FiveThirtyEight: Having Daughters Rather Than Sons Makes You More Liberal (HT: Gruntled Center)
The post quotes from an article by Andrew J. Oswald and Nattavudh Powdthavee:
In remarkable research, the sociologist Rebecca Warner and the economist Ebonya Washington have shown that the gender of a person's children seems to influence the attitudes and actions of the parent.
Warner (1991) and Warner and Steel (1999) study American and Canadian mothers and fathers. The authors' key finding is that support for policies designed to address gender equity is greater among parents with daughters. This result emerges particularly strongly for fathers. Because parents invest a significant amount of themselves in their children, the authors argue, the anticipated and actual struggles that offspring face, and the public policies that tackle those, matter to those parents. . . The authors demonstrate that people who parent only daughters are more likely to hold feminist views (for example, to favor affirmative action).
By collecting data on the voting records of US congressmen, Washington (2004) is able to go beyond this. She provides persuasive evidence that congressmen with female children tend to vote liberally on reproductive rights issues such as teen access to contraceptives. In a revision, Washington (2008) argues for a wider result, namely, that the congressmen vote more liberally on a range of issues such as working families flexibility and tax-free education.
Our [Oswald and Powdthavee's] aim in this paper is to argue, with nationally representative random samples of men and women, that these results generalize to voting for entire political parties. We document evidence that having daughters leads people to be more sympathetic to left-wing parties. Giving birth to sons, by contrast, seems to make people more likely to vote for a right-wing party. Our data, which are primarily from Great Britain, are longitudinal. We also report corroborative results for a German panel. Access to longitudinal information gives us the opportunity -- one denied to previous researchers -- to observe people both before and after they have a new child of any particular gender. We can thereby test for political 'switching'. Although
panel data cannot resolve every difficulty of establishing cause-and-effect relationships, they allow sharper testing than can simple cross-section data.
Warner (1991) and Warner and Steel (1999) study American and Canadian mothers and fathers. The authors' key finding is that support for policies designed to address gender equity is greater among parents with daughters. This result emerges particularly strongly for fathers. Because parents invest a significant amount of themselves in their children, the authors argue, the anticipated and actual struggles that offspring face, and the public policies that tackle those, matter to those parents. . . The authors demonstrate that people who parent only daughters are more likely to hold feminist views (for example, to favor affirmative action).
By collecting data on the voting records of US congressmen, Washington (2004) is able to go beyond this. She provides persuasive evidence that congressmen with female children tend to vote liberally on reproductive rights issues such as teen access to contraceptives. In a revision, Washington (2008) argues for a wider result, namely, that the congressmen vote more liberally on a range of issues such as working families flexibility and tax-free education.
Our [Oswald and Powdthavee's] aim in this paper is to argue, with nationally representative random samples of men and women, that these results generalize to voting for entire political parties. We document evidence that having daughters leads people to be more sympathetic to left-wing parties. Giving birth to sons, by contrast, seems to make people more likely to vote for a right-wing party. Our data, which are primarily from Great Britain, are longitudinal. We also report corroborative results for a German panel. Access to longitudinal information gives us the opportunity -- one denied to previous researchers -- to observe people both before and after they have a new child of any particular gender. We can thereby test for political 'switching'. Although
panel data cannot resolve every difficulty of establishing cause-and-effect relationships, they allow sharper testing than can simple cross-section data.
Very interesting, and affirming of something I've noted in my own experience.
My wife and I have three daughters (and no sons) all in their 20s now. I'm certainly not liberal in my political views, but the church I planted 15 years ago does have female pastors on staff, something I would have never expected back then.
Coming out of seminary, I had never really wrestled with the "women in ministry" question. I was decidely in the all-male leadership camp, a position that came by default from my teenage years in a conservative Baptist church. But when women with strong pastoral gifts kept showing up, I had to research it and I concluded that both sides of the question had great (biblical) answers, and that I wasn't smart enough to figure out who was right. So, I went with the yes-to-women position.
I'm pretty sure that having three little girls at the time helped me to be open to it.
Posted by: Rick McGinniss | May 21, 2009 at 08:40 AM
We have three daughters and no sons... hmmm... so this is why I think like I do!
Posted by: neil | May 21, 2009 at 12:54 PM
It would be interesting to know what happens to those who end up without children.
Another stat I've seen is that single young women tend to be the most politically liberal. yet when they marry, political views often moderate considerably. Don't know how that ties in either.
Posted by: Michael W. Kruse | May 21, 2009 at 03:15 PM
Interesting. I wonder if people with sons and daughters are more moderate.
Posted by: Travis Greene | May 21, 2009 at 03:55 PM