Oh No: It’s a Girl

Oh No: It’s a girl

In his article “Oh No: It’s a Girl!” Steven Landsburg uses the research of Gordon Dahl and Enrico Moretti, two economists, to show that there is a tendency of parents to prefer having sons than daughters. From Dahl and Moretti’s research Landsburg describes a correlation between the divorce rates due to the gender of their child. In the United States, parents of a daughter are 5 percent more likely to get divorced when compared to the parents of a son. Dahl and Moretti’s research also suggests that divorced mothers of a daughter are less likely to remarry compared to divorced mother’s of a son. More evidence that Landsburg provides is that the parents of girls are more likely to try for another child. In the countries like the United States, Kenya, and Columbia parents of 3 daughters are only 4 percent more likely to try for another child. But in countries like Mexico, Vietnam, and China the probability that parents will try for another child is over 18%, and in China’s case, before the one child policy was enacted, it was 90%. Landsburg uses Dahl and Moretti’s research to show that unmarried couples are also more likely to marry if they were to find out that their unborn child is a boy. Landsburg writes that although other people may have alternative explanations for the statistics provided by Dahl and Moretti, the most natural way to explain it is that parents prefer having sons over daughters. From Dahl and Moretti’s research I would also conclude that parents do prefer sons over daughters.

My parents, who were both born in Laos, wanted a son in the family. The reason why they wanted a son was because that they would need someone to take care of them in their old age. In America that statement would not be as relevant because we are given the idea that everyone has an equal chance to succeed and therefore any child regardless of gender could become successful and come back to take care of their parents. That would explain why the divorce rate due to the gender of the child is lower then ather countries. But in countries like, the men are thought to be the providers of the family so sons would be more preferred.

One reason why there is a tendency that boys are preferred more than girls that Landsburg wrote about is that there is a less likely chance that a couple will get divorced if they have a boy. There are very many reasons why this may happen but one reason I have discussed with my Aunt, who is a family therapist, is that a father’s presence is more important for a boy then for a girl. What she said was that the reasons parents do not get divorced or at least hold it off is because the parents realize the detrimental affects it will have on the son. From what she could tell there was a correlation between divorce and the gender of the child or children.

Among the findings of Dahl and Moretti, when ultrasound is used on an unmarried pregnant women to see the gender of the child, if the child is a boy then the unmarried couple would be more likely to marry then if they were to find out it is a girl. So having a son would increase the chances of “shotgun marriages”.

After writing “Oh No: It’s a Girl!” Landsburg wrote another article “Maybe Parents Don’t Like Boys Better” in response to the readers that did not agree with Dahl and Moretti’s research. In this article Landsburg main idea is that the research of Dahl and Moretti cannot be contested and he also gives alternative explanations