The Effect of Sex of Firstborn Children on Attitudes Towards Intimate Partner Violence

What are the different ways in which one’s life is influenced by the sex of their children? Is there an effect on how they view Intimate Partner Violence? If so, is there a difference in how the male parent is affected by the sex of his child than the female parent? Bodies of conflicting Social Sciences literature suggest having a daughter makes one both more and less likely to engage in Intimate Partner Violence. In this paper, I approach this question through the use of a Linear Probability Fixed-Effects model on Demographic Health Surveys (DHS) datasets, using data from the Men’s, Women’s and Children’s Questionnaires. Results suggest a substantial positive relationship between having a daughter and acceptance of IPV among male respondents, whereas no significant conclusions can be made about the female respondents. When analyzed by groups of countries with similar sex-ratios at birth, I found that the relationship observed for the men only held for respondents in countries with masculine skewed sex-ratios