In an age where parents are having less and less children, I feel this article is totally irrelevant. Back when families had 3 or more children, the oldest would probably be the smartest simply because they had the responsibility of taking care of the younger children and watching out for them. They set examples and made sure they were on the right patch. Now with families getting smaller, there is less of a need for them to be as responsible and more of a likelihood that either child (considering the family has 2) has the possibility of being more intelligent. If this test is compared with old tests, the data will be skewed. I don't really see a relevance of making the comparison in this day and age. With the changing times and advances in technology, the younger you are the better off you are to learn these new technologies. If anything, it errs on the side of the younger child.
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No one is more sensitive to that criticism than the Norwegian scientists. In fact, they already have an answer ready in the form of a second paper. Soon to be published in the journal Intelligence, it's similar to the Science study except for one big thing: instead of comparing Bill to Bob, it compares Bill to his younger brothers Barry and Barney. The same birth-order pattern shows up: the firstborns, on average, score about two points higher than their secondborn brothers, and hapless thirdborns do even worse. "The purpose of the two papers was exactly the same," says Petter Kristensen of Norway's National Institute of Occupational Health, who led both new studies. "But this second one is much more comprehensive, and in a sense it's better than the Science paper." The data are there—within families, birth order really does seem linked to brain power. Even the critics have to soften their positions a little. The Intelligence study "must be taken very seriously," says Rodgers.
No one, not even Kristensen, thinks the debate is over. For one thing, there's still that argument about what's causing birth-order effects. It's possible, says UC Berkeley researcher Frank Sulloway, that trying to treat kids in an evenhanded way in fact results in inequity. Well-meaning parents may end up shortchanging middleborns because there's one thing they can't equalize: at no point in the middle child's life does he get to be the only kid in the house. Alternatively, says Sulloway, there's the theory he has his money on, the "family-niche hypothesis." Older kids, whether out of desire or necessity, are often called on to be "assistant parents," he notes. Getting that early taste of responsibility may prime them for achievement later on. "If they think 'Oh, I'm supposed to be more intelligent so I'd better do my homework,' it doesn't matter if they actually are more intelligent," says Sulloway. "It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy." If the firstborns' homework involves reading Science and Intelligence, there'll be no stopping them now.
—With Jesse Ellison
© 2007
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