Families are especially complex: Cause and effect are hard to disentangle in the bubbling cauldron that is a household. There are the daily negotiations between husband and wife, instructions to (and rejections by) children, and interactions with people outside the family. Taken as a whole, it is a challenge for a social scientist to analyze.
But there is at least one lens through which family interactions and feedback have become apparent: gender. It turns out that a complex set of negotiations and drives revolve around the sex of children, which involve both effects from parents onto children and vice versa.
When resources are scarce, or when a female’s health is not in tip-top shape, or when she is at the bottom of the hierarchy, she skews toward the safer investment: daughters.
Read the full, original story: Stress Gives You Daughters, Sons Make You Liberal: We affect our children’s gender, and it affects us back.
