is there a correlation with successful male politicians and having more daughters?
the last three U.S. presidents have a total of five daughters and no sons (Clinton has one daughter and George W. Bush and Obama both have two daughters).
maybe politicians with daughters are better at empathizing with the people.
of course, not all U.S. Presidents have mostly daughters … but a great many do.
Of the first five U.S. presidents, only one (John Adams) had any sons. And one of those sons (John Quincy Adams) became the sixth president.
one possible explanation for this is that the American people have always been wary of royalty and hereditary rule. so they were more apt to elect politicians in the the early days who did not have sons. Some of these presidents adopted sons or had step-sons … but the fact that they were not blood related probably soothed the consciousness of early Americans.
I’ve heard it stated that smart people tend to have sons, while beautiful people tend to have daughters. Just shows that looks matter more than brains in politicians.
Kids have a massive humbling effect and in the end provide a healthy does of wisdom along side the insanity they can cause.
A fellow founder once ask me about how he could mature to match some of the other people around him in his peer group. I suggested have a couple of kids, you will get old fast.
Great discussion piece. It might as well be suggested that the American presidents/successful politicians and distribution of daughters is random. Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt don’t fit, for example, and they were spectacularly successful political leaders. There’s too much contingency in American presidential selection for this kind of correlation to hold imho.
That said, one can make a strong argument that having children, can be important for those who would lead, at least if they have not otherwise evolved past an undue degree of self-focus.
Back to your American presidents/politician correlation, one of our greatest leaders, George Washington, was childless. Did that enable him to develop an even stronger bond with the emerging American people, as “father” of the new nation?
Good point Jim. And Andrew Jackson was childless too (though he did adopt).