Parents prefer boys

[House of Mustard]

http://channels.netscape.com/ns/homerealestate/package.jsp?name=fte/parentspreferboys/parentspreferboys

Kind of shocking stuff.  I don't know if I agree with their conclusions, though.

[Tage]

Yeah, I don't buy it.

[Mistress of Darkness]

A whole 5% huh? Sounds like they are mistaking the actual cause if the amount is that small. And kids don't ever cause parents to divorce, imo. And forgive me for thinking that economists should stick to economics, rather than dabbling in relational psychology.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

5% is hardly convincing, but there is cultural grounds for the idea that parents prefer boys. Stronger in Asian cultures than Western, sure, but it's still there. Sons will "carry on your name," girls therefore don't give you the immortality that children are supposed to do.

Again, I don't think this "study" is giving any solid info, but just thought I'd throw out that the idea is not as ludicrous as you're making it out to be.

Note: this post has nothing to do with my personal opinions about girls or boys. I LOVE my three daughters and don't want to "replace them" in anyway. As it stands, I don't even want to try for a boy, 3 girls is enough for me. This post, therefore, is just my observations about a cultural phenomenon.

[stacer]

Absolute bunk. Articles like this are constantly making out correlations to be causations, which are entirely different. Maybe guys who father only girls have some sort of genetic disorder that makes them more likely to divorce, for heaven's sake. And to echo MoD, unless it's psychologists or family scientists making such claims, or even some sort of anthropologist.... Sorry, economists? I don't think so.

[Fellfrosch]

The conclusions stated in the article have no visible support, so I'm inclined to disbeleive them. The correlations, however, still stand (if I may be controversial for a moment): parents of girls are statistically more likely to get divorced, and mothers of girls are less likely to get remarried. That's not something you need a sociology degree to figure out--any economist with census data and a calculator could do it. So my question is this: do you doubt their numbers altogether (lies, damn lies, and statistics) or do you think there could actually be something behind it? Stacer's genetic explanation, while far-fetched, could very easily be true. Any other ideas?

[Mistress of Darkness]

Their numbers might be correct, though I would like to see what surveys were actually conducted and how extensive the data they analyzed was, because I suspect there was some statistical mumbo-jumbo going on. But numbers do not neccessarily imply causation. And I stand by the theory that children do not cause divorce. It is true that they may aggrevate problems and conflicts already there, but children do not break up families.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

Children do not. Of course not. that would remove the free will of the parents. They choose to get divorce, and face it, Kids at stress, no matter how loved and good they are. So the parents feel this stress and direct it to... getting divorce. It's not the kids' fault, but ignoring that they factor in isn't going to get anywhere. Maybe female children produce more stress than boys. That wouldn't be absurd.

However, maybe men who produce girls are genetically predisposed to divorce (seems a bit dicey, MUCH more so than cultural predisposition to wanting boys, because it also assumes that there is a direct link between the endocrinology [most likely biological cause of deviant behavior linked to genetics] of social interaction and what type of sperm is produced -- a connection I've never seen evidence for). Maybe they are. However, that doesn't explain why women who have girls are statistically likely to remain unmarried after a divorce.

[Mistress of Darkness]

I don't think anyone has explained why people who eat tomatos are 5% more likely to get cancer either.

Sorry, but 5% is too easily a coincidence.

And yes, children are stressful. But to a healthy family, the stress and challenges bring them together, rather than tearing them apart. Being stressed in a healthy marriage causes one to turn to their spouse for support, rather than from them.

And I'm rabbling and will endeavor to stop now.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

I KNEW I'd read this discussion somewhere before.

Not about the boys and girls, but the response.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A24995-2003Sep30.html

Short form:
Man says something that doesn't reflect well on women
Woman takes offense and explains how this is chauvanistic.
Woman than explains alternative explanation which is just as sexist.
Man points this out.
what's left out is that man next get immasculated.

there is at least one thing that keeps getting left out: the difference is only 5%, yes (and I'd argue that this is enough if it is consistant, which hasn't been shown), which seems scant. but it's conveniently ignored that this percentage grows as the number of girls grows. I think there's a real trend. Especially if a different study backs it up.

Granted, there's nothing saying "little girls cause divorce" like the article wants you to believe. Though there's something connected to girls and divorce behavior if the study is repeatable.

Don't think I'm just blythely ignoring it, as the father of three girls, according to this article, i'm 10% more likely to get a divorce. (I wonder what numbers are for mixed gender children families)

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

The notion that children could be the sole reason parents get divorced insults and disgusts me. My parents statyed together too long because of me and the resulting implosion of their marriage in my Junior and Senior years of highschool is too painful for words. I still have emotional scars because of the event.

[stacer]

5% can be statistically significant and it can be insignificant. It all depends on the numbers you're looking at. I took an entire class on it, but it's a concept that's escaped me. But the fact remains that though the correlation exists, it could just be a fluke--two things happening at once that have independent causes (genetically more likely to have girls, and independently more likely to have dysfunctional families because of intergenerational transmission, money arguments, selfishness, or whatever). Or, yes, they could be related. Maybe girls do cause more stress in a family. But I'm sure it's not --what's the word that's such an insult to historians? Monocausational. I'm sure it's a pretty complicated matrix of causes.

[House of Mustard]

Well, 5% can be extremely big, if the statistical measures say it is.  It's a simple test (well, simple in the sense that basic statistical software can handle it - I'd hate to do it by hand) called ANOVA - Analysis of Variance.  You enter all of the possible variables into it, and it will tell you which ones are statistically significant, and how significant they are.

Now, there's nothing in the article saying that they used this, but I can garauntee that they would never have even been published if they hadn't.

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

In my family it was definately related to a number of factors. While fortunately there was no violence (physically) my mother was abusive emotionally. For her in the late 1960's getting married was about the only way to escape her life in a rural southern town with no prospects or a woman to do anything with her life. Her father was an alcoholic and verbally abusive, (eventually he died in a drunk driving accident)  Unfortunately the life she married into was one of a career army officers wife.
My father who had just come back from 2 tours in Viet Nam (one as a member of the 5th special forces and one as an Army Aviator with the 101st airborne) wanted to have a normal 2.3 kids and a dog life after the horrors of war. Like my mother he had an alcoholic father who instead of being abusive left him at the age of 10, the only time he ever contacted my father again was on his death bed in Florida, by then it was too late.
So you have two people, victims of emotional abuse and trauma getting married who should not have. The stress of one child barely added to the formula at all. In fact they both said after the fact that I was the one thing that they never regretted about being married.
The whole thing worked pretty well untill I was 16 and pretty much raised. Then my mother left. Walked out one night without a word and the next time she came back it was for half. Half my fathers retirement, half my college fund, a car that my father had to pay the insurence on, and the cats, but not me.

Definately not monocausational at all.

Part of the problem is that society still has a stigma about divorce that makes it wrong for people that discover they hate each other to split up. Part of the problem is that people are frivilous when they marry, focusing on sex, and not building a relationship. Part of the problem is money or the lack of it, which has been proven by better margins to be a more reliable contributing factor to divorce. 95% of all divorces in the first 3 years of marriage are at least partially caused by money problems.

I guess the problem for me with the whole thing is saying you found a cause and then blaming the victims, claiming they are the cause. The article smacks of ones about rape victims, you know the ones where because the victim was dressed attractively or provocatively she "asked for it".

[Fellfrosch]

I don't think any of us are saying that children ar ethe sole cause of divorce, and I know that none of us are saying that the gender of children causes divorce. Causes are virtually impossible to determine, especially when all you have are statistics, so stop getting offended by what we're not implying.

Whether you hate it or not, what we're saying is that the correlation exists. Or that the data is completely bogus, which is (interestingly) what the women are all arguing for.