Who has the higher IQ? And does anyone care?

The other day I was reading “The Oregonian” newspaper and came across an article that really grabbed my attention. The title was, “Firstborns have higher IQs.” I was shocked and dismayed to see that in print. Apparently there was research done on this, and it was done in Norway. Don’t those Norwegians have enough to do making all those bulky sweaters and fishing? How did they ever come up with something like this? The study involved only men and found that firstborns have an edge of 2.3 IQ points on their next oldest brothers. That all comes down to a 15-point difference in SAT scores. Even though only men were studied, they said the results would surely be the same for women. Now how do they know that? What sane woman would ever submit to that sort of testing? What is it with Scandinavian people? Do they all live in their own little quirky world? The article even quoted a psychologist in Glasgow, Scotland, who said that firstborns usually are the most intelligent of all children and the most likely to achieve.

How you treat your children also enters into the picture. It goes on to say that older children are showered with more attention (that’s a lot of crap) and given more responsibility than the younger siblings. Now that last part does make sense – I can’t see a man, watching a football game on TV, asking his 1-year old to get him a beer from the fridge. Wouldn’t he ask his 7-year old to do it? That’s the only thing that makes any sense to me.

I didn’t mention any of this to Teri and Cindy as I knew they would start fighting about who’s the smartest, and that’s a fight that would never end. But Jim, my OLDER brother, was here for dinner Sunday, and I brought this article out and waved it in his face and said, “Have you seen this?” Without missing a beat he replied, “I wrote it!” Jim can be really funny and he is smart. But the one sentence in this article that I liked said that the youngest tend to be creative and charming. I’m good with that.