Memphis Divorce Lawyer and Tax Attorney:
Sex of your firstborn child as
a predictor of divorce.

Divorce is more probable when your firstborn child is a female

Researchers have learned that marital relationships which generate firstborn daughters are also more probable to result in divorce than marriages that produce firstborn sons. What's more until recently, sociologists and economic experts chalked up the link between girls and divorce to a polarizing theory: Fathers understand boys better, so they're more likely stay and work on a marriage instead of divorce should they have a son.
An innovative study, though, implies that the connection is not so straightforward. An unexpected developmental distinction between male and female fetuses -- something that occurs far ahead of a little girl's birth or her parents' divorce -- may explain the incongruity.

The role of stress hormones in divorce and sex determination.

Scientists Amar Hamoudi and Jenna Nobles discovered evidence that implies female embryos are better able to withstand maternal stress and tension in utero than male embryos. So if a mother is going through a wobbly relationship from the outset, her female fetus has a higher probability of surviving the complete term. This theory of characteristic female survival advantage -- meaning girls and women of all ages are more likely than boys or men to make it to their next birthday -- is a widely accepted idea.

The scientists commenced their study to determine if the links between difficult pregnancies, maternity results and divorce are sufficiently strong to account for the daughter -to- divorce relationship. Stress and tension hormones have been shown to negatively affect pregnancies in otherwise healthy and balanced women; there have even been studies that found relationship between a pregnant woman's self-reported well-being (and lack of thoughts of divorce) and the possibility that she carries a child to term. Hamoudi and Nobles found that nearly all of the links between daughters and divorce can be accounted for by stress-related dynamics during pregnancy.

Daughters do not cause divorce.

As for the results of their study, "We didn't prove that girls don't cause divorce," Hamoudi said. "What we found was that it would be hasty to look at the daughter-to-divorce association and say, 'Aha, girls must cause divorce,' because we now have another explanation for why that association might exist."
In summary, if anyone jumps to conclusions about the relationship between daughters and divorce, they need start the clock at fertilization, not birth. Without that insight, they are missing a very important part of the equation.

More legal information on child custody, adoption,
and divorce

Tennessee Child Custody Information
Tennessee Adoption / Parental Rights Process
Tennessee Divorce

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