Watering the crops does nothing, if you're low on food, put your farmers on fishing (if you have it yet) or foraging. If you have enough food, change them to scientists or builders whatever you need done. I find it best to put my farmers on more useful tasks while waiting for crops and if you need tech points, they'll help accumulate them quickly.

As for babies, seems from other posts in here that there is no rhyme or reason to the sex of the baby. You could be having a great game and suddenly wind up with only one sex of villager and all is lost. Just pure dumb luck. However, it seems that for most players, myself included, it eventually evens out.