Thursday, May 24, 2012

Daughter effects?

So the “daughter effect” has been well-documented in the business world—if a company’s chief executive officer (or similar) has any daughters, and particularly a daughter as an oldest child, that company is more likely to have policies and practices of the type that are generally seen as being friendly to women.

So this has gotten me wondering—is there a similar sort of effect among Mormon leaders (bishops, stake presidents, mission presidents, general authorities)? If one of them has daughters, especially an oldest child who’s a daughter, is he more likely to, say, listen to women in stake or ward or whatever councils, or focus on young women equally as much as the young men, or promote visiting teaching as vigorously as home teaching, or whatever else one might come up with? Also, how would one measure this?

Utah Valley University has a decent and growing Mormon Studies program, and Brigham Young University has a lot of folks interested in the social scientific study of religion, and the University of Illinois has a history of research into Mormonism, so there’s got to be somebody out there who has the desire and training to look into this.

1 comment:

Heather the Mama Duk said...

IME... No. Relationship to their wife tends to be the bigger indicator. Of course, if they listen to their wife and take her feelings into careful consideration, it stands to reason that it would follow that they'd listen to the women in the ward, too. Some of the worst bishops as far as listening to the women are the ones with daughters (most commonly ONLY daughters, followed by a daughter being their oldest).