Does anyone else hate the way you can choose your baby's gender or so easily accidentally choose without having a clue that you did?
I think its so stupid how simply eating or even having certain fruit on the lot can determine the gender of an incoming baby, it makes me mad being forced to quarantine my Sims from having fruit just to get a random gender. ><

I suppose it was made this way to go with the new "Have a Girl" and "Have a Boy" wants (which I'm also not keen on, by the way". Choosing baby gender or at least being able to influence it has always been a BIG community want for the sims 2, so I imagine the developers thought of that as well. I don't like it either, it's not in the least realistic, but strangely enough I feel that a lot of realism has been taken out of the game anyway.

Could someone post what these fruits are, and whether they cause a boy or a girl... And also whether they have to be eaten, or simply be present on the lot, and if that includes even the plant if your sim is a gardener?

I ask because, well, it would be great to know, seeing as how I have 4 GIRLS! Seriously, I like my girls, but I need someone to carry on the family name!

Watermelon for girls, apple for boys. The pregnant sim must either eat the actual fruits, or items made with them (pancakes, waffles, etc.)

what I've been doing is when I see those wants/wishes whatever you want to call them I lock them. It doesn't mean I'm going to do what it takes to make it happen I just lock in case they do get the gender they want lol

In my game my self sim and her boyfriend had a baby boy while I was playing another house. Last time I played I actually played their household and had her get pregnant again. (I actually wanted to be around for this pregnancy lol) and her and the boyfriend both wanted a girl. But wound up with another boy. I don't remember if she ate apple pancakes during that time or not...makes me wonder.

I don't mind there being a way to choose, I know a lot of people want that, its that they made it so easy to do it without knowing. there's a lot of people complaining of their families having only one gender no matter how many they try.
as for the wishes, I just lock them and if they get it, its a bonus.

Are you speaking metaphorically? Because in my game, when I marry a female from an active household to some guy from the neighborhood, the male takes on her family name.

You have to eat 3 servings of watermelon to give a higher chance for girl and 3 servings of apples for higher chance of having a boy i believe i read it in my sims 3 guide book and i usually always want girls so i always just eat 3 servings of watermelon while im preggers and so far ive always gotten a girl so try that.

i think if you want random, just don't have the mother eat anything with those fruits in it during her pregnancy. i've tried that with one sim and she's had two girls... hopefully that's random.

I don't think that's correct. My sim Kristie recently had a child, which was a boy, and she ate watermelon pancakes constantly.

I wish it wasn't so easy to do. Apple is like the first fruit we learn to make. I was on a board with people wondering why they were having nothing but sons...I think there should be a way to have boys and a way to have girls but I don't think it should be THAT simple that you'd often do it by mistake.

Pancakes are made w/ apples. Eggs Machivellian are made w/ watermelon.

I actually like being able to pick gender personally. My family oriented sim and her hubby have had two babies so far and Apples=boys Watermelon=girls has been useful. I've actually fed her pretty much exclusively on raw fruits during these pregnancies to ensure the sex of each one.

Like mentioned before, if you want gender to be random, just don't eat pancakes/EM/or other dishes made w/ these fruits (or eat them in equal measure I spose).

I have no problem with it whatsoever. I like that, if I want to, I can choose. It isn't difficult at all to have them not eat an apple or melon for three Sim days, if I do want the gender possibility to be completely random.

Well, to be perfectly honest, gender in Sims 2 isn't entirely random, as the game does try to balance the male to female ratio, and many people have run into the problem of unusually long strings of boy or girl births.

Since apples are among the first fruits Sims can grow and the cheapest they can buy, it's true that it's really easy, while starting out, to accidentally feed Sims lots of apple without really knowing, resulting in them having lots of boys. Watermelons require more gardening skill to plant, and are more than twice as expensive as apples in the supermarket, so feeding pregnant Sims watermelons requires more deliberate action from players.

Now that which fruit = which gender is an open secret, and the recipes containing these fruits have been revealed, avoiding them in order for the gender to be more or less random should be easy.

I think it'd be bad for people who haven't read the guides and don't go on forums like these ones etc.

They'd be eating pancakes all the time.

I agree completely. I'm okay with there being a way to choose (esp. since story-telling is so popular), but I don't like the method they used because it's way too easy to end up boy-heavy or to use the choose method without knowing you are/wanting to.

Correct me if I'm wrong

but eating apples / watermelon or whatever, increase the ODDS of having a specific gender, it doesn't guarantee to have a certain gender at 100%

Yeah. My selfSim had two boys, then I decided I wanted ONE girl to balance out the testosterone. So my Sim ate watermelon and cheesesteak the whole pregnancy and BAM- Boy. Then, I decided I'd try again one more time. Nothing but watermelon. Not even ice cream, no salad, cheesesteak, nothing. JUST WATERMELON. BAM! Twin boys. FML.

Not too sure.

My breeder family has only had 2 kids so far but their success rate in picking gender has been 100% so far (one girl, one boy). That's not nearly enough data to be statistically definitive though.

Mind you that I way exceeded the three pieces of watermelon / apples threshold during mom's two pregnancies so far, if that makes a difference. She might have eaten 2 meals that weren't straight up raw fruit.

They'll probably (try to) have another boy and an another girl and the leave the 5th kid's gender purely to fate.

Huh, crazy. Maybe she was sneaking apple juice injections in the shower...

Maybe my game is buggy, but I've had pancakes with every kind of fruit I stock in the fridge (and personally, I think grape pancakes would be disgusting AND hard to do...) -- I think apple is just the default when you've got no other kind of flavor.

Well...to be fair, we are playing "god," right?

We are the omnipotent beings in our Sims' universes?

So, picking the sex of our little simlings seems perfectly acceptable and logical to me.

Yeah, I haven't made anything other than apple pancakes yet, but the ingredient for pancakes is just listed as fruit.

This explains why my family always had boys. My Sims always eat apple pancakes.

I think its awesome! i've been wanting that in the sims 2 and i always save and go back to neighborhood to get the gender i want.
I think its a great idea =]