When we compare the percentage of women who have son and daughter preferences, we find that, in all of the Latin American/Caribbean countries except for Bolivia, more women report having a daughter preference. The percentage of women exhibiting a daughter preference is especially high in the Dominican Republic (33.2%) and in Haiti (23.2). This is consistent with prior anthropological research in the Caribbean, which found that matrifocal kinship patterns are prevalent, and that daughters are thus highly valued.
Thus, this cross-national comparison has demonstrated that son preference is not always the dominant type of gender preference, and that daughter preference is common in many societies. This is an intriguing finding, given that most previous studies of gender preference in developing countries have focused heavily on son preference. The discovery that different societies have different attitudes about gender preference suggests that more research is needed to help us better understand the context of each specific situation.
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