Talk:Midparent

How?

The article says:

Studying quantitative traits in heritability studies may be complicated by sex differences observed for the trait. The midparent value is defined as the average of the trait value of father and mother. This value can be used in the study to analyze the data set without heeding sex effects.

But that does not make much sense. Consider height, and assume women are on average 160, and men 180 cm, so the average midparent value should be around 170 cm. In a constant world, girls would on average be 10 cm shorter than their midparent value, and boys 10 cm taller (as adults). If the variation within each gender is +-5 cm (I know it's really much more, but I thought giving an example on penis lengths instead might be considered offensive), the distruibution of the difference between the height of child and their midparent values would be two-humped. I'm not saying the midparent value cannot be used, I just think it should be explained in more detail how.--Noe (talk) 15:11, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

The height of the female child will need to be scaled as well. For example, if a theory says a child's height will be equal to their parents' midparent height, and that midparent height is 1.70 m, then the child's height will be 1.70 m if it's a boy and 1.70 m / 1.08 = 1.57 m if it's a girl. MaigoAkisame (talk) 17:59, 19 November 2022 (UTC)