Sons Shorten Mother's Lifespan in Preindustrial Families with a High Level of Infant Mortality.

AbstractIn dimorphic vertebrates where males are larger than females, the energetic costs of producing and rearing sons can exceed those of daughters. In humans, differences in maternal energy intake suggest that sons require 10% and 7% more energy than daughters during pregnancy and lactation, respectively. Due to a trade-off between reproduction and somatic maintenance, having sons is expected to have a more pronounced detrimental impact on a mother's lifespan than having daughters. A limitation of previous studies investigating this hypothesis is that the increased mortality cost of having sons was assumed to affect all mothers equally. Using a dataset from a preindustrial Quebec population monitored over two centuries, we found that the number of sons decreased postmenopausal lifespan only in mothers experiencing high infant mortality. Our study highlights the importance of interindividual variation in environmental conditions and maternal health when studying effects of offspring sex on reproductive costs.