First-Born Boys Demand More Mommy Time

Filed under: In The News, Weird But True, Behavior, Research Reveals: Babies

Baby boys demand more attention from moms than baby girls. Credit: Getty Images

Women have thought for years that men are really more high maintenance. A new study confirms that this royal highness syndrome starts at birth, as these little princes demand more of mom's time than baby girls. By requiring more of mom's presence, moms of first born sons are working less, the study claims.

British researchers who have keen insight into royal entitlement have released a new study that says "...women whose first child is a boy are less likely to work in a typical week and work fewer hours than women with first-born girls," according to the Wall Street Journal's Real Time Economics blog.

The results, though "statistically significant" and suggesting "quantitatively relevant" losses in lifetime labor income, are nonetheless "a puzzle," the authors write. They say future studies are required to answer the "whys."

But, one reason possibly contributing to the findings, they say, is the desire to have the baby boy.

"A first-born girl reduces substantially the stability of a marriage," thus women are working. It also finds that the divorce rate is four percent higher in families where the first-born is a girl. The first-born boys evidently positively affect the probability that the marriage will survive, so moms aren't racing back to work.

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Source: http://www.parentdish.com/2011/04/21/first-born-child/

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