Sunday, October 29, 2017

Mothers Spend More on Daughters While Fathers Spend More on Sons

Do Mothers Spend More on Daughters While Fathers Spend More on Sons? Lambrianos Nikiforidis, Kristina M. Durante, Joseph P. Redden and Vladas Griskevicius. Journal of Consumer Psychology, https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3050165

Abstract

Do parents favor some children over others? The overwhelming majority of parents state that they treat their children equally, but parents rarely track their spending on each child. We investigate in four studies whether mothers and fathers favor specific children depending on the biological sex of the child. Evidence from the field, laboratory, and community (online panel) showed that parents exhibit systematic biases when forced to choose between spending on sons and daughters. Mothers consistently favored daughters, whereas fathers consistently favored sons. For example, parents were more likely to choose a real prize and give a real U.S. Treasury bond to the child of the same sex as themselves. These parenting biases were found in two different cultures and appear to be driven by parents identifying more strongly with children of the same sex as the parent.

Layperson Abstract

Research Finds Women Spend More Money on Daughters and Men Spend More on Sons

Parents spend more money on a child of the same sex as themselves. From estate planning and savings bonds to back-to-school supplies and cash allowances, women spend more on daughters and men spend more on sons. New research from the State University of New York, Oneonta, Rutgers Business School, and the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management finds that consumers favor investment in children who are the same sex as themselves because parents identify more strongly with children of the same sex.

This research, forthcoming in the Journal of Consumer Psychology, provides some of the first evidence that the biological sex of a child leads to a systematic bias with parents allocating more resources to the child who is the same sex as they are. Nikiforidis and colleagues became interested in this research because prior research had produced mixed results, with some research suggesting that parents spend more on boys and other research finding that girls receive more investment, particularly when a mother has a greater say in household spending. For the current study, the researchers focused their prediction on the idea that parents might systematically (if unwittingly) invest more in the child of the same sex because they more closely identify with that child.

This is consistent with the idea that people tend to spend money on things that align with their identity, and gift giving to one’s children can be a way for parents to bolster their sense of identity and live vicariously through their children. Because parents likely identify more with a child of the same sex, Nikiforidis and colleagues proposed that parents should exhibit a sex-matching bias when investing across their children.

“Although the idea that parents might play favorites is not new—we’ve all heard adages such as “like father, like son” or “daddy’s girl”—most parents strongly deny favoring one child over the other,” says Lambrianos Nikiforidis, an assistant professor of marketing at the State University of New York, Oneonta. “Even though parents say they do not have a favorite, they also admit they do not actively track investment in each child, which leaves room for bias.”

In one study, researchers had parents in the US and India who had children of each gender living at home make a decision about which of their children (son or daughter) would receive a treasury bond. Mothers were more likely to choose their daughter to receive the bond and fathers were more likely to choose the son because they identified more strongly with the child that was the same sex as themselves. These same effects emerged when parents were deciding which child would receive more in their will, and when selecting which child would participate in a drawing to win back-to-school supplies, with 76% of women choosing the girl and 87% of men choosing the boy as the recipient of the back-to-school prize pack.

The current findings have far-reaching implications. “For example, when men control the family’s financial decisions, then sons may chronically receive more resources than daughters. By contrast, if women are the primary shoppers, this can result in subtle but consistent favoritism for daughters,” says Nikiforidis. In single parent or same-sex parent households, the ramifications of this bias can be even stronger, given that there is no opposite-direction bias from the other parent to even things out.

Although the research focused on parents, it was also found that non-parents favored investing in a same-sex child. This suggests that the sex-matching bias leads to a general favoritism of same-sex people when investing resources. If more men are in positions of corporate and political power, this can translate to greater investment in programs and policies that favor men, and have implications in settings such as work, organizations, schools, charities, and more.

3 comments:

  1. Does this research take parental income and ethic status into consideration? In certain cultures mothers buy more for their sons and fathers naturally don’t say no to their daughters, including credit cards! :)

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    Replies
    1. They didn't... They try different combinations, four experiments with different conditions, just to measure this part of systematic preference. Among the limitations they mention are:

      While we found evidence for identification with the child being the mediator underlying our effect, this does not preclude the existence of other process variables. Such possible variables might include empathy (e.g., men might empathize more with boys and women with girls), or more familiarity with the child of the same sex as themselves. It is also possible that spending more time with the child of concordant sex (more exposure) results in the parent being able to imagine and anticipate the needs (due to more information and familiarity) of that child. All of these are empirical questions that are candidates for future research, but none of these possibilities contradicts or precludes the existence of the process identified in the present research.

      Additionally, there could be other moderators of the sex-matching bias that future research should examine. Beyond resource scarcity (Durante et al., 2015), possible moderators include children’s birth order (Suitor & Pillemer, 2007), proportions of children of each sex within the family, presence of step children, or parents’ risk-aversion (because from an evolutionary perspective, investing in boys involves higher-risk; Durante et al., 2015; Leimar, 1996).

      A limitation of the present research is that our dependent measures consisted of one-time decisions. It is possible that over time, parents might try to make up for these biases (even if not consciously aware of them) by balancing things out across multiple decisions. Using our main finding as a starting point, future research should examine this possibility in longitudinal studies that examine this bias within individuals over time with repeated choices.

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    2. They also mention:

      "The sex-matching finding in the current studies does not contradict the effects of external variables on parental spending, such as the effect of resource scarcity (Durante et al., 2015). Durante and colleagues (2015) found that resource scarcity led parents (both men and women) to
      bias investment toward girls. The sex-matching effect and the effect of resource scarcity appear to be rooted in fundamentally different underlying processes. Whereas the effect of resource scarcity on biased spending on daughters is proposed to occur via an evolutionary mechanism related to reproductive fitness, the sex-matching bias in parental expenditures is related to higher identification between the parent and child of the same sex. The sex-matching effect found in the current research could not account for the effects in the Durante et al. (2015) paper because the latter captures how recessions lead to greater spending on daughters regardless of the parent’s sex. The current paper complements the work by Durante et al. (2015), with the effect of resource scarcity being a potential moderator of the sex-matching effect demonstrated in the present research. Hence, the effect of resource scarcity and the sex-matching effect on parental investment are not mutually exclusive or inherently related. For example, the findings of Durante et al. (2015) suggest that under conditions of resource scarcity, the sex-matching effect would be intensified for women and suppressed for men (because both would favor daughters more). Influences driven by evolutionary biology and social identification can coexist. Future research will need to explore when resource scarcity concerns outweigh a shared sex, and vice versa."

      Overall, this is like saying that they agree that there are other effects and they do not control for them, so we have not a well relative weight for the preference they study... They are just sure the effect is there but cannot tell how important really is.

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