It's a Boy! Will You Marry Me?
Tue May 6,10:05 AM ET Add Oddly Enough - Reuters to My Yahoo!
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A woman who has a boy out of wedlock is much more likely to marry the father than if she has a girl, U.S. economists reported on Monday.
The study, by two University of Washington economists, suggests not only that men may value sons more, but that little girls are more likely to grow up poor.
"It may be that parents just feel more strongly that a boy needs a father around or it could be that it's easier to find a husband if your child is a boy," associate economics professor Elaina Rose said in a statement.
She and colleague Shelly Lundberg, writing in the May issue of the journal Demography, had earlier found that fathers of sons spend more money on their families and worked more additional hours than the fathers of girls.
For this study, they analyzed data from a national study of 600 children born to single mothers and found a woman was 42 times more likely to marry the father of her son than she was to marry the father if the child was a girl.
Unmarried mothers of boys were 11 percent more likely to find a husband -- even a husband who was not the child's biological father -- than those with girls.
Because children from single-parent homes are more likely to be poor, this is bad news for girls said Lundberg, who is director of the university's Center for Research on Families.
"Some men probably see a biological son as their immortality," Rose said. "It's a little 'me.' "
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WHOA....
Baby mommas with boys more likely to marry the father
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