A study has found that parents of boys experience a faster decline in brain power than those with girls.
According to researchers, people with sons age much faster than people with daughters, as their brain processing abilities drop away more quickly as they grow older.
The US study also discovered that the more sons the parents have, the worse the damage.
Researchers claim that the reason for the brain decline is due to boys being less caring than girls, which leads to parents experiencing poorer health.
The study drew data from 18 years of intelligence tests on 13,222 parents aged 50 or over in the US.
They were tasked with solving maths problems and had to remember a list of words that were read out loud to them.
The intelligence levels of the boys’ parents were no different to the parents of girls at the start of the study, however, as the children grew older, their levels of intelligence were found to be lower.
They scored lower in tests than parents of girls at the same age.
Researcher Katrin Wolfova, of Columbia University in New York, said: “Parents of at least one son had a faster rate of cognitive decline compared to parents without any sons.
“Results suggest effects are social rather than biological, as we observed similar trends in mothers as well as fathers.”
Writing in the Journal of Psychiatric Research, she added: “Daughters provide more social and emotional support than sons and often become informal caregivers.
"Benefits of a daughter on health and depression may contribute to lower risk of dementia”.
