Intelligence

Insanity is hereditary, you get it from your kids. Since I had children this old joke made a lot more sense and has kind of a true ring to it. One I have never heard though is having children causes a loss of intelligence.

A five-year study run by Indiana University’s Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction proves what many in the scientific community have always suspected (emphasis added): having children significantly lowers the IQ of both male and female parents.

It makes for an interesting read but I disagree with the methodology and the conclusions it reaches.

To start with, to make it a true scientific study the test would also have to be given to those couples who did not conceive, instead of just those who successfully conceived, to rule out other causes of the lower IQ score. Also, I can easily explain why the parents tested lower six months after the baby was born and why it affected mostly the objective parts of the brain, sleep. Simple and pure sleep. Anybody that has raised kids knows that normally still at six months you are getting up at night with the child and taking an IQ test when you are exhausted would definitely affect the score. Anybody that has ever been tired knows this.

I am not out here blindly defending parents just pointing out the problems with the study. I've met the kind of parents the article mentions and they do appear to be a little one sided in their views, but I attribute that to the insanity is hereditary theory and not the intelligence theory, but I could be wrong.

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. F. Scott Fitzgerald

BTW: My children are intelligent and beautiful, I will not comment on their athletic ability, you can ask their grandparents for proof.