Triplet children in great Britain and Ireland

Abstract

Measurements taken at a fixed age of 115 surviving triplet children show no distinct difference in stature from children by single birth. The precision of the comparison is, however, limited by scanty knowledge of the average bodily growth in the general population of Great Britain and Ireland. The average degree of resemblance between triplet children of opposite sex does not differ appreciably from that of twins of opposite sex, or of fully grown brothers and sisters by different births. The differences between triplets of like sex are intermediate in magnitude between those found by Dahlberg in groups of like-sex twins classified as monozygotic and dizygotic respectively. The comparison indicates that about 54% of the like-sex triplets pairs measured were monozygotic. The correlation between triplet children of like sex, the estimate of which could be improved by a better knowledge of the population, agrees well with that found for like-sex twins in Lauterbach''s measurements, and indicates a correlation between monozygotic pairs of about 0.92.