ACCORDING to a recent survey in the UK, mothers who have had three daughters are likely to be less happy than others. Is this a proven scientific fact, or the result of a long tradition of sexism? Researchers are inclined to favour the latter hypothesis.
"Would you like to know the sex of your baby?" It's a question that doctors habitually ask during the routine second-trimester ultrasound. And to which a great number of parents answer "yes."
While many parents-to-be express a desire to get this kind of information in order to have a better idea of what their future offspring will look like and to help them visualise the child, for some parents-to-be, knowing whether it's a girl or a boy takes on another level of importance, potentially resulting in great surprise or disappointment (even if the latter feeling remains more difficult to admit).
A recent study goes even further, suggesting that this may influence mothers' morale in the long term. To reach this conclusion, researchers at the London School of Economics and Political Science combined data from two British longitudinal cohort studies involving a total of 34,000 adults (half of them born in 1958, the other in 1970).
The adults who took part were interviewed throughout their lives, at least once every 10 years. In the course of their investigation, the study's authors came to a surprising conclusion: parents who already had two children of the same gender seemed more inclined to want a third child, compared to those who had given birth to a girl and a boy. And while having two children of the same gender seemed to have a positive impact on the well-being of both mothers and fathers, the opposite was true for parents with three children of the same gender.
"Contrary to previous studies, having three children of the same gender negatively affects life satisfaction," the researchers write.
Specifically, this finding appears to concern mothers who have had three daughters, disappointed at not having given birth to a boy. A drop in morale that dissipates as the child grows: the study suggests that mothers have completely recovered from this sentiment by the time their third daughter reaches the age of 11. Interestingly, this shift in subjective well-being does not seem to appear in fathers who have had three children of the same gender, whether they have had three girls or three boys.
"[I]t seems that mothers do not want to have too many children of the same sex as them," write the authors of the study. The phenomenon would therefore specifically concern mothers having three girls.
Gender stereotypes that are hard to break
According to the study, one possible explanation for this phenomenon is that it "reflects the superior earning power (and therefore economic security) of boys, which persists despite progress in gender equality."
In other words, having at least one boy in the family is more reassuring for mothers. The authors of the study state, however, that they do not know whether this finding is unique to the dataset they used, or whether it reflects a more widespread phenomenon in society.
However, a preference for having boy children remains firmly rooted in certain cultures, notably in East Asian countries, "where the preference for boys is generally because they are more likely to work and take care of parents, especially in old age," the researchers point out. The desire to have a boy may also be influenced by certain enduring gender stereotypes, such as that boys are "stronger" or "braver" than girls.
In the West, it's more rooted in a desire to have children of both genders. However, some studies indicate a preference for boys among parents: a Gallup Institute survey published in 2018 showed that 36% of Americans would prefer to have a boy and 28% a girl. The same is true of a 2016 French survey, which shows a slight preference for boys among parents with lower levels of education. Here again, gender stereotypes are undoubtedly at work. – ETX Daily Up, August 12, 2023
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