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I'm more of a case by case guy, but I think that's true on average, in the modern west. But that's culturally dependent. It's more typical in history for parents to let the daughter drown, because a dowry will have to be found for her, while a son will stay in the house and have the obligation to provide for his parents in old age.
You're basically saying it's a fact of nature that parents prefer to send their daughers to college rather than their sons. Now, they do. For most of history, they really didn't.
A telltale sign that someone's putting words in your mouth. Where did I say anything about the relationship between parents and their children, or parents' desired level of educational attainment for their children sorted by sex? I was talking specifically about the male urge to protect female people from physical harm. There isn't even any contradiction between an intense desire to protect women from harm and a chauvinistic attitude towards female educational attainment.
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