Form Time | Geography | Citizenship | Relationships and health

Parents prefer daughters for the first time

Girls' world: Boys increasingly underperform in education when compared with girls and are failing to launch into adulthood, with 20% of men aged 25 to 34 in the US still living with their parents, compared with 15% of similarly aged women.

Is this bad news for boys? After centuries of favouring male children, surveys have shown a sudden and dramatic shift in parents' preferences for daughters.