Boys are deemed easier to take care because they seem to require less attention. This may not be true for all boys because of course there are boys who like attention as well but families with both girls and boys often notice that boys are easier to look after.
Most of the couples who wanted a boy - 45per cent - said they felt that having a son would be 'less hard work' than a daughter. On the other hand, a third said they wanted a boy because older sons are better at looking after their younger siblings.
About 40% of parents, across the decades, have told researchers that if they could only have one child, they would want a boy. Only a consistent 20% to 30% has chosen a girl or no preference.
"Before the birth, a father would assume he'd connect with his son psychologically more so than with his daughter, and that they'd have more shared interests such as playing football. There is also research showing marriages with sons are less likely to break down than marriages with only daughters."
According to a survey conducted by British parenting website Bounty, two girls are considered the best combination for parents to have a happy and harmonious family life. In their study, they surveyed 2,116 parents who had children aged 16 and under.
However, a 2018 Gallup poll found that 54% of Americans said boys were easier to raise than girls, while only 27% said girls were easier, and 14% said there was no difference. Some research suggests girls are better communicators in the younger years, but this may change later on.
Summary: A research group has studied whether parents' gender preferences and investment in offspring are affected by their status, wealth, education or childhood environment. Instead, parental preferences were best predicted by their sex.
Two studies comparing men's and women's desires to have children found that men expressed more interest.
Statistically speaking, daughters win the day, but sons win dad by a nose. These findings are somewhat surprising, given the prevailing theory that preference for sons or daughters is based less on the sex of the parents than on their socioeconomic status.
Predivorce family dynamics: In most intact families, sons and daughters are closer to their mothers than to their fathers. This does not mean the children and their fathers love one another less.
(Even as an overall inclination toward girls seems to have arisen, though, both American moms and dads express a desire for a child of their own sex—and dads have on average a much stronger desire for sons than moms do for daughters.)
Younger adults, and those with less education, are more inclined toward boys, but the main distinction is between men and women. Women are split — 31 percent want a girl, 30 percent a boy — but 43 percent of men prefer a son, to 24 percent who prefer a daughter.
Moms who have girls are much happier than those with boys, particularly when the children reach early adulthood, according to a study from the Journal of Family Issues. However, a survey done by Gallup says: 54% of Americans say boys are easier to raise than girls. 27% say girls are easier to raise than boys.
A recent study has found that it's not the youngest child that's liked the most. It's actually the eldest! While eldest children around the world have had to be the example for their younger siblings and parents being extra strict on them, it looks like there was a good reason.
Interestingly, studies show that fathers' favorites are likely to be their youngest daughter, while moms are likely to favor their oldest son, Kluger says. They may be of the opposite sex, he says, but they tend to share traits associated with the parent's sex.
RESULTS: There was a significant offspring gender preference in all cases, and the direction of the bias depended on the respondent's gender. That is, men on average preferred sons while women preferred daughters.
Well, it turns out male offspring - so boys - inherit more genes from their mothers. The way this works is that when it comes to the sex chromosomes, females get two X chromosomes, one from their mother, one from their father, whereas males get an X from Mom and a Y from Dad.
While historically, there have been about 105 boys born for every 100 girls worldwide — which creates a “sex ratio at birth” of 1.05 — the share of boy babies has increased in recent decades. 2011 data from the World Bank show the global sex ratio at birth is now 1.07, or 107 boys born for every 100 girls.
Between 2012 and 2018, the percentage of childless men ages 15 to 49 responding that they did not want children doubled from 9.9% to 20.2%. In addition, the number of men concerned with parental leave policies when evaluating jobs decreased between 2005 and 2015.
Studies have shown that children tend to form stronger bonds with their mothers, primarily due to the fact that mothers are typically the primary caretakers. However, this doesn't mean that fathers aren't equally important in their children's lives!
While they praise particular characteristics in their sons – seeing them as being "funny", "cheeky" and "playful" – mothers admit that they are likely to denigrate their daughters for showing similar attributes, referring to them instead as "stroppy", or "argumentative".
Of people who said they would prefer a boy, 23 percent said it was because men can relate to males better and have more in common. Twenty percent said because boys can carry on the family name, and 17 percent said boys are easier to raise. Gallup interviewed 1,520 adults aged 18 and older from June 1 through June 3.
When all is said and done, MoneyTips estimates that parents spend $80 per month more on girls than they do on boys. This comes out $960 more per year, or $17,280 more over the course of the 18 years that children are likely living at home.