Want a Boy or a Girl? This Book Says Parents Can Choose.

When Christina Kattula, a 31-year-old yoga teacher in Michigan, was ready to start a family in 2024, she hoped for a son.

Her husband “wanted a boy to bond with,” she told me.

“And if we had girls later, he thought it would be cute to have a protective-big-brother-type thing.” Kattula decided to try something she’d heard about on a podcast: the so-called Babydust Method.

The theory, which was first laid out in a self-published book from 2016, claims, contrary to scientific evidence, that couples can influence their baby’s sex by precisely timing when they have intercourse.

Why not try it? she thought.

What’s the harm if it doesn’t work? Kattula and her husband followed the book’s advice, and she became pregnant with a boy.

During her pregnancy, Kattula posted a TikTok to her few hundred followers recommending the book to other couples.

“Blessed either way,” she said in the video .

“But it worked for us.

If you’re on your last kid and you’re really, really trying for something, read The Babydust Method .” She’s one of many women on TikTok and elsewhere on social media who credit Babydust with helping them conceive a child of their preferred sex.

Some acknowledge that the method is scientifically unfounded, while other posters are more credulous: In one video, Julie Wise, a mom of two in Massachusetts, said that it’s “not like a fact; I’m pretty sure it’s just like a theory,” but that she is nevertheless “kind of a believer.” In Wisconsin, a day-care owner and mom of four named Courtney Raspor said the method has something like a “90 percent success rate.” Some go a step beyond what the book recommends, into the realm of the woo: In Australia, Faye Briotti said that in addition to timing when she had sex, she also kept pink crystals and salt by her bed, and painted her nails pink.

A woman named Reagan, who’d had two boys and was hoping for a girl, said that she got rid of all her baby boy clothes , “because I really wanted to put out into the universe that I wanted a girl.” [ Read: The best parenting hack is being rich ] The rise of TikTok and other social-media platforms has given audiences ready access to folk-science life hacks of all kinds.

People can now more quickly find vertical videos about scientifically suspect practices such as mouth-taping and cortisol-lowering than they can make a doctor’s appointment to address snoring or weight gain.

Conceiving and carrying a pregnancy—high-stakes experiences that are full of uncertainty—seem to make some women unusually susceptible to dubious strategies.