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Mumii 14
Stories have been doing the rounds for years about how parents of daughters are more likely to suffer marriage breakdown than those with sons. Statistics appeared to back up this folk wisdom, and researchers who pondered the problem tended to assume that daughters were the ‘cause’ of these difficulties.
New evidence from the States, however, now suggests there might be another explanation.
A recent study in the journal Demography found that girls are far tougher than boys both before and after they are born. At any particular stage of life, males are slightly more likely to die than females whether they are 7 months, 7 years or 70 years.
What’s interesting is that this was found to be the same during pregnancy too. Girls conceived into a stressful relationship are more likely to survive a pregnancy than their male counterparts. The research showed that there was a direct correlation between high levels of relationship conflict and the birth of girls.
So it seems that more girls are surviving stressful pregnancies than boys, and, therefore, girls are more likely to be born in to relationships that are already in trouble and have a higher potential of failing.
Does this ring true in families you know?
