, and incorrect reading postures such as lying down or lying on your stomach can all lead to decreased vision.

There are many dangers of myopia, such as decreased visual sensitivity, strabismus, glaucoma, and the lens opacity we are all familiar with.

Therefore, parents must pay attention to their children’s eye habits, use their eyes scientifically, and reduce the incidence of myopia.

hypertension

As early as 1994, the "Chinese Journal of Medical Genetics" published that primary hypertension is generally believed to have a family background and genetic tendency. The incidence rate for people whose both parents suffer from hypertension is 20%-45%, while the probability of people whose parents are both healthy suffering from hypertension is only 3.1%. This data speaks for itself.

Hypertension may not have any symptoms in the early stages, but it can subtly cause damage to the heart, brain, kidneys and other organs, eventually leading to stroke or myocardial infarction, or even death. It can be described as "killing invisibly."

Therefore, we must insist on regular physical examinations to detect, prevent and treat diseases early.

Breast cancer

According to data published in "China Oncology" in 2021, breast cancer is a common malignant tumor in women, and its incidence and mortality rate rank first and fourth respectively among malignant tumors in women in my country.

In 2015, breast cancer in Chinese women accounted for 17.1% of all malignant tumors in women; there were approximately 70,000 deaths, accounting for 8.2% of all malignant tumor deaths in women.

At the same time, epidemiological survey data show that breast cancer occurs in families, and 15% to 20% of breast cancer patients have a family history of breast cancer.

Women who do not have a family history of breast cancer should also pay attention to regular breast examinations.

depression

The Shanghai Psychiatry journal once conducted a study and investigation on a number of patients with affective disorders, including depression, mania, and bipolar disorder, and reached a consistent conclusion: the prevalence of co-morbidity between patients with affective disorders and their first-degree relatives is higher than that between their second-degree relatives, and the prevalence of the disease among relatives is higher than that among ordinary people.

That is to say, the closer the blood relationship, the higher the prevalence of depression.

Regarding depression, full understanding and care from the outside world can reduce the incidence rate to a certain extent. We should also pay more attention to our own inner health, not give up on ourselves, and try to discover the beauty in life.

In summary

Boys take after their mothers, girls take after their fathers

Not credible

Who will the child lean towards?

Depends on the genetic factors allocated from parents

Instead, we should focus on

Diseases that parents may pass on to their children

Get regular medical checkups

Timely detection and early treatment

Source: Science China (ID: Science_China)

Expert of this article: Huang Yao, Master of Pediatrics, First Affiliated Hospital of Dalian Medical University

This article was reviewed by: Zhang Junling, Chief Physician, Department of Pediatrics, Affiliated Hospital of North China University of Technology

Producer: Mou Yanqiu Huang Linhao

Editor: Cai Mengxiao

Proofreading: Dong Jingxue