Do Men Really Prefer to Live with Sons? Stress, Pregnancy and Family Composition

Amar A. Hamoudi, Duke University
Jenna Nobles, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Several studies have documented controversial but widely-reported findings linking children's gender to union stability and family living arrangements in the US. Couples with girls are more likely to divorce than couples with boys; girls are less likely than boys to coreside with their fathers. The findings are often described as contemporary evidence of fathers' son-preference. Our study considers the role of a competing hypothesis for these patterns, one that emphasizes epidemiological research on stress, miscarriage, and the production of female births. Combining analysis of vital statistics and two longitudinal studies, we demonstrate that children's gender is not exogenous to family processes. We examine the timing of pregnancies and births, relative to conflict within marriage and maternal anxiety, and relative to transitions in union status and fathers’ coresidence. The findings allow us to bound the possible causal effect of the birth of a daughter on her father's departure from the household.