Couples with daughters only are more likely to divorce, claims new study

Children are pearls. And just like pearls are available in just about every colour you can imagine, social science is now calling for more sober debate on which is the stronger sex; boys or girls.

Whether a boy or girl the birth of a child has been celebrated in most families, especially in the African culture. However, modern science is arguing with previous researches in the US implying that couples with daughters are more likely to divorce.

Papers published on the effect of a firstborn child’s gender on marital stability has over the years concluded that there were higher divorce rates where girls were firstborns than otherwise, a son.

Claims that fathers prefer boys and are more likely to stay in marriages that produce sons have been made for decades, to the extent that the theory has become accepted in popular culture as the truth.

In a 2008 joint research by Enrico Moretti with economist Gordon Dahl, they found out that boys are more prized in the US than girls and there were higher rates of divorce where girls were born.

In the study titled ‘the demand for sons’ the pair found out that couples who conceive a child out of wedlock and find out that it will be a boy are more likely to marry before the birth of their baby and that parents who have first-born girls are significantly more likely to be divorced.

Moretti and Dahl concluded that because of this preference, fathers are more likely to marry their partner, less likely to divorce, and more likely to fight for child custody if they have sons versus daughters.

So do daughters cause divorce?

Scientists at Duke University in North Carolina last week found that girls are more likely than boys to be born to parents whose relationship is already in trouble due to what they termed as ‘robustness of female embryos’ which may explain why couples with daughters are more likely to divorce.

The latest research indicates that female embryos are harder in the womb, so they are more likely to reach full term if the expectant mother is in a stressful relationship.

Researchers Amar Hamoudi and Jenna Nobles challenged previous research that girls cause divorce calling for a critical look at the study period between fertilisation to birth than studying the family patterns after the child was born.

The two researchers based their research on longitudinal data from a nationally representative sample of US residents from 1979 to 2010  and called for the need to look beyond the premise that girls cause divorce; instead researchers attributes this to the toughness of female embryos.

“We are saying: ‘Not so fast.’ What about all those pregnancies that don’t end up in a live birth?” said the two scientists who now suggest that girls survive to be born in troubled relationships than boys.

This study also noted there was the monetary or time factor on raising girls who were considered more expensive thus discourages fathers of girls from marrying their partners.

Most studies on African culture show there is a high preference for boys than girls and that male children are valued for their role in retaining or perpetuating family name.

Kenyatta University lecturer Catherine Gakii Murungi expressed concern that despite scientific evidence that the women does not determine the sex of the child, educated men and an informed society show contempt to the woman who begets daughters only.

“Some men have upheld this tradition of kicking women out of their homes on the same basis that they need a woman who can give them a son, yet they know the woman doesn’t determine the sex of the child,” said Dr Murungi who teaches at the department of Early Childhood Studies and has published papers on child preferences in Kenya.

Dr Murungi cites other instances of child preference in the Kenyan culture, which she believes should not be upheld in the society.

“In certain communities, when a boy was born he was celebrated by giving five ululations whereas three were given for a baby girl,” Dr Murungi added.

“It was considered to be a waste of resources in educating a girl-child and very few were lucky to receive education then,” she added.

In a 2013 study by Dr Murungi on the preference of children to educate in Meru County, 52 per cent chose to educate the boy and the rest opted for the girl child.

Another study in Meru by Meshack Ncabira showed that parents believed that boys are more intelligent than the girls and that girls are less success-oriented than boys.

“Given the perceptions of parents in the two studies, it is not surprising to find girls who have dropped out of school due to family inability to meet their financial demands of schooling, or being used as a source of income for the household,” noted Dr Murungi.

However, Dr Murungi noted some parents have opted to educate the girl-child despite the long-standing preference for boys. “Some hold the view that girls are more development-conscious and more responsible; they are less problematic and more vulnerable,” Dr Murungi noted.

She further noted that some parents who supported girl-child education gave examples of what girls have done in their villages like constructing permanent houses for their parents, helping the needy children in the community and cited the fact that girls can now become national leaders and take powerful positions in government unlike before.

Dr Murungi noted that though this trend is slowly fading, it is important to provide both educational and job opportunities for both sexes to allow healthy competition for the development of the country.

“Some individuals and  communities are deeply-rooted on the negative cultures need to adapt the current trends so that every girl can have a chance to a better life by giving them an opportunity to explore their full potential without withholding anything from them on the basis that they will be married and leave,” Dr Murungi concluded.

The authors also found that a couple’s level of relationship conflict at a given time also predicted the sex of children born to that couple at later points in time with women who reported higher levels of marital conflict were more likely to give birth to girls, rather than boys.

“Girls may well be surviving stressful pregnancies that boys can’t survive,” Hamoudi said adding that girls are more likely than boys to be born into marriages that were already strained.”

The researcher further notes that the rates between the boys and girls are very small and in a given study period, about two per cent of couples with first-born sons will divorce and 2.1 per cent of couples with first-born females will divorce.

The study looks at the months before birth, patterns that have earlier been ignored by population scientists that the authors say could provide crucial links that could shed more light on demography.