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reTHE AUGHTERS HAVE long linked to divorce. Several studies conducted in America since the 1980s provide strong evidence that a couple’s firstborn being a girl increases the likelihood of their subsequent separation. At the time, the researchers involved hypothesized that this was an expression of “preference for sons,” a phenomenon which, in its most extreme form, manifests itself in selective or abortion. infanticide of female offspring.
Work published in the Economic Journal, however, demystifies this particular idea. In “Daughters and Divorce,” Jan Kabatek of the University of Melbourne and David Ribar of Georgia State University, Atlanta, confirm that having an eldest daughter indeed increases the risk of divorce for that child’s parents, both in America. than in the Netherlands. But, unlike previous work, their study also looked at the effect of the girl’s age. She revealed that the risk of “divorce between girls” only appears during the teenage years of the first daughter (see graph). Before reaching the age of 12, daughters are no more linked to marriage breakdown than sons. “If fathers were really more likely to take off because they preferred sons, they certainly wouldn’t wait 13 years to do it,” says Dr Kabatek. Instead, he argues, the fact that the risk is so age specific requires a different explanation, namely that parents argue more about the education of teenage girls than teenage sons.
Taken over the years, the daughter effect, while real, is small. In the Netherlands, when their firstborn turns 18, 20.12% of couples will have divorced if that child is a son, compared to 20.48% if it is a girl, an increase in the probability of 1.8 %. But in the five years when the firstborn is between 13 and 18, this increase rises to 5%. And it peaks at 9% when the child is 15 years old. In America, for which the data collected by researchers was rarer than that of the Netherlands, the numbers are roughly double.
Anyone who has – or has been – a teenager knows how eventful these years can be. Surveys confirm that teenage daughters and fathers, in particular, annoy each other. They also show that parents of teenage girls talk more about parenthood than parents of sons, and mothers of teenage girls report much more disagreements with their partners over money and become more open to the idea of money. divorced. Previous research has also shown that one of the things parents fight over the most is how much control they should control over their teens’ personal choices, such as how they dress, who they date. and where they work.
In light of all this, it’s fascinating that Dr Kabatek and Dr Ribar have found one type of couple that seems immune to the daughter effect: those in which the father grew up with a sister. Having somewhat seen things from a sister’s point of view can act as a kind of social inoculation. ■
This article appeared in the Science and Technology section of the print edition under the title “Teenage rampage”
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