Some Mothers Have A Preference For Their Daughters

First Posted: Nov 12, 2014 09:24 PM EST
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Most parents equally love their children. Yet recent findings published in the The British Journal of Development Psychology show that mothers could be partial to their daughters.

Researchers at the University of Surrey found that conversations mothers had with their daughters tended to contain more emotional words and content than the exchanges they had with their sons.

Furthermore, mothers used more emotional words than fathers, which was particularly true in the case with their daughters.

The recent findings involved 65 Spanish mothers and fathers, along with four and six-year-old children who were asked to complete storytelling and conversational tasks while researchers assessed their use of language.

"Our study suggests that parent-child conversations are gendered, with mothers talking more expressively to their daughters than their sons," concluded lead study author Dr. Harriet Tenenbaum from the University of Surrey, in a news release. "This inevitably leads to girls growing up more attuned to their emotions then boys. Having this edge to be more expressive and cope well with emotions may matter more than ever in the workplace, as more companies are starting to recognize the advantages of high emotional intelligence when it comes to positions such as sales, teams and leadership."

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