Women's History Month: Pattern of Children of Your Female Ancestors

My friend and fellow Blogger Lisa Alzo has a Meme for March - Fearless Females: 31 Blogging Prompts to Celebrate Women's History Month

I encourage readers to join in. Lisa has some terrific blogging prompts for each day of Women's History Month.  

Meanwhile, because there are 5 Fridays in March, I have written 5 Blogging Prompts for Women's History Month. I will write my own stories each Friday (and participate in as many of Lisa's 31 Prompts as I can!) I hope you'll join in with your own.

Here is my second blog post for the topic Make a list of your female ancestors beginning with your mother. Go back as far as you can. Now figure out how many children each female ancestor had. Did the females in your direct maternal line tend to have the same numbers of children each generation? Did they have more? Less? Were they prolific or are there few children born to each woman? Is there a pattern emerging? 

My mom: 4 children - 2 boys, 2 girls
Maternal grandmother: 3 girls
Paternal grandmother: 6 boys
Great grandmother Simpson: 6 children - 4 boys, 2 girls
Great grandmother Fuller:5 children - 4 boys, 1 girl
Great grandmother McGinnis: 5 children - 3 boys, 2 girls
Great grandmother Peer: 9 children - 5 boys, 4 girls

Of a total of 38 children, there were 24 boys and 14 girls. Statistically there were almost double the number of boys than girls each generation. 

I was curious about the ages of the above ancestors when they had their children. My great grandmother Peer was the youngest, only 17 when her first child was born. The others were aged 19, 21, 22, 23, 26 and 29. There's certainly no consistency there, which makes sense because it would depend on when they fell in love and married.

Four of my female  ancestors above had  late-in-life babies - my Grandmother McGinnis who was 45 when her last child was born, and my great-grandmothers Fuller who was 42, Peer who was 44 and McGinnis who was 40.  I suppose the quality of birth control at the time may have factored into those later children for my great-grandmothers.

What about your female ancestors? How do they compare?