Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion A question of genetics

"only 30% of the men can reproduce" but 100% of the families have kids. Somebody's got some 'xplaining to do,..lol. I kind of think about that trippy hippy indigo children stuff, that we'll just keep evolving, or at least that the majority of people do a little better raising children than the generation before. Also we have better tools and knowledge for every generation, compounding at an astounding rate. I think the whole crowd of humanity is on the rise. Even the very sad cases where people have diseases they have a higher quality of life and a greater chance of improvement than ever before.

Thanks, and yes to all that you wrote. I'm not 100% sure about Barbara Walter's quote... although I have to admit that I have taken a less demanding job (although still somewhat demanding) and that has certainly helped with my marriage and mothering.

I think you're right that perfectionism has played a role (and, honestly, you see this in many families, in general). There's an idea out there that there's a perfect way to raise a child (although no one seems to agree on what exactly that way is) and each mother is left to try a myriad of things to establish what is perfect for their respective child. Add to that there's extensive pressure for your child to perform in public (not tantrum in restaurants/airplanes, share with peers, easily make friends and do well at school) and your parenting is judged by how well your child performs. If you have an intense, stubborn child who very much has a mind of their own and throw in some overexcitabilities or a learning disability and you have quite the job for yourself! Dealing with your own perfectionism just adds to the fun.

I'm not sure about that. I think there are just so many factors that go into dating/marriage that it's hard to say. I never had that experience (and have dated men who I felt were both smarter than me and ones who were not). And I know many other women who were quite intelligent and had no problems finding guys interested in them (again with a range of intelligence levels). I do think that things like overexcitiabilites, perfectionism, social anxieties, and being an introvert play a major role, though.* Friends of mine who have struggled with dating always seems to struggled with one or more of those (and I know that they can appear often in the gifted population).

*ETA: I realized that came our wrong and I also want to add obvious things like a small dating pool (e.g. living in a small town) or simply bad luck can play a role here too. I'm sure that are also a million of other factors I'm overlooking but what I mentioned above seemed to happen often amongst friends of mine.

Also, putting off relationships because they thought it would affect their careers is quite common too.

Socioeconomic Status Modifies Heritability of IQ in Young Children
Eric Turkheimer,
Andreana Haley,
Mary Waldron,
Brian D'Onofrio and
Irving I. Gottesman
+ Author Affiliations
University of Virginia

Eric Turkheimer, University of Virginia, P.O. Box 400400, Charlottesville, VA 22904�4400; Email: ent3c@virginia.edu

Abstract
Scores on the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children were analyzed in a sample of 7-year-old twins from the National Collaborative Perinatal Project. A substantial proportion of the twins were raised in families living near or below the poverty level. Biometric analyses were conducted using models allowing for components attributable to the additive effects of genotype, shared environment, and non-shared environment to interact with socioeconomic status (SES) measured as a continuous variable. Results demonstrate that the proportions of IQ variance attributable to genes and environment vary nonlinearly with SES. The models suggest that in impoverished families, 60% of the variance in IQ is accounted for by the shared environment, and the contribution of genes is close to zero; in affluent families, the result is almost exactly the reverse.

I think the raise in general living standards, the democratisation of education, and the drop in childhood diseases probably also plays a role. Children who may have had the genetic traits for high IQ, but were malnorished or whatever are unlikely to have reached their potential. Plus the fact that for most people education was a rare privelege. If you were gifted but had never been even exposed to reading it would be unlikely that you would be identified.

Essentially, this study appears to find that there is an environmental threshold level below which high genetic potential cannot be adequately expressed.

Grinity I could have written that, in particular the bold bits. I often wonder whether my first daughter drove my parenting style or whether I created a monster. My second DD made me think it was probably all my fault. My third has made me realise they come out how they are. I was quite affronted to have had a REALLY hard first baby, thought I had it all sorted after #2 and then find that #3 was the hardest yet. I love my girls to pieces but there is no way in hell DH and I would risk a fourth and we often wonder how crazy we must have been to think we could manage three. The answer to that might be that we probably could have managed a third that was like the second, and we had the delusion we had learned a thing or two about parenting and that would influence the outcome. And I guess to an extent it has, we are having a slightly less hard time with #3 as an individual than we did with #1 as an individual - but that is a nearly impossible task when combined with two other children already here and keeping life interesting.

Which dovetails nicely with the quote from Lauren Bacall. I was doing ok with 2 kids, but I just had a major melt down that I simply cannot adequately run my own business, parent three kids like we have and be married to to my DH. I love every one of my family members to pieces, and I love my job, I CANNOT do all three adequately. Not without some serious help.

I would certainly say that this describes at least one of my paternal grandparents, probably my grandfather who was a painter with "the gift of the gab", I would be surprised if he ever finished high school but he was a bright man. But following that trail - my dad was most certainly gifted, quite probably HG, one of his brothers probably is too, actually it would not surprise me to learn they were both PG or close to it. But his other was brother a mechanic, now a driver, his sisters are home makers. They all went to the same schools, had the same opportunities and same parenting. Well the gifted uncle chose to leave home for the seminary at 12 and never came home (he visited obviously and it was a choice, my gran did not want to let him go and all the other boys who went gave up but he did not, he had the inner calling and drive from early childhood). Interestingly I am my father's only child and his gifted brother is childless (priest!). My father's family are truly wonderful people, but I am certainly "different" from the rest of the family. Perhaps this unbalanced family tree is the result of more uneven IQ match between my grandparents? Where as my DH and I are very closely matched and I would place bets that all three of our children will fall within 10 points of each other, if they don't it would be 2E issues clouding things.

Arthur Jensen and J.P. Rushton say Turkheimer's study is an outlier:

http://www.alternativeright.com/mai...appy-science/?print=1&tmpl=component
The Happy Science
Forget the Bell Curve, Everyone's a Genius!
By Richard Hoste

...

Shenk cites a 2003 study by University of Virginia psychologist Eric Turkheimer purportedly showing that intelligence is less heritable in lower socio-economic status (SES) groups. This article was a favorite of Nisbett, too, though Jensen and Rushton pointed out at the time that

'The Turkheimer et al. [70] study that Nisbett cites is an outlier. In Britain, the exact opposite of Turkheimer's result was found in over 2,000 pairs of 4-year-old twins (N = 4,446 children), with greater heritability observed in high-risk environments [74]. A re-analysis of the Hawaii Family Study of Cognition also found contrary results to Turkeimer's. Nagoshi and Johnson [75] found no reduction in the relationship between parental cognitive ability and offspring performance in families of lower as opposed to upper levels of socioeconomic status. In the 1,349 families they studied, the relationship remained the same across tests, ethnicity, and sex of offspring.'

<end of excerpt>

The article above is citing the paper

http://psychology.uwo.ca/faculty/rushtonpdfs/Intelligence%20and%20How%20to%20Get%20It%20(Working%20Paper).pdf

Race and IQ: A Theory-Based Review of the Research in Richard Nisbett�s
Intelligence and How to Get It
by J. Philippe Rushton and Arthur R. Jensen

Did anybody read the Hawaii study? I wondered why they limited their study to two ethnic groups that are normally among the best educated, with the most political power in a richly multicultural, working class society.

I am raising a PG adopted son, born in a developing country, and was not identified until age 8. Potential was always there, of course, but environment was everything for him flourish. I am not gifted, except in finding teachers for my son!