Sons, Daughters, and Parental Behaviour

Abstract

The prevalence of son preference and its implications for family behaviour in developing countries have received a great deal of scholarly attention, but child-gender bias is believed to be empirically unimportant in wealthy, non-traditional societies. Studies by sociologists and psychologists during the past 30 years, however, have documented consistent discrepancies between the behaviour of parents of sons and parents of daughters-boys tend to increase marital stability and marital satisfaction relative to girls, and fathers spend more time with, and are more involved with, sons than daughters. In recent years, economists have begun to contribute to the child-gender literature, reexamining the effects of sons and daughters on family structure and parental involvement with larger samples and greater concern for possible sources of selection bias. Other economic outcomes, such as market work and earnings, have also been studied, and some investigators have exploited the randomness of child gender as a source of exogenous variation in parental behaviour. In general, recent results suggest that child gender does affect family stability and the time allocation of parents, but it is not clear whether these responses reflect parental preferences for boys rather than girls or differences in the constraints parents face.

Gender gaps in the effects of childhood family environment: Do they persist into adulthood?

“…Sex-selective abortion, which might generate a correlation between marital status and child gender, is not expected to be an important consideration in the Danish context, but there is considerable evidence from a number of countries that fathers are more likely to co-reside with, seek custody of, and marry the mothers of their sons rather than daughters (Lundberg and Rose, 2003;Dahl and Moretti, 2008;Lundberg, 2005). There is also increasing evidence that the Trivers-Willard hypothesis, which suggests that females in advantaged circumstances are more likely to bear male offspring, may apply to human populations through the impact of stress on the mortality of male and female fetuses (Almond and Edlund, 2007;Hamoudi and Nobles, 2014;Norberg, 2004;Trivers and Willard, 1973); though the effects of even extreme events are small.…”

Gender Differences and Professional Identities in Health and Engineering

“…The origin of these differences begins to be constructed before birth, as Lundberg (2005) points out since the definition of what is expected from boys and girls starts even before birth and is clearly marked in babies' rooms by the colors of the furniture, clothing, decoration, and toys. The task division at home between mother and father and between male and female children also conditions what one can expect from one and the other in the life course.…”

“…To achieve this purpose, we started from the conclusions of Lundberg (2005) and Raley and Bianchi (2006). These authors state that cultural values, norms, and traditions measure the professional choices and career planning of young people since they establish different education paths, associated with the gender and the feeling of social belonging, defining which groups will be at risk or marginalized, as well as valued and rewarded.…”

Gender-influenced Parents’ Investment in Children’s Education

“…Parents and children of the same sex may achieve the symbiosis of interests more easily. If fathers want more to have sons than daughters, mothers can see the birth of a son as a way to strengthen the marriage bond (Lundberg, 2006). Parents may assume that boys need fathers as role models more than girls, and this may have an impact on higher number of interactions in a pair of father and son versus in a pair of father and daughter.…”