Having daughters increases your divorce risk – what this stuff teaches businesspeople

A recently released survey indicates the following:

* The presence of daughters in the family increases the chances of the parents divorcing (in every society studied)

* Compared to families with 1 boy, families with 1 girl are 25% more likely to divorce! – that’s in Vietnam (that figure reduces to 5% more likely in the US, but even that figure is doubled if the family has 3 daughters)

* Women with sons are more likely to remarry than women with daughters

* If a single woman is pregnant with a son, she is more likely to marry the father than if she is pregnant with a daughter

* Following the birth of a son, fathers average an extra 118 paid hours at work. If the child is a girl, the extra number of hours worked drops to 54

(Check if your mouth is open. My jaw dropped when I read this research.)

What does that all tell us? Plenty, I’d say

Some of what it tells us scares me a little. Maybe men ‘value’ sons more. And by using the term value I mean a whole range of quantitative and qualitative aspects.

Maybe having daughters reduces the mother’s emotional dependence on staying in an unhappy marriage.

Maybe………………maybe lots of different things.

But one- (1) thing I’m certain stuff like this does tell us

It tells us that humans are animals. We are a animals with deeply ingrained beliefs, value systems and behaviours. We act like animals in that much of what we do might well be there because of thousands and thousands of years of natural influences closely related to the survival of the species.

As businesspeople, we need to look beyond the fact that some of us might find the above info unpalatable. We need to be aware that we can’t easily predict human behaviour in many cases.

We need to be aware that us humans are animals. We have animal instincts. And we do behave in predictable animal ways despite our very best efforts to act ‘civilised’.