14 DAY TRIAL // According to a new scientific study, it would appear that fathers who have more daughters than sons are very likely to turn Left-wing, from a political standpoint, whereas the opposite holds true for mothers. Apparently, women tend to become more conservative, and to share their young boys' opinions on politics. The research even suggests that the number and gender of children a couple has can cause a radical shift in political perception, and that the new views could become directly opposite to the ones the couple had before making babies.
The new investigation, which is the result of a fruitful collaboration between Warwick University Professor Andrew Oswald and Dr. Nattavudh Powdthavee, based at the York University, shows that daughters tend to have a more liberal, Left-wing view on politics, in that they support initiatives such as higher taxes, as long as the extra money goes to agencies such as the NHS (National Health Service) in the UK, or the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) in the United States. Also, because women earn less money than men, on average, they tend not to get that much affected by higher taxes.
Over time, fathers tend to get overwhelmed by these Left-wing viewpoints. The more daughters they have, the faster they see the political situation from their children's viewpoints. In the UK, some speculate that this was the case with former labor party leader John Smith, who had three daughters. “This paper provides evidence that daughters make people more Left-wing, while having sons, by contrast, makes them more Right-wing,” the researchers write in a yet-unpublished article, to be submitted for consideration to a famed economic journal.
“As men acquire female children, those men gradually shift their political stance and become more sympathetic to the 'female' desire for a larger amount for the public good. They become more Left-wing. Similarly, a mother with sons becomes sympathetic to the 'male' case for lower taxes and a smaller supply of public goods. Potential feelings are much less independently chosen than people realize. Children mold their parents. It’s so scientifically because it’s out of the parents’ control whether they have a boy or a girl. 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,” Oswald adds in the study.
Another reason why parents tend to turn Left-wing when they have daughters could be the fact that they realize just how much their offspring will have to fight in life in order to get the same chances as their male peers. This realization makes fathers most of all especially attentive to the social disparities, which until then may have passed unnoticed, the Daily Mail informs.