Cain
6th October 2003, 09:45 AM
Another provocative article from Slate's Steve Landsburg: http://slate.msn.com/id/2089142/
A snippet:
If you want to stay married, three of the most ominous words you'll ever hear are "It's a girl." All over the world, boys hold marriages together, and girls break them up.
In the United States, the parents of a girl are nearly 5 percent more likely to divorce than the parents of a boy. The more daughters, the bigger the effect: The parents of three girls are almost 10 percent more likely to divorce than the parents of three boys. In Mexico and Colombia the gap is wider; in Kenya it's wider still. In Vietnam, it's huge: Parents of a girl are 25 percent more likely to divorce than parents of a boy.
Ever since the economists Gordon Dahl (at the University of Rochester) and Enrico Moretti (at UCLA) established these facts a few months ago, they and their colleagues (and not a few of their colleagues' friends and families) have been spinning hypotheses about what's behind the numbers.
I recall Robert Wright's _The Moral Animal_ citing a study by a pair of evolutionary psychologists who recorded how long rich and poor parents breast fed their children by gender. At least, I think it was breast feeding. Anyway, rich moms breast fed their boys longer than their daughters. Among poorer folks it was the exact opposite. Wright tentatively stated that this implies it's genetically advantageous for rich parents to have sons because material resources figure prominently into a female's choice of mate. So a wealthy young man could sire more children. A strategy for the poor might be to pamper a young girl and hope she "marries up."
A snippet:
If you want to stay married, three of the most ominous words you'll ever hear are "It's a girl." All over the world, boys hold marriages together, and girls break them up.
In the United States, the parents of a girl are nearly 5 percent more likely to divorce than the parents of a boy. The more daughters, the bigger the effect: The parents of three girls are almost 10 percent more likely to divorce than the parents of three boys. In Mexico and Colombia the gap is wider; in Kenya it's wider still. In Vietnam, it's huge: Parents of a girl are 25 percent more likely to divorce than parents of a boy.
Ever since the economists Gordon Dahl (at the University of Rochester) and Enrico Moretti (at UCLA) established these facts a few months ago, they and their colleagues (and not a few of their colleagues' friends and families) have been spinning hypotheses about what's behind the numbers.
I recall Robert Wright's _The Moral Animal_ citing a study by a pair of evolutionary psychologists who recorded how long rich and poor parents breast fed their children by gender. At least, I think it was breast feeding. Anyway, rich moms breast fed their boys longer than their daughters. Among poorer folks it was the exact opposite. Wright tentatively stated that this implies it's genetically advantageous for rich parents to have sons because material resources figure prominently into a female's choice of mate. So a wealthy young man could sire more children. A strategy for the poor might be to pamper a young girl and hope she "marries up."