Daughters change dads' thinking

A U.S. study says men who have daughters are more likely to support women's issues than men without daughters.

Ebonya Washington, an assistant economics professor at Yale University, found that the more daughters a congressman had, the more likely he was to vote for reproductive rights, USA Today said Thursday.

Washington's research expands on an analysis that she did last year of roll call votes by congress members in 1997 and 1998, on women's issues such as equal rights, women's safety, economic security, education, health and reproductive rights, the newspaper said.

Kyle Pruett, a clinical professor of psychiatry at Yale University's Child Study Center, said daughters make fathers "think differently about how they're going to make the world a better place."

Sociology professor Scott Coltrane of the University of California-Riverside said fathers who have only daughters "tend to instill in their daughters an achievement motivation" and are "more sensitive to discrimination."

Copyright 2007 by United Press International