Baby Gender During Pregnancy

[Theblip]

What year (even roughly) were parents in England first able to find out during a pregnancy what gender their baby was going to be, and at what stage of the pregnancy would that have been?

[Redhelen72]

Technologies introduced in the 1970s that allowed for identification of fetal sex in utero have become increasingly become more affordable, less technically demanding, and less invasive. Ultrasound is the most common method, and is used to determine sex at around 16 weeks of pregnancy.

https://www.prb.org/resources/when-technology-and-tradition-collide-from-gender-bias-to-sex-selection-fact-sheet/#:~:text=Technologies%20introduced%20in%20the%201970s,around%2016%20weeks%20of%20pregnancy.

 

[calmck]

First scanners were in the 60s and 70s with 3d imaging in the 80s. A first scan is usually done between 12 and 16 weeks.  Sex can be determined after this if the baby co operates with it being in the right position. 

[-SharonA-]

I had my first in 1980 & was pure guesswork regarding the sex.

[Buenchico]

It's ultrasound technology that's made it easy to identify a baby's gender while still in the womb.

 

Quote:
"For most women today, it’s hard to imagine going through a pregnancy without having an ultrasound scan. But these iconic images and movies of a developing fetus, generated by the reflection of high frequency sound waves, have only been around since the mid-1950s.Ultrasound was first used for clinical purposes in 1956 in Glasgow. Obstetrician Ian Donald and engineer Tom Brown developed the first prototype systems based on an instrument used to detect industrial flaws in ships of all things!

They perfected its clinical use and by the end of the 1950s and ultrasound was then routinely used in Glasgow hospitals but it didn’t really take off in British hospitals until the 1970s."

 

Source:
https://www.theoriginalwttw.co.uk/blog/the-history-of-ultrasound-window-to-the-womb/

 

An Iranian study in 2014 looked at trying to identify the genders of foetuses within the 11th and 12th weeks of pregancy.  There were 150 women in the survey, with the results as follows:
The gender of 53 foetuses couldn't be determined.
57 foetuses were correctly identified as male but 8 were wrongly identified as male.
31 foetuses were correctly identified as female but 1 was wrongly identified as female.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5958571/

So there's no one point at which the gender of a foetus can be accurately determined but the probability of getting it right will increase as each pregnancy progresses.