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Posted By: Bostonian Birth order and student performance - 02/28/14 04:22 PM
The abstract of the paper is at http://www.nber.org/papers/w19542 , and the paper is at http://artsci.wustl.edu/~pantano/Birth_Order_School_Performance.pdf . One could ask if it is fair to younger children to not push them as hard, or if it is fair to the oldest to be prodded to set an example. All three of children often say that we aren't being fair, which is perhaps a sign of our impartiality smile. The description of how parents raise first-borns reminds me of the Tiger Mother.

http://www.nber.org/digest/mar14/w19542.html
BIRTH ORDER AND STUDENT PERFORMANCE

V. Joseph Hotz and Juan Pantano

...mothers with two children were almost 8 percent less likely to say that their second child was one of the best in his class.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Does birth order correlate with student performance, and if so, why? In
Strategic Parenting, Birth Order and School Performance (NBER Working Paper No. 19542),
V. Joseph Hotz and Juan Pantano present both empirical and theoretical
evidence on these questions. They study all children born to the female
respondents in the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth in families of
two, three, or four children.

They find that birth order affects perceived academic performance for 10- to
14-year-olds. On average, mothers with two children were almost 8 percent less
likely to say that their second child was one of the best in his class.
Earlier-born children also had higher scores on the Peabody Individual
Achievement Test and the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test at age ten. The effects
of birth order persisted for second children even when the sample was restricted
to "intact" families in which children's performance had not been affected by
divorce or other family disruptions.

The evidence suggests that earlier-born siblings are more likely to be "subject
to rules about TV watching and to face more intense parental monitoring
regarding homework" and that "mothers are more likely to report that they would
increase the supervision of one of their children in the event that child
brought home a worse than expected report card when the child in question was
one of her earlier-born children."

The authors draw on game-theoretic models that emphasize reputational concerns
in an attempt to explain the correlation between birth order and children's
school performance. They conjecture that earlier-born siblings will put forth
more effort in school and end up performing better because parents are more
likely to set higher standards for earlier-born children and to impose
consequences for poor performance. The study concludes that "parental reputation
dynamics may explain part of the observed birth order effects in school
performance."
Posted By: Dude Re: Birth order and student performance - 02/28/14 05:10 PM
Viewing this article through the lens of a third-born of four boys who significantly outperformed all his siblings in scholastic achievement, I am unimpressed.
Posted By: ultramarina Re: Birth order and student performance - 02/28/14 05:15 PM
Birth order effects are not as strong as one might expect, generally speaking, but there do seem to be some findings regarding firstborns doing a bit better in the IQ and achievement departments. I often see this attributed to the "more attention in infancy and toddlerhood" theory. When you're the first and only baby, you get spoken to and played with more.
Posted By: bluemagic Re: Birth order and student performance - 02/28/14 05:20 PM
Not true in my family. I have a lot higher standards for my second born.
Posted By: KADmom Re: Birth order and student performance - 02/28/14 05:33 PM
Originally Posted by bluemagic
Not true in my family. I have a lot higher standards for my second born.

Same here, but to be fair they are twelve years apart, from different marriages, and I didn't know what I was doing with my first (which was probably a blessing because he's doing well in spite of me and in spite of his education).
Posted By: bluemagic Re: Birth order and student performance - 02/28/14 05:45 PM
Originally Posted by KADmom
Originally Posted by bluemagic
Not true in my family. I have a lot higher standards for my second born.

Same here, but to be fair they are twelve years apart, from different marriages, and I didn't know what I was doing with my first (which was probably a blessing because he's doing well in spite of me and in spite of his education).
Well yes.. my son is 4.5 years younger. My older daughter had LD's, wasn't gifted. So while hope I 'expect' that my kids put in the same amount of effort, my expectations are that my son can do a lot better in school.
Posted By: NotSoGifted Re: Birth order and student performance - 02/28/14 06:14 PM
My eldest refers to herself (in jest) as the "dumb one" of my three kids. She was labeled as gifted, due to FSIQ > 130, but her scores on EXPLORE, PSATs, & SATs without prep are lower than her two sisters. Middle one has higher IQ than eldest, and youngest has not had an IQ test.
Posted By: SFrog Re: Birth order and student performance - 02/28/14 06:43 PM
I am as unimpressed as Dude. I am the third of three children and I outperformed my siblings' combined efforts. Birth order is given too much credit for its influence.
--S.F.
Posted By: HowlerKarma Re: Birth order and student performance - 02/28/14 06:50 PM
This is (IMO) rather like those studies that "show" that onlies are all narcissistic, antisocial high-achievers.

Not really true. My DD is way more prosocial than her father (an oldest of sibs), as am I.

Parenting is too varied, IMO, for such over-generalizations to be very valid in the first place.

Posted By: JamieH Re: Birth order and student performance - 03/06/14 07:47 AM
A Global Economic Slowdown does not mean every country will experience an economic slowdown.  Global Warming does not mean every year will be warmer than the next.  Scientific studies involving a large sample of people are about looking at averages, finding trends, not predicting what will happen in individual cases.

Economies, climate, people are all complex systems.  All are effecedt by large combinations of factors.  This is why individual cases do not always fall within the trend.

Why do they do these studies that predict trends and not individual cases? To look for potential cause of concern. Then use this as a starting point to find the why behind the trends. The why can be used to then look for ways to alleviate any problems that may occur.

This level of study is not particularly useful for individual families. Once they understand the why, then there might be something a family can work with. But still interesting from an academic point of view.

I have not reviewed this particular study, but I have come across other studies involving birth order.  Some studies have found evidence of prenatal neurological development being effected by birth order in males.  It also appears only male pregnancies affect the development of future male babies.

The effect appears to result in earlier born males having neurological development more in common with more female typical development and later born males having progressively stronger male typical development.

Realize studies in these areas are difficult and the results are prone to a high degree of uncertainty. Sorry, I have not provided any links. I am writing this from memory. Feel free to look into this further.

Interestingly enough, a medicine person in a tribal group told me of a custom whereby certain tribal roles were choosen based on male birth order. The role choices were in line with what the scientific studies found.

I should mention I added in some of my own post analysis based on my knowledge of many areas involving people.
Posted By: JamieH Re: Birth order and student performance - 03/06/14 08:34 AM
One of the scientific theories I read regarding why this birth order effect occurs is as follows.

Initially, the female parent has a strong mechanism to reduce the effect of testoterone levels on male neurological development.  Each male pregnancy reduces the strength of this mechanism for future males.

As each males prenatal testosterone level is determined by the individual male's genes, the effect will be seen to occur over a large sample size, but not necessarily within an individual family.

So if the first male has high testosterone levels and the fourth male has low testosterone levels, then you might see the opposite end result than what the study would suggest happens on average.

Realize the studies did not determine if all females have this suspected mechanism.
Posted By: Zen Scanner Re: Birth order and student performance - 03/06/14 12:49 PM
Good edit
Posted By: ultramarina Re: Birth order and student performance - 03/06/14 02:23 PM
Yes, the more boys there are in a family, the more likely the later born boys will be gay. However, high testosterone is correlated with homosexuality, IIRC.
Posted By: ultramarina Re: Birth order and student performance - 03/06/14 02:25 PM
Anyway. People get very worked up about birth order. But I've read a lot on this for work, and I'll repeat: the findings are pretty anemic. There are some patterns, but due to the complexity of family structures, it doesn't really work very well to generalize. The thing I took away from it is that parents should be careful to directly talk to and play with second and subsequent kids in the early years, even though that can be kind of difficult.
Posted By: JamieH Re: Birth order and student performance - 03/06/14 06:22 PM
Gay is not the opposite. Contrary to what most believe gay has been associated with a strong male brain in most cases. A highly prenatal testosterone level. Not necessarily at the highest level either, but near the highest.

Wish more scientists would look at more than one of their studies and coorelate the results. It causes all this confusion out there.

How people view masculine, feminine, what is more common in male or female is almost totally wrong. We make the mistake of not taking into account that our observations in everyday life are not a random sample, we make notice of some people over others.
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