A Surprising Factor Influenced How the Framers Voted

Many people understand, at least on some level, that gender and family structure play pervasive roles in American politics. Political scientists have documented, for example, how women tend to vote for more progressive policies and candidates than men do, and how marriage tends to correlate with more conservative preferences among both genders. And of course some family effects go beyond gender, such as the electoral boost of coming from a brand-name political family.

But the shape of American politics might owe far more to gender and family structure than is broadly realized. In our research into that these factors might have molded the institutional design laid out in the Constitution itself: The more sons a Founding Father had, the more that Founder supported a stronger, more centralized federal government; the more daughters, the less he did so.