как дети влияют на политические взгляды родителей
Children, the Littlest Politicians
By DAVID LEONHARDT
Published: February 19, 2006
цитирую статью полностью под катом:
IT was not so long ago that men and women voted along similar lines. Both sexes went overwhelmingly for Richard Nixon in 1972 and narrowly for Jimmy Carter in 1976.
Today, though, the gender gap - that men lean right and women lean left - has become a political truism, and a series of new studies suggests that gender plays an even bigger role in politics than many believed. Having a son tends to make parents more conservative, it appears, while a daughter makes them more liberal. The parental has become the political.
"Political feelings are much less independently chosen than people realize," said Andrew Oswald, an economist at the University of Warwick in Britain. "Children mold their parents."
So far, most of the work has examined Europe. Polling data in the United States hasn't received the same academic scrutiny, but it points in similar directions.
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.
What might this mean for the United States? These findings are consistent with a narrow but striking study by Ebonya Washington, a Yale economist. She found that men in Congress with daughters vote for abortion rights more often than those without daughters. But abortion is not a clear gender-gap issue. Polls show that more women oppose abortion than men.
Both researchers and political professionals say that economics rather than the abortion issue is a more likely explanation for any gap between the parents of girls and the parents of boys.
In small ways, having a daughter seems to make men think a little bit more like women when it comes to economic considerations like health care - and to make women focus even more on those issues. Democrats pushed for the Family and Medical Leave Act over Republican objections, for example, and more voters agree with Democratic positions on health care.
"You see a different set of experiences" when you have a daughter, said Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster. "You tend to see more of a role for government and more of a need for a safety net."
But the findings cut both ways. Boys aren't neutral. They seem to make some parents more conservative. In the United States, just 31 percent of parents with only boys call themselves Democrats, while 37 percent with only girls do, according to the General Social Survey, a large poll.
One reason, Mr. Oswald said, might be that men work longer hours and earn more money than women, giving the parents of boys reason to want lower taxes. Men also tend to prefer that individuals make decisions, a view that fits with Republican beliefs, while women prefer community solutions.
Matthew Dowd, a Republican strategist, adds another possibility: Many voters are influenced by their friends. Mr. Dowd speculates, for example, that parents of boys spend more time fishing and end up surrounded by Republicans.
Mr. Oswald's work, which was inspired by Ms. Washington's abortion study, is part of a surge of academic interest in children and gender.
The subject has the advantage of avoiding a common problem in social science: the blurry line between correlation and causation. Depressed people drink a lot, for instance. But are they depressed because they drink, or do they drink because they are depressed? Or do they have genetic disposition to both depression and drinking?
On the other hand, there is no way that voting for a Democrat makes someone more likely to bear a daughter.
"It's so scientifically attractive," Mr. Oswald said, "because it's out of the parents' control - whether they have a boy or a girl."
Other research along these lines has found that parents with girls are slightly more likely to get divorced and that young boys get more parental attention, because fathers spend more time with them.
Mr. Oswald's research, which he did with Nattavudh Powdthavee, has yet to be published in a journal, and no one seems to have attempted a similar study in this country. But it has already become a topic of discussion at universities in Europe and this country.
"I think it passes the smell test," said Shelly Lundberg, director of the Center for Research on Families at the University of Washington.
The problem for politicians is figuring out what to do with it. Conservatives could try to push policies aimed at helping girls, and liberals could do the same with boys. But it's probably not that simple. And neither side, so far, has figured out a way to produce more babies of the sex that might help them at the ballot box.
за ссылку огромное спасибо mypka
By DAVID LEONHARDT
Published: February 19, 2006
цитирую статью полностью под катом:
IT was not so long ago that men and women voted along similar lines. Both sexes went overwhelmingly for Richard Nixon in 1972 and narrowly for Jimmy Carter in 1976.
Today, though, the gender gap - that men lean right and women lean left - has become a political truism, and a series of new studies suggests that gender plays an even bigger role in politics than many believed. Having a son tends to make parents more conservative, it appears, while a daughter makes them more liberal. The parental has become the political.
"Political feelings are much less independently chosen than people realize," said Andrew Oswald, an economist at the University of Warwick in Britain. "Children mold their parents."
So far, most of the work has examined Europe. Polling data in the United States hasn't received the same academic scrutiny, but it points in similar directions.
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.
What might this mean for the United States? These findings are consistent with a narrow but striking study by Ebonya Washington, a Yale economist. She found that men in Congress with daughters vote for abortion rights more often than those without daughters. But abortion is not a clear gender-gap issue. Polls show that more women oppose abortion than men.
Both researchers and political professionals say that economics rather than the abortion issue is a more likely explanation for any gap between the parents of girls and the parents of boys.
In small ways, having a daughter seems to make men think a little bit more like women when it comes to economic considerations like health care - and to make women focus even more on those issues. Democrats pushed for the Family and Medical Leave Act over Republican objections, for example, and more voters agree with Democratic positions on health care.
"You see a different set of experiences" when you have a daughter, said Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster. "You tend to see more of a role for government and more of a need for a safety net."
But the findings cut both ways. Boys aren't neutral. They seem to make some parents more conservative. In the United States, just 31 percent of parents with only boys call themselves Democrats, while 37 percent with only girls do, according to the General Social Survey, a large poll.
One reason, Mr. Oswald said, might be that men work longer hours and earn more money than women, giving the parents of boys reason to want lower taxes. Men also tend to prefer that individuals make decisions, a view that fits with Republican beliefs, while women prefer community solutions.
Matthew Dowd, a Republican strategist, adds another possibility: Many voters are influenced by their friends. Mr. Dowd speculates, for example, that parents of boys spend more time fishing and end up surrounded by Republicans.
Mr. Oswald's work, which was inspired by Ms. Washington's abortion study, is part of a surge of academic interest in children and gender.
The subject has the advantage of avoiding a common problem in social science: the blurry line between correlation and causation. Depressed people drink a lot, for instance. But are they depressed because they drink, or do they drink because they are depressed? Or do they have genetic disposition to both depression and drinking?
On the other hand, there is no way that voting for a Democrat makes someone more likely to bear a daughter.
"It's so scientifically attractive," Mr. Oswald said, "because it's out of the parents' control - whether they have a boy or a girl."
Other research along these lines has found that parents with girls are slightly more likely to get divorced and that young boys get more parental attention, because fathers spend more time with them.
Mr. Oswald's research, which he did with Nattavudh Powdthavee, has yet to be published in a journal, and no one seems to have attempted a similar study in this country. But it has already become a topic of discussion at universities in Europe and this country.
"I think it passes the smell test," said Shelly Lundberg, director of the Center for Research on Families at the University of Washington.
The problem for politicians is figuring out what to do with it. Conservatives could try to push policies aimed at helping girls, and liberals could do the same with boys. But it's probably not that simple. And neither side, so far, has figured out a way to produce more babies of the sex that might help them at the ballot box.
за ссылку огромное спасибо mypka