A woman who has a boy out of wedlock is much more likely to marry the father than if she has a girl, U.S. economists reported on Monday. The study, by two University of Washington economists, suggests not only that men may value sons more, but that little girls are more likely to grow up poor. "It may be that parents just feel more strongly that a boy needs a father around or it could be that it's easier to find a husband if your child is a boy," associate economics professor Elaina Rose said in a statement. She and colleague Shelly Lundberg, writing in the May issue of the journal Demography, had earlier found that fathers of sons spend more money on their families and worked more additional hours than the fathers of girls. For this study, they analyzed data from a national study of 600 children born to single mothers and found a woman was 42 times more likely to marry the father of her son than she was to marry the father if the child was a girl. Unmarried mothers of boys were 11 percent more likely to find a husband -- even a husband who was not the child's biological father -- than those with girls. Because children from single-parent homes are more likely to be poor, this is bad news for girls said Lundberg, who is director of the university's Center for Research on Families.
(Agencies) | 5月5日，美國經濟學家發布了她們的一項最新研究結論：在未婚媽媽這一群體中，生男孩的女性嫁給孩子父親的幾率比生女孩的女性大，她們更有可能為自己的孩子構建一個完整的家庭。 由華盛頓大學的兩位經濟學家得出的這一結論不僅暗示著男人的"重男輕女"情結，還預示著跟著未婚媽媽長大的女孩生活會比男孩更悲慘。 參與這一研究的經濟學家埃萊娜·羅斯在結論中說："導致這一現象的原因可能是父母普遍認為男孩子的成長更需要有父親陪伴在身邊；還有的未婚母親會這樣認為，如果生的是個男孩，即便不嫁給孩子的父親，也更容易為自己找到個丈夫。" 羅斯和她的合作者雪莉·倫德伯格還發現，男孩子的父親為家庭花的錢比女孩子的父親要多，而他們加班工作的時間也更多一些。她們把這一結論刊登在五月的《人口統計學》雜志上。 兩位學者分析了美國的600名未婚媽媽，發現其中生男孩嫁給孩子父親的幾率是生女孩的42倍。而即便不是嫁給孩子的親生父親，生男孩后再嫁人的可能性也比生女孩的要多11%。 身為華盛頓大學家庭研究中心主任，雪莉指出，由于未婚母親的生活水平通常比較低，因此對于生活在這種家庭的女孩子來說，這樣的研究結論無疑是個壞消息。 (中國日報網站譯) |
Updated: 2003-05-07 01:00
