The First Daughter Effect: The Impact of Fathering Daughters on Men’s Preferences for Gender Equality Policies

An extensive literature on the politics of the family suggests that familial relationships play a central role in individuals’ political socialization and can ultimately shape one’s policy preferences. A current debate within this literature deals with the impact of daughters on fathers’ political attitudes. In this article, we address this debate in relation to a specific set of policy preferences and ask: does the experience of fathering daughters affect men’s opinions toward gender equality policies? In answering this question, we examine three specific, theoretically-motivated propositions: first, that having a daughter leads men to see the benefits of public policies that aim to reduce gender inequality and therefore to support those policies; second, that fathers with a larger proportion of daughters express stronger support for these policies; and finally, that having a daughter as a man’s first child is a critical event in the political socialization of men, such that this experience of “first daughterhood” will lead to higher levels of support for gender equality policies. We use original representative survey data from a module on the 2016 Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES) to test these three hypotheses. The results of our analyses suggest that the experience of having a daughter as a first child – but not the effect of having a daughter in general or the experience of having a higher proportion of daughters – significantly increases fathers’ support for policies designed to increase gender equality