Our results provide two unique contributions to
the literature on political socialization. The first contribution
is methodological. Our findings provide quasiexperimental
evidence that childhood experiences can
play an important role in shaping people’s political
preferences. Accordingly, our findings support a causal
interpretation of earlier research. Second, our results
provide evidence that socialization can happen in subtle
and unexpected ways. The vast majority of the literature
has argued that socialization causes children’s views to
resemble their parents’ views. Our findings suggest that
having sisters may influence men in such a way thatcould actually tend to make them agree less with their
sisters rather than more.