Because they don’t mow the lawn?
According to a recent study by two economists, U.S. parents of a girl are about 5 percent more likely to divorce than parents of a boy. U.S. parents with three girls are almost 10 percent likely to divorce. Full disclosure: I have three girls. Well I guess I’m lucky to be in the U.S. as this disparity is wider in the developing countries surveyed: Columbia, Kenya, Vietnam. In China, parents get condolence letters when their newborn is female.
It is not just divorce statistics. Divorced mothers with girls are substantially less likely to re-marry than if they had boys. And, as before, that marriage is less likely to last.
Even unmarried couples are less likely to marry if they find out that their fetus is female. So why do couples seem to prefer boys? The authors of the study don’t say–they are economists, not psychologists. I can’t relate myself, because I really dig being a father to girls.
Yesterday, one of my wife’s friends came over and brought her five-year-old boy over to play with our girls. He ran all over the place constantly screaming and the top of his lungs while chasing my middle daughter and hitting her with a foam bat. My other two girls played pretty quietly by themselves. The daughter being chased was giggling so it wasn’t too violent, but the boy’s mother did almost nothing to rein him in because he was just being a normal kindergarten boy. He was certainly more boisterous than I’ve ever seen my girls. And I don’t have angels.
Years ago, my wife came to the same conclusion that boys are more highly-strung after an afternoon watching the neighbor’s toddler boy.
So why do couples prefer boys? The conclusion I come to is that they obviously must crave the turmoil. :-)