The Daughter Penalty

[Imnobody4]

Really not sure what to make of this one.

'Having a first child often entails sacrifices, but a study suggests that British mothers pay a far higher price when the baby is a girl.'

www.thetimes.com/article/70848f1f-22b7-4a3f-9935-585091abd709?shareToken=70f3adb7ccd9350dd9761f4d3e3c4179

This is the paper [it's linked in the article]
'The Daughter Penalty' by
Sonia Bhalotra† Damian Clarke‡ Angelina Nazarova

Abstract
Looking at the earnings profiles of men and women after their first child is born, a num
ber of studies establish that women suffer a larger penalty in earnings than men—a child
penalty. Leveraging randomness in the sex of the first birth, we show that the child penalty
in the UK is larger when the first born child is a girl. We label this the daughter penalty.
Exploiting rich longitudinal survey data, we examine behavioural responses to the birth
of a daughter vs. a son to illuminate the underpinnings of the daughter penalty. We find
that the birth of a daughter triggers more household specialisation than the birth of a son,
with mothers taking on a larger share of household chores and childcare. Mothers suffer
a daughter penalty in mental health, while fathers report more satisfaction with their rela-
tionship. Our findings imply that girls and boys in the UK are, on average, growing up in
different home environments, with girls growing up in households that, by multiple markers, are more gender-regressive. This is potentially a mechanism for the inter-generational
transmission of gendered norms.

Wow.

I'm honestly not sure what to make of all of that....it sounds as if maybe the researchers had a pre-ordained agenda/bias.

Did they study single parent families for comparison?

Thank you for sharing, that is absolutely fascinating. I wonder what is going on there? Genuinely intriguing.

Can't see any mention of single parent families but it's a long paper. It does ask re satisfaction with marriage. Lots of charts.

Read this earlier today. Very complicated and confusing.

I feel anecdotally that the paternal grandparents are more hands on with boys than girls. So a family with a boy gets more support overall than one with a girl.
I also think, anecdotally, women are expected to have compliant daughters and sympathised with if they have boisterous sons. So there’s extra work and judgment there, too.

I’m wondering what the statistics actually are and what the mean difference is. Feels unlikely it’s very significant?

Interesting. How did they calculate a penalty?
Was it mums with 1st born daughter earning less than mums with 1st born son?
Or was it comparing the gap between mums and dads with a 1st born daughter to the gap between mums and dads with a 1st born son?

Would a dad working harder for daddy’s little princess rather than junior not also cause a bigger gap?

curious

Mothers of girls saw their incomes fall by an average of 26 per cent in the five years after birth, compared with fathers — more than eight times the 3 per cent fall for mothers of boys. Employment rates showed a similar pattern: they fell by about 20 per cent for mothers of daughters, compared with 6 per cent for mothers of sons.

In the context of a 40,000 household dataset that is definitely statistically significant.

That’s one helluva difference. Instinctively this feels wrong (I’m a single parent and mother of a girl so full disclosure). I’ll have a read of this when I have more time. Keep wondering what they are/aren’t controlling for.

Yes, it seemed odd to me in that surely mist people plan how much time they'll take off, what hours they'll go back to etc well in advance of having the baby and often won't know the sex at that point. I can’t imagine many women are saying 'Oh, well I'm expecting a girl so I'll only go back part time' or whatever. So what on earth is going on? Is it subconscious choices? Is it men getting more involved with sons therefore giving the woman more confidence to work more? I'm quite fascinated by this.

What?? I’d like to see this research and findings repeated by other researchers, at least once for validation purposes please. Sounds like a lot of dubious statistical nonsense.

In the paper it says they took an average over the first five years. They also identified that if the first-born was a girl there was more chance of the family having a second child within five years. And that the act of having a second child/larger family might then lead to the 'specialisation' in roles.

So you're less likely to go back into work/stay in full-time work if you have more than one child - I guess childcare costs are a factor, and the demands of two young children at home making p/t work more sensible, plus the impact of two rounds of mat leave on experience/opportunities etc. And since is you have a girls first you're more likely to go on to have second child in that early period - the 'son preference' - the economic effects are more likely as well.

It really shows that the ingrained idea of women's role being more familial remains, as well as the preference for a son.

Thanks @newrubylane that's a really helpful explanation and an angle I hadn't thought of.

This is interesting. An alternative explanation, I suppose, could be a sort of daughter preference - that mothers (or parents?) enjoy the experience of having a girl baby more than having a boy baby, therefore decide to have a second child sooner afterwards… Of course this isn’t necessarily to do with the child itself being “better” (less colicky, better sleeping, more placid?) but could be to do with the responses of those around the parents (“what a beautiful little girl” vs “boys are so boisterous”?). I’m just thinking aloud here.

I’d also be interested to see a breakdown by ethnic group within the UK population - I had a look at the original article (here: www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/resrep70562.pdf?acceptTC=true&coverpage=false&addFooter=false) but couldn’t see one.

This is fascinating but yes, it doesn't sound instinctively right to me so I'll read the full paper. At a guess, from the abstract, I wonder if the dads get more involved if they have sons and 'leave it to mum' to some level if they have a daughter. And I'd assume that to some extent what you do with your first child sets the tone for the next child.

And in some families/ cultures this will be more clear-cut than others.

And yes, I'll read it later, but I assume they didn't include 'blended' families etc where existing/step-kids were complicating matters.

I did read something a while ago that divorce became more likely if there were no male children (I think the implication was that the father was more likely to leave). Did the study control for families breaking down following having children as many do anyway? If mother's are more likely to become single after a daughter is born it could explain some of the difference?

Wow those figures are very surprising. Doesn’t correlate with my experience of the world. A baby is a baby and affects your life pretty much the same regardless of the sex.
Basically women have it harder if they have a girl first? 🤔

Full paper here: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/research/centres/cage/manage/publications/wp756.2025.pdf