Effect of Culture-Level Clusters on the Preference for a Single Child’s Sex

In the full factorial model the interaction effect of Culture-Level Cluster x Gender was significant while the interaction effect of Culture x Gender was non-significant (see Table 41). Thus, the interaction between Culture and Gender was fully explained by the interaction between Culture-Level Cluster and Gender. A reduced model without the Culture x Gender interaction revealed the best model fit in terms of AIC and was selected as the final model.

According to expectations the additional main-effects only model was non-fitting and showed a higher AIC than the full factorial model. Since the main effect of Culture-Level Cluster was non-significant in the main effects model, no single contrast will be reported for this effect.

An additional model controlling for adolescents’ age yielded a non-significant effect of age with Wald χ² = 1.04 (df = 2, p = .60) and no differences resulted with regard to the other effects in the final model.

Table 41

Multinomial Logistic Regression for the Preference for a Single Child’s Sex

Model Full Factorial Reduced Main Effects

Effects Wald Df p Wald df p Wald df p

Culture-Level Cluster 9.60 4 <.05 8.53 4 <.10 7.62 4 .11 Culture [C-L Cl.] 198.32 14 <.001 241.41 14 <.001 240.18 14 <.001

Gender 51.12 2 <.001 149.07 2 <.001 144.58 2 <.001 C-L Cl. x Gender 12.80 4 <.05 16.86 4 <.01

Culture x Gender [C-L Cl.] 9.81 14 .78

Criteria Overall Model Test (LR) Model Fit (LR) Model Comparison AIC R² (U) Chi² df p Chi² df p Intercept only 671.29

Full Factorial 246.11 .267 501.18 38 <.001 saturated model

Reduced 228.94 .267 490.35 24 <.001 10.83 14 .70 Main Effects 238.19 .253 473.11 20 <.001 28.08 18 <.10

Note. C-L Cl. = Culture-level cluster. The acronym in squared brackets signifies that the preceding effect is nested in the factor Culture-Level Cluster. AIC = Akaikes Information Criterion. R² (U) = Nagelkerke’s Pseudo R² (Reduction of Uncertainty). The bold printed model is selected as the best (and final) model according to the AIC. The factors Culture-Level Cluster, Culture, and Gender were used for the definition of subpopulations.

Table 42 shows the distribution of adolescents’ answers with regard to the preference for a single child’s sex by Culture, Culture-Level Cluster, and Gender. The strong Gender main effect was reflected in differential preferences of sons and daughters by male and female adolescents. In contrast, male and female adolescents were very similar with respect to the

‘does not matter’-category. Three times more male adolescents opted to have a son than to have a daughter, and two times more female adolescents opted to have a daughter than to have a son. The significant main effects of Culture and Culture-Level Cluster are displayed in Figure 22. The Gender main effect is qualified by the significant interaction with Culture-Level Cluster. Therefore, Figure 23 displays the distribution of the Preference for a Single Child’s Sex across culture-level clusters separately for male and female adolescents.

Table 42

Preference for a Single Child’s Sex: Culture, Culture-Level Cluster, and Gender Differences

Males Females All

As shown in Figure 22, the most son-preferring adolescents can be found in India, South Africa, Turkey, and Japan (over 30% son preference). However, South African adolescents reported also the highest daughter preference. Thus, son preference cannot be

interpreted straightforwardly without taking the ‘does not matter’-category into account.

Indonesian adolescents reported the highest proportion of indifference with regard to their future child’s sex, followed by Chinese, Swiss, German, and French adolescents. As reflected in the non-significant main effect of Culture-Level Cluster, the between-culture variation overrides the between-cluster variation by far.

Figure 22. Preference for a Single Child’s Sex across Cultures and Culture-Level Clusters.

The between-cluster variations were stronger for females than for males as reflected in the significant Culture-Level Cluster x Gender interaction. Females from cultures characterized by the family model of (total) interdependence reported a higher son preference as compared to females from cultures in the other two culture-level clusters. No such cross-cluster differences were observed for male adolescents (see Figure 23).

Overall, with regard to Research Question 2.1.3, at the cultural level of analysis adolescents’ Preference for a Single Child’s Sex did not follow the propositions made in Kagitcibasi’s theory of family change. Rather, adolescents’ own gender determined the extent to which they preferred the sex of a future child – their own sex. However, though there was no direct effect of culture-level family model value profiles on adolescents’ sex preference, the interaction with Gender revealed that girls from cultures characterized by the family model

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of (total) interdependence (and of those mainly girls from India) showed a slightly higher son preference than girls from cultures characterized by the other two more “modern” family models. Also, the two sexes differed with respect to the extent of preference for the own sex:

male adolescents reported a higher son preference as compared to the daughter preference reported by female adolescents. Finally, an important result is the uniformly high proportion of adolescents who have no preference with regard to the sex of their child.

Figure 23. Preference for a Single Child’s Sex across Culture-Level Clusters and Gender.

Multilevel Analysis to Estimate the Between-Culture Variance Explained by Culture-Level Cluster Membership. The results of the null model showed significant between-variance-components of the intercept of Category 1 (Son vs. Does Not Matter) with u0j (1) = 0.285 (χ²

= 107.96, df = 9, p < .001) and of the intercept of Category 2 (Daughter vs. Does Not Matter) with u0j (2) = 0.923, (χ² = 256.68, df = 9, p < .001), indicating significant cross-cultural differences with respect to the outcome variable. In the model including the culture-level effects of the dummy variables representing culture-level cluster membership, none of the four culture-level effects was significant (see Table C-1 in Appendix C). Nevertheless, the proportion of variance accounted for by the culture-level predictors will be reported here: the between-variance-components were reduced to u_0j (1) = 0.263, (χ² = 101.46, df = 7, p < .001)

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and u0j (2) = 0.913 (χ² = 254.39, df = 7, p < .001), respectively. Thus, culture-level cluster membership accounted for 2.2 % of the between-culture variance for Category 1 [(0.285 - 0.263) / 0.285 = .022] and for 1.1 % of the between-culture variance for Category 2 [(0.923 - 0.913) / 0.923 = .011]. Thus, about 2 % of the between-culture variance with respect to Preference for a Single Child’s Sex was explained by culture-level cluster membership.

4.3.4.2 Effect of Individual-Level Clusters on the Preference for a Single Child’s Sex