Study shows children shift their father’s political views

A recent study coming out of Britain, which uses research done by an Oregon State University professor, shows that fathers who have daughters are more likely to shift their political views to become more liberal.

The study was done by Andrew Oswald of the University of Warwick and Nattavudh Pawdthavee of the University of York and compared voting tendencies gathered from the British Household Panel Survey.

An excerpt from the study stated, “We document evidence that having daughters leads people to be more sympathetic to left-wing parties. Giving birth to sons, by contrast, seems to make people more likely to vote for a right-wing party.”

The study found that any child has the potential to shift a parent’s ideology, but that the occurrence was more prevalent among fathers who have daughters.

The study did not focus on how having a child changed one’s political view, but on how the gender of a child affects those views.

The study concluded that it was not only the gender, but also the number of children a person has that affects their political stance.

With the birth of each child, the study showed a 2 percent shift toward left-wing voting if the child was a girl, and 2 percent shift toward right-wing voting if the child was a boy.

Oregon State University sociology professor Rebecca Warner, along with Yale University professor Ebonya Washington, contributed research on the gender of children and the effect it has on a parent’s stance on political policy, specifically those concerning gender equality. Warner’s unpublished study is titled “Children’s Gender and Parents’ Support for Gender Equity Public Policies.”

Oswald and Pawdthavee also used Warner’s past research that supported their conclusion that the gender of a person’s child does affect their political ideology.

“In remarkable research, the sociologist Rebecca Warner and the economist Ebonya Washington have shown that the gender of a person’s children seems to influence the attitudes and actions of the parent,” an abstract from the study stated.

Findings showed having a daughter not only affects the voting habits of the general male population, but those holding political office could also have their viewpoints swayed by becoming parents.

Washington looked at the voting records of U.S. congressmen and found those with daughters were more likely to sympathize with left-wing ideology.

“Conditional on total number of children, each daughter increases a congressman’s propensity to vote liberally, especially on issues of reproductive rights,” Washington’s study stated.