A trio of studies published in Personality and Individual Differences suggests that having a daughter can subtly recalibrate a father’s relationship priorities, nudging him to invest more in his bond with the child’s mother and potentially supporting greater long-term family stability.
The researchers grounded their work in paternal investment theory, a framework that treats fathers as early models of male behaviour for their children. For daughters in particular, a father’s involvement and presence can signal whether men in the wider environment are reliable and likely to invest in long-term relationships.
Past findings cited by the team note that father absence can influence daughters’ development and life choices. A 2003 longitudinal study linked growing up with an absent father to a higher likelihood of early sexual activity and teenage pregnancy. A separate study highlighted by PsyPost in 2016 tied earlier father absence to more casual sexual encounters during college, while research covered in 2026 associated father absence during particular developmental windows with accelerated physical maturation, including earlier puberty.
The researchers hypothesised that the reproductive costs borne by daughters heighten their sensitivity to reliable male support. They proposed that having a daughter might prompt fathers to maintain a stronger pair-bond with the mother, by demonstrating stable romantic investment and modelling reliable male investment for their daughters’ expectations of future partners.
“But no prior study had looked at the reverse, the impact having a daughter has on a man,” Kristina M. Durante, a professor of marketing and research fellow at the Center for Women in Business at Rutgers Business School, told PsyPost. “This was a significant gap, especially given that one of the leading theories for why father absence negatively impacts daughters is because fathers send a message to a daughter about what to expect from a future partner.” The research, led by Krystal Duarte alongside Durante, aimed to test whether fathers of daughters display stronger pair-bond motivation than fathers of sons.
In the first study, 184 parents with a single child under 18 participated, comprising 101 fathers and 83 mothers. Participants completed questionnaires assessing emotional attachment to their partner and various facets of relationship quality, including satisfaction, commitment and trust.
The findings showed that fathers of daughters reported stronger attachment bonds to the child’s mother than fathers of sons. On a 9-point scale of attachment strength, fathers with daughters averaged 8.04, versus 7.37 for fathers of sons. Fathers of daughters also reported higher levels of commitment, satisfaction and trust. By contrast, mothers’ reports of relationship quality and attachment did not differ according to the child’s sex.
For the second study, the team drew on data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, a large, long-term project. The final sample included 587 couples, and researchers measured both partner-directed support—affection and fairness toward the mother—and parenting-focused support, such as cooperation on childcare rules. Mothers who had a daughter reported receiving more partner-directed support from fathers shortly after birth than mothers who had a son. The researchers found this difference specifically pertained to the couple dynamic, with no corresponding differences in general parenting or co-parenting behaviours based on the child’s sex. Additionally, fathers’ perceptions of the mothers’ supportiveness did not vary with the child’s sex.
“Outside of finding that daughters have an impact on dads, we were surprised and delighted to see that dads of daughters were reported to be better partners by the mother,” Durante noted. “So, this isn’t just dad ‘reporting’ that he is a more committed partner, moms are feeling that commitment through his behavior.” Over time, the gap in partner support between fathers of daughters and fathers of sons appeared to narrow as the children grew older.
The third study followed 168 first-time parent couples from late pregnancy to the first two years with the child. It again found that after birth, fathers of daughters reported greater relationship satisfaction and provided more support to their partners. In contrast, fathers of sons tended to become more avoidant and less satisfied with their relationship, though satisfaction with childcare duties did not vary by the child’s sex.
“Having a daughter seems to shift dads toward greater investment in their relationship with the child’s mother, not just toward the kid, but toward the marriage/partnership itself,” Durante explained. “This showed up across three different methods (self-report, partner-report over time, and before-vs-after having the baby), which is what makes it compelling: it’s not just ‘dads of daughters say nice things,’ it’s that fathers’ actual relationship behavior appears to change after a daughter is born.”
“These are small-to-medium effects, which means differences of about half a standard deviation on measures like commitment and relationship satisfaction, not full standard deviations,” she added. “The effect isn’t large enough to predict any single father’s behavior, but it’s consistent enough, showing up across three independent studies using different methods, to suggest something real and biologically patterned is going on beneath the surface.”
The researchers caution that the overall interpretation is contextual. “It’s not that dads love daughters more than sons,” Durante clarified. “It’s not that fathers of sons are bad partners. Sons’ fathers didn’t get worse, so much as daughters’ fathers showed a distinctive uptick in pair-bond-focused behaviour.”
The authors note that the observed effects arose in the United States and may not automatically translate to non-Western populations. In societies where fathers are less involved day to day or where there is a cultural preference for sons, effects of a child’s sex on a father’s relationship behaviour could look different. The current research focused on heterosexual couples, leaving open whether similar dynamics exist in non-heterosexual partnerships.
Future work may explore the biological and social mechanisms behind the shift in fathers’ behaviours. While the transition to fatherhood is associated with hormonal changes such as a drop in testosterone, it remains to be seen whether having a daughter amplifies these hormonal shifts more than having a son. Researchers also suggest examining how the sex of multiple siblings interacts to shape a father’s relationship behaviour.
“We are continuing to look at how a person’s early experience with mom and dad impacts their behavior in adulthood,” Durante said. “We are looking closely at how moms may differentially influence the development of sons versus daughters.”
“Becoming a father to a daughter may recalibrate a man’s relationship priorities, nudging him to be a more visibly committed partner, possibly because daughters are especially attuned to what their father’s relationship teaches them about what to expect for a future partner,” she concluded.
The study, “Daughters promote pair-bonding in fathers in modern Western cultures,” was authored by Krystal Duarte, Kristina M. Durante, Jeffrey Gassen, Americus Reed, Steven Rholes, and Jeffry A. Simpson.
