According to this article from the New York Times, twin births have increased 76% in the US between 1980 and 2009. One out of 30 kids born these days is now a twin!!! What an interesting society phenomenon...
It says that about two thirds of this spectacular rise can be attributed to the increased use of fertility drugs/assisted reproduction procedures (well not here, since the government is now reiumbursing couples doing IVF, but under the condition that only a single embryo is implanted), while the remaining third can be attributed to mothers being older than they used to be. I remember reading about that already, but as they get closer to menopause, women more regularly have two-egg cycles, naturally. Ha!
All of this mostly leads to fraternal twins, though... I suspect the rate of (rarer) identical twins has pretty much stayed the same... An old boyfriend of mine (when I was 18/19) was an identical twin, by the way. Yes, I could tell him apart from his brother (yes, I'm sure). It's funny though, even if they shared the same group of friends, they weren't crazy close and didn't really have that "special bond" a lot of people keep talking about. They were oppositional more often than they were fusional. But their mom did tell me that they talked (with the outside world) late, because as toddlers, they had their own little language only the other one could understand.
Which reminds me of this fascinating cover story in a recent National Geographic issue... About studies done on identical twins, which are in high demand in lots of science fields, since they provide such a rare insight on the old nature vs nurture debate... What I liked best about the story was that increasingly, researchers are coming to the ("radical") conclusion that genes and environment alone cannot explain everything, but rather that a third factor is probably playing much more of a role than previously thought: epigenetics. I'm no science maven, but from what I understand it's about how genes can change and express themselves or not due to "external" factors such as nutrition, exposure to contaminants, stress, etc.
4 comment(s):
I had the impression that I have been teaching more twins than I grew up with. Very interesting! Although IVF and mothers' age certainly are good explanations, I also wonder if there are other environmental elements that have an impact?
Apparently identical twins are more likely in older moms too - or so my sister-in-law who is carrying identical girls at age 39 was told by her doctor!
Really? I wouldn't have thought... Very interesting, anyway.
When you mentionned the famous "twin language" that they always seem to develop at an early age, it made me wonder something.
Has anyone ever studied these languages? We are able to decipher old, never heard languages, so I guess that any linguist could figure them out. Do they have a logical syntax? Are they consistant over time? What kind of idea can they express with it?
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