search for: boy_1

...if the first birth is male, b1=2 if the first birth is female, and b1=NA if the family did not record any first birth. Similarly for b2, b3, b4, b5 and b6. I want to record the positions of the male children within their family's birth history. So, I was thinking of creating six variables boy_1, boy_2, ..., boy_6. boy_1 would record the position of the first boy, boy_2 would record the position of the second boy and so on till boy_6. I want to assign a value of zero to boy_i if the family in question did not have the i_th boy. I am not sure how best to do this (i.e., whether to create va...