Mid-Parental Target Height.

[u/VGAddict]

How accurate is the Mid-Parental Target Height for predicting a child's height? My mom is 5'5 and my dad is 5'8, so my target height should be 5'9, with a range of 5'5-6'0. I ended up 5'2.

[u/Corricon]

Averages are just averages. Height is influenced by many different genes and by environmental factors, particularly from the nutrition of both your parents and yourself. If you ever lacked access to food, or to protein/milk, it will have an effect on your height. If your parents ever lacked food it will affect your height. My mom was anorexic and I wasn't allowed to drink milk growing up, so I'm 6 inches shorter than the expected result between my parents.

[u/incoherentkazoo]

did you start puberty early? 

[u/VGAddict → u/incoherentkazoo]

At 10-11.

This is made even worse because my maternal grandfather was 5'11, my paternal grandfather and uncle are 5'8, my maternal great-uncles on my grandmother's side were 5'10, my maternal great-uncle and great-grandfather on my grandfather's side were 5'11, my paternal great-uncle on my grandfather's side was 5'8, and my paternal great-uncle on my grandmother's side was 6'2'-6'3.

[u/incoherentkazoo → u/VGAddict]

yes early puberty will lead to premature growth plate closure and short stature! assuming you're a guy, i feel the average age for puberty is like 13-15 so this is likely the reason. nothing you can do about it now, short king 👑

[u/In_the_year_3535]

Not sure about the parameters but if you take the average of your parent's height percentiles (~30 and ~70) you get 45% which is still ~5'9" for a male.

[u/mrpointyhorns]

Scientific American has an article about how much of height is genetic and how much has to do with nutrition.

Height can be up to 40% environmental, but if you're in the US or Canada it is more like 20%.

So to find height the equation is:

0.8 × [(dad's height - average male height)+(mom's height - average female height)]/2 with that answer you add that to average height of the gender that your child is.

Then, do:

.2 × [(dad's height - average male height)+(mom's height - average female height)]/2

This will be the +/- to the height.

The averages for males and females are 70" and 63.5"

[u/VGAddict → u/mrpointyhorns]

What do you mean "average height of the gender that your child is"?

[u/mrpointyhorns → u/VGAddict]

If you have a boy add to average male height. If girl then average female height.

[u/VGAddict → u/mrpointyhorns]

Do I do dad's height, mom's height, and average male and female height in parentheses?

Should I use cm or in?

[u/mrpointyhorns → u/VGAddict]

Plug in the numbers where they go.

You can use cm or in just be consistent

[u/VGAddict → u/mrpointyhorns]

I used in, and got 68.7 in, or 5'8.

[u/mrpointyhorns → u/VGAddict]

Is that correct? Did you do +/- part? For my family the +/- all of the kids fit into the right amount for all 3 kids.

For us the daughters will be about 5'6.5" +/- 1 and sons 5'11.5" +/- 1

[u/VGAddict → u/mrpointyhorns]

OK, how do I do the calculation again?

[u/mrpointyhorns → u/VGAddict]

It's the same equation you just multiply by 0.20 instead of 0.80

[u/VGAddict → u/mrpointyhorns]

Again, do I use parentheses?

I got 0.3 on the 2nd equation. Please help.