Male fetuses are more likely to die in the womb if the mother is stressed. Marriages are more likely to end if the marriage is stressful. Therefore, marriages with first born daughters are more likely to end with divorce, by no fault of the daughter.
Disclosure: I was once a first-born teenage daughter. Yes, my parents divorced.
> But, unlike previous work, their study also looked at the effect of the girl’s age. It found that “daughter-divorce” risk emerges only in a first-born girl’s teenage years (see chart). Before they reach the age of 12, daughters are no more linked to couples splitting up than sons are.
I don't. I was specifically responding to yellowbeard's comment, which read:
> Childless parents as a result of self aborting male fetuses would not show up in the study.
Yellowbeard provided one explanation for the fact that, despite male fetuses being more likely to self-abort, there is no difference between divorce stats of young male and female children. My response said why that explanation was wrong. I wasn't saying that the self-abortion delta affects divorce ratios, only that it might.
(Indeed, I do expect that it does have an effect, but that that effect is miniscule and unlikely to be measurable.)
A disproportionate amount of parents with first born daughters over sons is inconsequential because they are measuring the percentage of divorces for each population, not the total number of divorces for each population.
The logic she uses here is really far fetched and unlikely to be true so you really need statistical causal links in order to say anything substantial. I mean her disclosure also discloses a possible bias. She may not have the ability to admit that she her self was the causal factor in her own parents divorce.
If parents have already seen a boy go through their teenage years, they’ll be better prepared for the grief a 12-year-old girl can cause.
Also, anecdotally, a close friend of mine had a very difficult older sister. The younger siblings witnessed her bad behaviour, and decided not to repeat the theatrics.