COMMENT
From our "The Latest Research is Bad for You" file: worrying new data shows that daughters cause divorce. Economists Gordon Dahl (University of Rochester) and Enrico Moretti (UCLA) have found that a couple with one daughter is 5 per cent more likely to divorce than a couple with one son.
The
more daughters, the greater the effect, although it remains statistically small. Couples with all girls have the highest divorce rate; couples with all boys the lowest.
Why? The researchers don't seem to have a clue. Although they've hypothesised that it might be to do with men's preference for a male heir, or because having someone to kick a ball around with in the back yard strengthens marriage.
The writer of an article on the subject in online magazine Slate failed to endear himself to his readership when he suggested a simple reason for these figures - parents like boys better.
Still, it gets you thinking, especially after a punishing session of late-night female pre-teen histrionics about clothes, hair, homework, who is being, like, a total bitch to whom and/or why we are the meanest parents in the world, counting known serial killers.
Our boys are now safely grown up and it's easy to view their childhood years through the rosy lenses of nostalgia. But it certainly was different.
At one son's 21st, his father's speech consisted of making his way through the archaeological layers of x-rays acquired in emergency room dashes over the years. There were the broken bones - he once went to school with both arms in casts, thus hindering his ability to deflect the cricket ball that then hit him in the head. (The x-ray department was greeting us with expressions of frank disbelief by this stage.) There was the cherry pip up the nose x-ray; the BB gun pellet in the head (don't ask) x-ray.
The other son largely avoided broken bones. He was too busy working on the 56 stitches (a family record) in various parts of his anatomy, thanks to a fondness for activities designed to launch the human body into space at speed. One reason parents might like boys better is possibly out of sheer gratitude and relief that they're still more or less in one piece.
There was the time Stitch Boy got his head stuck in a toy gridiron helmet; the time he got his finger stuck in a toy gun; the time he got both knees stuck through the stair railings, causing his heavily pregnant mother to laugh so hard she almost went into labour.
The girl has no stitches and has broken just one toe during an overly ambitious dance move.
Research based on the very small sample at our place reveals other key areas of difference between raising boys and girls.
Social relations: With girls there's a lot of psychological warfare - "He said she said she said he said". With boys, there's just warfare - "Ha ha!" Thump.
The worry: Being a concerned (or, as our children prefer, "paranoid") parent, I'm an equal opportunity worrier. But although her super-confident generation must be the scariest girls since that kid in The Exorcist, girls seem more vulnerable. The boys roamed the neighbourhood at will; if the girl goes to the park, I fret. And make her take her cellphone. I know. But being able to keep track of your kids is one of the few genuine advantages of the communications age.
Reading literature: Boys don't.
Culture: Girls love engaging in expensive, group-oriented after-school activities. Boys love PlayStation. Take a girl to a dreary three-hour-long Taiwanese movie (well, Peter Calder gave it five stars) and she will discuss the cinematography with you afterwards. Take a boy and zzzzzz.
Discipline: Your attempt at telling off the girl is merely another opportunity for her to communicate precisely how your entirely unreasonable criticism impacts negatively upon her self-esteem. A boy will yawn a lot. If that fails, he'll sulk.
Communication: From the early teens, the problem is to get the boy to talk. At all. A series of primordial grunts is the best that can be hoped for. Their telephone conversations - "S'up? Not much. Later." - are brief and to the point. Girls seem to learn to talk earlier and remain jammed on transmit, pretty much for life. Over years of driving girls to netball, art, dance (see Culture) I've never heard one finish a sentence without the help of the rest of the group.
Sturm und drang: Girls are naturally theatrical, in the sense that the slightest setback can bring on mad scenes normally confined to the opera stage. Only louder. Boys sulk. On the plus side, things girls make don't generally blow up and their rooms grow fewer microbes.
Eventually, thank God, they all tend to grow up to be lovely human beings. And, on reflection, I think the grey hairs they have given me are fairly evenly distributed along gender lines.
Even out there in research land, the news for girls isn't as bad as it sounds. The study also revealed that most parents prefer one of each. Parents who get their pigeon pair are statistically less likely to try for a third child than parents with two children of the same gender, no matter what the gender. In other words, statistics are often a load of old cobblers.
Yes, girls are a challenge. But most parents of daughters wouldn't have it any other way.
COMMENT
From our "The Latest Research is Bad for You" file: worrying new data shows that daughters cause divorce. Economists Gordon Dahl (University of Rochester) and Enrico Moretti (UCLA) have found that a couple with one daughter is 5 per cent more likely to divorce than a couple with one son.
The
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