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fraternal birth order effect

fraternal birth order effect noun: the scientific observation that a man's statistical probability of being homosexual increases with the number of older brothers he has.

Noun

fraternal birth order effect (uncountable)

  1. The scientific observation that a man's statistical probability of being homosexual increases with the number of older brothers he has.
    • Thus the fraternal birth order effect is specific to male sexual orientation, and does not affect female sexual orientation.2008, Glenn Wilson, Qazi Rahman, Born Gay: The Psychobiology of Sex Orientation, Peter Owen, →ISBN, page 98
    • The influence of the fraternal birth order effect is not mediated by a male growing up with older stepbrothers but is influenced by them having biological brothers (who share the same mother) regardless of whether they are raised together or apart (Bogaert, 2006).2010, Mark J. T. Sargeant, “Brain and Behaviour: Sex Differences”, in Philip Banyard, Mark N. O. Davies, Christine Norman, Belinda Winder, editors, Essential Psychology: A Concise Introduction, SAGE...

Forms of fraternal birth order effect

alternative formfraternal birth-order effect

Questions about fraternal birth order effect

What does fraternal birth order effect mean?
Fraternal birth order effect means the scientific observation that a man's statistical probability of being homosexual increases with the number of older brothers he has.
What part of speech is fraternal birth order effect?
Fraternal birth order effect is a noun.

Words near fraternal birth order effect in the dictionary

  1. frater-house
  2. frater-houses
  3. fraterculine
  4. frateries
  5. fraternal
  6. fraternal birth order effect
  7. fraternal birth-order effect
  8. fraternal nephew
  9. fraternal nephews
  10. fraternal niece
  11. fraternal nieces

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: fraternal birth order effect (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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