Psyche, Science, and Society

Child gender and voting patterns

February 20th, 2006

The New York Times Week in Review has a fascinating article [Children, the Littlest Politicians] on gender differences in political allegiances. No, this isn’t the well-known gender gap whereby women lean Democratic and men Republican. Rather, parents of boys tend to vote more conservatively than parents of girls. Most of the research conducted so far has been in Europe. For example:

“In Germany, two-thirds of people who switched their political affiliation in the year after having a son moved to the more conservative party. The ratio was flipped for those who had a daughter.
In Britain, the two left of center parties, Labor and the Liberal Democrats, do much better — 11 percentage points — among voters with three girls and no boys than among voters with three boys and no girls. “

As the Times article points out, these findings avoid the famous researcher warning: correlation doesn’t prove causation, for, as the article states, “there is no way that voting for a Democrat makes someone more likely to bear a daughter.” For political activists these findings raise profound questions about the origins of political attitudes and behaviors that we ignore at our peril.

I am writing a more extened piece on issues raised by this article.

Entry Filed under: Psychology, Social Issues