According to Hanna Rosen (The End of Men), a survey in 2010 showed that 29.1% of women preferred having a boy as their first-born, and 36.3% wanted a girl (the rest had no preference).  For men the gap was even higher, with 23% preferring a boy and 42.6% a girl.  It took an imaginary third child, after two hypothetical daughters, for people to opt for a boy, and that by a small margin.  As if to bear all this out, 75% of couples using US fertility clinics ask for girls, not boys (quoted in The Guardian, 19/10/2012).

I’m surprised a survey was necessary.  As men grow older they realize that their sons have transferred their loyalties to the family of their wives (who do the work keeping the family in touch in any case; and often it is in touch with her family, less his).  Women tend to be better at looking after an ageing Mum and Dad, of course.  I am making a sweeping generalization; some sons have a wonderful relationship with their fathers.  But the generalization basically holds, as it always has.

Epicurus is not on record as having a gender preference (he was an ancient Greek and you know what ancient Greeks were like), but since he believed in pleasure as the most important thing in life, he would have opted for loving daughters – plenty of them.