Sibling Superiority

A recent study supposedly unearths the "smoking gun" data which proves what many say is generalized conventional wisdom: First-born children are smarter than their siblings, while their younger siblings are more outgoing.

I've observed with this phenomenon and I would say that this is true more often than not. I'm a younger brother, and I would fully concede that my brother is smarter than I am while maintaining that I'm more outgoing. Based on limited data extrapolated from their relative inquisitiveness and desire to read, Daniel seems smarter than Sophia, while Sophia is clearly the more sociable and personable of the two. I'll keep Carissa out of this analysis as it's hard to make judgments from spit-up, drooling and gutteral gurgling sounds.

The article outlines the underlying cause theory which I think is pretty intuitive and can be largely traced to "nurture" versus "nature". An older child is for some time an oldest child, and thus experiences a great deal of educational attention from parents. Parents will often overcompensate with their first child, bombarding the poor kid with books, videos, academic calisthenics, games, visits to museums and other mind-cultivating activities. By the time the second kid comes around, parents are either/both (A) too exhausted with multiple kids to go through the same trouble or (B) convinced that they went overboard the first time around and cut back... a lot.

The younger child is emboldened by all the social settings that are now familiar because of their older sibling. In my family, Sophia will go to the same preschool as Daniel (which she's seen), play in the same playgrounds as Daniel (which she's done already with Daniel and his friends after school), and also know all the good excuses to feed her parents when she gets in trouble (which she's seen Daniel pull). All of this will be old hat for her, so she'll approach these situations with a level of boldness and audacity that a newbie wouldn't have.

Of course there are exceptions, and I have no intention of allowing this to be a self-fulfilling projection by withholding funds from Sophia's 529 fund because I don't want to waste money sending my moron of a second-born child to college. Nor will I refuse to allow Daniel to go to dances and his prom because he should stay at home like the loner the study says he should be.