I think there are a number of reasons that higher IQ individuals have less kids:
-they use birth control more effectively
-they chose to study/pursue a career first before having kids, thus, having a smaller number of fertile years
-they realistically thought about the cost of their child's education/travel/housing and decided to limit their family size because of it
-they chose not to have a large number of kids for environmental reasons
-there seems to be a strong correlation between giftedness and being an intense child. it's hard to have a lot of intense children around!
Nice list!
I might add that highest IQ parents are more perfectionistic, and vulnerable to trying 'birth-controling' styles of parenting - such as the family bed. ((wink))
I know that my natural gifted intensity kicked into overdrive with my DS, I wore him in a baby sling, nursed exclusively while working part time for 6 months - basically my perfectionism set me up to believe "There has to be a better way!" I was willing to try anything to blunt that very deep sence of lonliness I grew up with - even in the middle of a healthy loving family. When one is Intense, one doesn't need a tramatic upbringing to experience a lot of intense feelings.
And it's possible that my 'high-need' kid was successfully cue-ing me that he needed 'super-parenting' right from the begining (or that I created a monster with my liberal expectations - the world will never know)
Sometimes I dismiss my efforts as ignorant and misguided. Other times I get a sense of 'how things might have been much worse' if I hadn't gone 'over the top.'
Either way, having a 2nd child just didn't seem in the cards for us.
It seems to me that a good number of very intelligent women would choose to not have children if they have a choice - it maybe an inborn desire for most women, but not all. Barbara Walters wrote in her book that Lauren Bacall said that a woman can have 2 out of following 3: demanding job, good marriage, be a good enough mother.
I hope that isn't true, of any individual, but I can see those stressors limiting family size. I liked this book when DS was small:
Penelope Leach
Children First: What Society Must Do --- And Is Not Doing --- For Children Today (1994) is a polemic suggesting large-scale social initiatives to end child poverty and homelessness, and to enable parents to spend more time with their children.
I wonder if she'll do a '20th aniversary edition?'
Must send email---
Grinity
