Social networks play an important role in various aspects of life. While
extensive research has explored factors such as gender, race, and education in
network formation, one dimension that has received less attention is the gender
of one's child. Children tend to form friendships with same-gender peers,
potentially leading their parents to interact based on their child's gender.
Focusing on households with children aged 3-5, we leverage a rich dataset from
rural Bangladesh to investigate the role of children's gender in parental
network formation. We estimate an equilibrium model of network formation that
considers a child's gender alongside other socioeconomic factors.
Counterfactual analyses reveal that children's gender significantly shapes
parents' network structure. Specifically, if all children share the same
gender, households would have approximately 15% more links, with a stronger
effect for families having girls. Importantly, the impact of children's gender
on network structure is on par with or even surpasses that of factors such as
income distribution, parental occupation, education, and age. These findings
carry implications for debates surrounding coed versus single-sex schools, as
well as policies that foster inter-gender social interactions among children