Birth Order and IQ- Or why firstborn always think they’re right
by Heather Setrakian | June 28th, 2007In recent studies published in Science and Intelligence, and reported by the New York Times, the eldest children in the family tended to develop higher I.Q.’s than their siblings; a slight but significant difference that may have a big cumulative effect. The researchers also stated that the results clarify the debate on nature vs. nurture. The differences were due to family dynamics and not biological factors such as prenatal environment. Differences in household environments or sibling gender did not explain the elder sibling’s higher scores. You might be wondering “These I.Q. differences were only a few points, so do I really need to care? What’s the big hoopla?” When asked a similar question, Dr. Frank Sulloway, an expert on family dynamics at University of California, Berkeley who provided answers on the Time’s website and editorial commentary to the article, had this to say:
It is worth noting that 2.3 extra I.Q. points (the advantage enjoyed by a firstborn over an immediately younger sibling) is approximately equivalent to scoring an extra 15 points on each SAT test, or a combined 45 points on the three current tests, which have a mean combined score of about 1,500 points. The cutoffs for acceptance to the best colleges, based on SAT scores, often hinge on where one stands within a range of just 40 to 50 points on the three tests combined.
Whoa. Should parents start to worry about their second and third children? Should I call up my youngest sister and gloat? Probably not. While some studies have families describing the firstborn as “more disciplined, responsible, and high-achieving” (ah-hem) younger siblings may distinguish themselves in other ways to gain attention- such as social grace and charm, athletics, music or the arts (ah shucks. I quit the piano ages ago). Dr. Frank Sulloway agrees:
I.Q. is hardly everything, and much that makes people successful in life has to do with how people use their intelligence rather than with their intelligence per se. In addition, there is considerable evidence suggesting that siblings born later use their intelligence differently from the way firstborns use theirs. Indeed, later-born siblings would appear to have 2.3 extra points of one difficult-to-measure intellectual skill (associated with unconventional thinking) that firstborns sometimes lack.
Looks like everyone gets their own gold star.
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July 19th, 2007 at 12:02 am
Hum…my sister (4 years older then me) has two gifted children. She did not make it past the first year of university. I am the youngest of three. I obtained a 3.5 out of 4 in university and graduated with a major and two minors (I worked on all three at the same time). My bother (three years older than me) never made it past grade 11. Throws all the thearies all to …. doesn’t it.
January 11th, 2009 at 1:16 pm
I’m the oldest of nine. I had a lot of attention from my parents. Between assignments from my father to read and report to him on what I read and one memorable in-school in-front-of-my-fifth grade-class spanking after an uncharacteristically bad report card, I am sure my IQ jumped a bit.
Since I was roughly ten to fifteen years older than most of my siblings, they used to think I was extremely intelligent. But there were moments with some of them when I knew I may have changed their diapers, but that they snapped up knowledge at a rate I never was capable of. Several of them are multi-talented, one of them is ambidextrous like my mother.
Now that we are all adults, when I think about “sharing” anything I think they ought to know, I sometimes keep my mouth shut. And more and more, they surprise me by revealing mysterious grown people who still look very much like the little baldheaded peanut heads or soft-braided or Afro-puffed heads that bobbed down the street beside me on the way to meet the kindergarten teacher for the first time.