A new research has found that baby girls are able to cope with stress, while in the womb. There is a lot of difference about how baby girls and boys cope with stress during pregnancy and the studies at the University of Adelaide's Robinson Institute have managed to establish these differences.

The girls tend to cope with multiple events before birth, like having a mother smoking, drinking alcohol, suffering from asthma or having an infection. Girls appear more resilient. On the other hand boys only do better than girls if the mother only faces a single stress, like asthma, or a single infection.

Associate Professor Vicki Clifton said, "Basically, what we see, when mum has a stressful event during pregnancy, is that boys make themselves as big as they possibly can and ignore what is happening in mum's body".

Girls have better chances of surviving if something else goes wrong in the pregnancy, as they can make themselves just a little bit smaller. Boys are more at risk of delivering pre-term, if something goes wrong.

While girls make adjustments to the presence of stress hormones, boys try to ignore them. Professor Clifton opined that her research would help pregnant mothers about know about the risks associated with habits such as smoking and alcohol use, which can affect their babies.