Fathers become more Left-wing if they have daughters because girls are more socially conscious, according to research.
Economists claim to have found a correlation between the number of daughters and sons in a household and their father's political views.
By analysing data in the British Household Panel Survey, they found that 67 per cent of parents with three sons and no daughters voted for Labour or the Liberal Democrats.
This rose to 77 per cent in households with three daughters and no sons. A similar pattern was found among families with two and four children.
Professor Andrew Oswald, from Warwick University, and Dr Nattavudh Powdthavee, of York University, wrote in an unpublished article that has been submitted to an economics journal: "This paper provides evidence that daughters make people more Left-wing, while having sons, by contrast, makes them more Right-wing."
Professor Oswald said that having daughters made men "gradually shift their political stance and become more sympathetic to the 'female' desire for a ... larger amount for the public good".
"They become more Left-wing. Similarly, a mother with sons becomes sympathetic to the 'male' case for lower taxes and a smaller supply of public goods," he said.
"Political feelings are much less independently chosen than people realise. Children mould their parents."
Researchers who looked at voting records of US congressmen before and after having children have found a similar pattern, with the arrival of daughters having a particularly strong effect on fathers.
However Arthur Mayne, a biologist with three sons, dismissed the approach as "simplistic" and said the idea that women were "more likely to be softer politically than men" could be seen as a stereotype.
"Recent studies seem to prove that women with higher levels of testosterone - who are more likely to display dominant, positive behaviours - seem to produce more sons than daughters," he said.
"Women with lower levels of testosterone, who are more likely to be empathetic and better listeners, tend to produce more daughters.
"It could be that the women who are most likely to produce daughters pick a partner who is closer to her more empathetic attitude to life.
"Hence people who are already more liberal may produce more daughters and those who are already conservative may produce more sons."
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Comment: While the connection between the mother's testosterone level and the sex of her child is real, it is not likely to be the explanation for the study results.
First, the relationship between the number of daughters and the fathers' socially progressive views is graded, i.e., the more daughters the father has, the more progressive he is. The article mentions in passing the research by a US professor Ebonya Washington that has demonstrated a similar effect among both Democrat and Republican members of Congress. Clearly, the influence of daughters is felt by both politically conservative and liberal fathers, and is therefore likely to be of the social nature rather than a result of "assortative mating" of the parents.
And second, in contrast to Dr. Mayne's statement, observations from daily life suggest that people would rather pick a complimentary personality as a partner. This is especially true for dominant men who are not attracted to dominant women but rather to the empathetic ones. Sandra Brown's research on psychopathy victims points towards the same conclusion. Further, any preferences for a certain type of partner will likely be noticeable only at the farthest ends of the testosterone level spectra for both men and women. Most of us have average testosterone levels, and therefore our mating would be based on other criteria, while remaining "chance-dependent" in regards to testosterone.
It is entirely possible that the connection between the gender of the children and the political views has a different mechanism for men and women. Men may be molded by their daughters, while women indeed may be giving birth to the children that they are best fit to parent, according to their biologically defined temperament. Future research in this area will certainly be very interesting.