Study on Left-Handedness

My mother is right-handed; my father was left-handed. Of their six children, four of us are left-handed, one is right-handed, and my brother Dennis writes left-handed but does most everything else right-handed. Statistically, our family beat the odds; today, about 10% of the overall population is left-handed. Except for my youngest brother, who was born in 1964, we were all born in the 50's, and back then, it was not politically correct to be a lefty (in more ways than one, ahem). Of course as children, what did we know about "handedness" - nothing, and my parents never made a fuss about what hand we used to do what. By the time we got to school age we were set in our ways, although the nuns at St. Rose's Catholic Grade School were determined to make it otherwise. But, try as they might, they could not get me (or two other of my equally stubborn left-handed sisters, heh heh) to write with right hand. Not even the purely evil Sister Elvira (who lived to be at least 1,000) with her swatting ruler that came down on my left hand hundreds of times. Of course the nuns would not admit defeat despite not being able to convert my sisters or I to the right-handed way, and so they taught us to slant our writing in the correct "right-handed" way so that it would not have that evil "left-handed" (back-handed) slant. My brothers did not go to catholic schools and so they were spared this torture. Today, Darlene, Yvonne and I all write in the same palsied-looking manner - with our wrists twisted around and our paper far askew, but our handwriting slants beautifully to the right. When people watch us write, they marvel that we can do it at all! When I watch my sisters write I wonder how they do it! I've been asked more than once over the years "does it hurt to write like that?" No, it doesn't. Not anymore. I became interested in the subject of "handedness" many years ago. The 50's are long gone, and as far as I know, at least in the United States children are no longer forced to favor one hand over the other - at least, good goddess - I sincerely hope not! I do wonder why there are so few of us - only 10% of the population - and why it seems that a disproportionately large number of left-handed people are among the lawyers, judges, politicians and physicists in the U.S. today. Is left-handed suppression still going on here and elsewhere? With the overwhelming majority of humans being right-handed, why hasn't left-handedness died out as an evolutionary dead-end? Why are there still left-handed people at all? One of the fascinating things I learned about our Goddesschess group back in 1999 was that most of us are left-handed, although we work the computer mouse with our right hands... Anyway, this is all a lead-in to another fascinating story I found at the New York Times - it's all Queen Victoria's fault! Victorian-Era Films Mined for Clues to Handedness By HENRY FOUNTAIN Published: September 18, 2007 Scientists look for data anywhere they can find it. Researchers from University College London studying handedness, for example, found data in a group of early 20th-century films of everyday English life. More than 800 short films made from 1900 to 1906 by Mitchell & Kenyon, a company in Blackburn, were found in 1994 and preserved by the British Film Institute. The researchers, Chris McManus and Alex Hartigan, wanted to see what the films showed about rates of left-handedness. More than 10 percent of people are left-handed, but studies have shown that the percentage was lower a century ago. The researchers found 391 arm-waving examples in the films, 61 involving the left arm. Other studies have shown a correlation between arm waving and handedness. In a control sample of 391 modern images of arm waving, 95 involved the left arm. The findings were published in Current Biology. The researchers estimated the ages of arm wavers and found that the frequency of left-arm use increased with age. It was higher, for example, among people estimated to have been born in the 1860s than those born in the 1870s. The researchers concluded left-handedness declined in Victorian England because of social and school pressures and the rise of industrial tools, among other factors, reaching bottom around the turn of the 20th century.