According to British researchers, parents' voting patterns are linked to the gender of their children. By looking at people who switched their votes from liberal to conservative and vice versa, they found that the more girls you have, the more liberal your voting record becomes, and the more sons you have, the more conservative you become.
Since voting patterns cannot determine the gender of children, he says, the childrenís gender must be influencing parental voting pattern.Fascinating results, and like a big, strong cardboard box, if you use your imagination, it can be anything you want it to be.
Voting and the feminine mystique [times of london, via isteve and rw]
Is it causality or correlation? Maybe it's not having boys that makes you conservative, but being conservative that makes you have boys. Like some kind of testosterone thing.
[But the study shows people switching after the birth, so it's not a discrete pre-identified political population. And since the Tories have been politically impotent for a decade, maybe this works the other way. -ed.]
Maybe my family is just freaky (ummm, yeah), but my dad has four daughters and is very conservative politically and socially -- with the exception of the last election where he abstained because he can't bear GWB's policies (!). My mom always voted Democrat, but I think that was mostly to piss my dad off. My sister who has three sons and her husband are the biggest bleeding hearts you can imagine, as is my MIL with six sons. So, my anecdata doesn't support this theory.
We've got one of each and are just as liberal as we were before the boy was born.
Perhaps it is just looking out for your children? A world governed by conservatives is, in many respects, not advantageous (reproductive rights, civil rights, equal pay, etc.) to women, but is to men.
Of course, a conservative might see it differently...
[a conservative on isteve commented how a daughter made him want to jail and kill more criminals. or words to that effect. -ed.]