descenterace on 24/3/2006 at 15:15
Well, the whiny kids are the ones who look to authority for protection, instead of relying on themselves. So that isn't very surprising.
Paz on 24/3/2006 at 15:18
That article seems ... highly dubious.
descenterace on 24/3/2006 at 15:24
Statistics always are.
I'd want a wider-scale study done, with over a half-million samples, before I considered it any more than conjecture. Then you'd have to take into account other environmental effects, such as parental political leanings...
Convict on 24/3/2006 at 15:39
One thing I would mention is that in Australia (I don't know about America) pre-school is free (IIRC) and so poor children and rich children would mix together at pre-school. I would certainly like to see socio-economic status accounted for as well as other variables before accepting research like that.
Here's another piece of research into political leanings and gender of one's children (and they removed other factors such as age, education and income which obviously affect political leanings):
Quote Posted by TheGuardian
(
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1671758,00.html) Article:"This paper provides evidence that daughters make people more leftwing. Having sons, by contrast, makes them more rightwing ... the paper ends with a conjecture: leftwing individuals are people who comes from families into which, over recent past generations, many females have been born."
Who says so? Professor Andrew Oswald of Warwick University's economics department and Dr Nattavudh Powdthavee of London University's institute of education, who spotted a marked trend in the British Household Panel Survey, which has tracked the habits of 10,000 British adults since 1991.
Why do they think it happens? That is harder to be sure about. But the two authors suspect that behind their complex mathematical modelling lie two simple propositions:
· women are increasingly aware of pay discrimination in the workplace, where, better educated and experienced, they play a growing role.
· women "derive greater marginal utility from public goods like community safety".
In other words "women are intrinsically more leftwing than men" because they prefer a larger supply of public goods and higher tax rates - for the obvious reason that they value health, education and creches and rarely get paid so much that they worry about top tax rates. The results, drawn from examining 65,000 declared voting intentions from the 10,000 names on the database over a 13-year Labour-to-Tory period, 1991-2004, suggest that 66% of British people with three sons and no daughters vote Labour or Liberal Democrat.
But that figure increases to 78% among parents with three daughters and no sons. The influence on parental voting may be "subconscious" but it is real, the research suggests.
Even after factoring out age, education and income, the researchers found that having a daughter shifted allegiances to the left. They checked their unexpected findings against an even larger data base in Germany - and found the same thing.
Of course the obvious problem with the anecdotal examples noted by the Guardian (source of all wisdom) is that the politicians would already be strongly committed to a particular cause and have joined a party which reinforces their beliefs, thus overwhelming the influence daughters have on the political leanings of the parents. :tsktsk:
Paz on 24/3/2006 at 15:59
The problems I see, aside from THE MASSIVE GAYNESS OF ASSUMED POLARISATION AGAIN - WELL DONE AMERICA, is that political leanings are at least partially self-defined and in semi-constant motion in relation to events and developments.
It's fairly clear that the 'conservative' tag (or perhaps more accurately The Republican Party) has changed a LOT over the past .. what, decade? I'm not terrifically well read on this, but they seem to now encompass a broad church of all manner of voters along differing religious/economic/wacky foreign policy lines. Now, yes, you can chuck them all in the same box because they voted for the same guy - however, I think that would be tremendously over-simplistic.
I guess I'm saying that you cannot theorise that 'lol the whiney kids become conversatives' because it is impossible to arrive at a satisfactory definition for the term. Using voting tendancies or a person's self-declared stance is problematic (as stated), which doesn't leave you with very much to go at.
I'm more satisfied (though not very) by general "cried a lot/was coddled during infancy = more likely to respond to/respect authority" suggestions or observations, but it's a massive leap to suggest this will predispose a person to one of the two possible political options BECAUSE WE ALL KNOW THERE ARE ONLY TWO VIEWS OF THE WORLD, RIGHT? Also, there's the obvious point that it's quite possible to be an authoritarian lefty.
{edit} Yes, that Guardian article reads like balls too (being selective here):
"66% of British people with three sons and no daughters vote Labour or Liberal Democrat.
But that figure increases to 78% among parents with three daughters and no sons"
Again, lumping Labour and Lib Dem together in the same political pie is seriously poor cookery. Also, does 12% really count as statistically significant; more than just chance and circumstance? {/edit}
Brian T on 24/3/2006 at 22:14
From Shit Lists to reasoned debate this website always has something worth reading.:thumb:
Rug Burn Junky on 24/3/2006 at 22:59
TGGP: Quit whining.
kingofthenet on 24/3/2006 at 23:05
It seem the more Answers we get, the more questions we have, Such as:
1. I wonder what our life must seem like to a bird?
2. If our knees where on backwards what would a chair look like?
3. If a snowball doesn't have much chance in Hell, what chance does it have in heavan?
4. Why is it that they say you shouldn't spank your children, but it's OK to spank your Monkey?
Convict on 24/3/2006 at 23:14
Paz judging by the size of the study quoted by the guardian I think a 12% difference is easily statistically significant (EDIT - ask GBM he's done statistics at uni), but anyway the study wouldn't say it found a result if it wasn't significant (and also remember significance is just showing the low probability that something occurred by chance). I don't see the problem with showing that families with daughters are more likely to vote Lib Dem or Labour and concluding that it is changing voting patterns. Do you see any problems in study design there? BTW My beef piece was on what The Guardian said later in the article (not quoted).
