Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion A question of genetics

YES! I had a very similar experience! I don't have a job, but I was studying part-time and I would like to work again, one day. So I guess I have the children and marriage. And some days, I really miss the career.

The other thing is that a parent, we are more likely to research everything, and I think we are more likely to do what we believe is best even if it is not 'the norm'. This often comes with some personal costs to us. In the middle of a really bad week, I once said that I would have been a happier parent if I'd had a frontal lobotomy when I got pregnant. That's probably a bit extreme, but really it is very hard to combine parenting 3 children 5 and under with any kind of sustained thought. I can completely understand choosing to have fewer or no children.

Given that IQ is positively correlated with income, a negative correlation between income and the number of children desired may reduce average IQ over time, other things being equal.

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/01/richer-people-want-fewer-children/
July 1, 2011, 12:54 PM
Richer People Want Fewer Children
By CATHERINE RAMPELL
New York Times

...

[S]ince 1977, most Americans have said having no more than two children is ideal. I should note also that Americans have been making good on those desires, and the fertility rate has fallen greatly over the last half-century.

Even within the populace today, preferences for brood size correlate with income, Gallup found.

Only a third of people with annual household incomes over $75,000 say they want families with three or more children. Of all Americans with income levels below $75,000, 44 percent say they want families with at least three children.

The Lauren Bacall comment is true. DW was president/ceo for a few years and now has taken a less visible job and has turned down promotions. She decided to focus on the family for a while. I've done the same thing - scaled back my work hours to under 60 and pushed more work onto subordinates and hired a few more people.

DW and I would like a 3rd and perhaps a 4th kid, but some complications from #2 have precluded that.

Empirical research shows that number of kids is tied to political beliefs and marginal tax rates. More conservative people have more kids and lower marginal rates are associated with more kids. So I am not so sure that IQ selects for fewer kids. (US tax rates are still indexed to income and there is a huge marriage penalty.)

http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2007/04/employment-gaps-fertility-rates-and-tax.html

http://www.jasoncollins.org/2011/05/the-heritability-of-feminism/


Also, income also correlates with age. Younger people tend to want more kids and older people, less. Income rises with age. I think you would have to go back and look at the final net worth.

Finally, if we assume IQ is dominant genetically, then higher IQ will spread quickly throughout a population, even if couples self-select for dominant traits.

I agree, but I think we're thinking of IQ as a single gene - since we know there are so many varieties of 'gifted IQ' it must be dependent on a variety of genes (similar to hair and eye color) and therefor it wouldn't simply spread quickly, there would always be great variety because of the huge number of possible combinations any two people can create in their offspring.

Going back to the original topic about being part of a pocket of giftedness - we definitely experienced this when we first moved back to the US. DD8.5 was 3.5 and we had lived in expat communities made up of a large majority of well educated, smart/gifted people, so most of our friends and her friends were gifted and developing at close to the same pace as she was so she didn't seem that "strange" to us at the time. We then moved back to rural US and not only had reverse culture shock, after being out of the country for 11 yrs, but also because we had to become part of the general populace again. It was an amazingly hard experience - almost like being back in middle/high school trying to fit in again.

The fertility rate in the U.S. is pretty high for developed countries.

It's at replacement rate.

Compare and contrast with Italy and Japan, which are on the road to zero.

I wanted three or four children (I have three siblings, dh has one). It wasn't our choice to stop at two although it has turned out better for us financially. Some people can decide and consciously plan their family and some people are lucky to just take what they get.

Speaking of genetics, I knew that I wanted to have children as early as possible in my life given my family history.

With my mother dead at 50 (cancer - I was 20) and my father totally mentally and physically debilitated post-stroke at 55 (I was 24), I figured the sooner I had kids in life, the better.

Even so, I still ended up waiting until I was 28 to have kids. I had just gotten married at 26, so there wasn't much opportunity prior to that. My wife was 24. I figure that gives me better odds of my kids having an intact parent into their adulthood.

(Granted my grandmother just passed away at 99...but still)

Sweetie, you are so right. There is an element of random chance in all this, as I well know

I would love to find one of those pockets of giftedness