Egregious research

So remember that study I have referred to multiple times about vocabulary being found to be deficient in the younger children of large families? I bet you were getting a little tired of me harping on it. 

Well, I have some good news and bad news for you. The good news is you probably won't ever hear me reference it again. Don't get too caught up in your celebration, though, because this looks is only because a new, more egregious study is out. Now it seems, that it has been "proven" that not only are the younger children of large families intellectually behind, but the intellectual ability of the older children declines with each added sibling. 

First off, I guess I need to apologize to my older children. Just think how much smarter you could have been without all those pesky younger siblings around sucking up parental attention and causing you untold intellectual damage. 

You were reading that as heavy irony, right? There is absolutely nothing wrong with my older children's intellect, vocabulary, or functioning. They will also be the first to tell you that having my rather intense mothering attention dilutes by younger siblings was not necessarily a bad thing. 

But back to the study. I have questions. Now granted, I have not read the actual study, just a synopsis of it. So perhaps these things are addressed in it. It's also four days before Christmas and the last thing I have time to do is slog through an academic study. You know all those children take up all my time. And after all, I'm just a mom with more the acceptable number of children and since I couldn't figure out how to not make that happen, heaven knows I couldn't wrap my little head around an academic paper. You know, the ones written by smart people who don't have an  unacceptable number of children. 

More heavy irony if you didn't guess. 

But back to my questions. The two big ones are what is the socio-economic status of these families and what is the highest level of education achieved by the parents? Because my gut feeling is that this is a privilege thing and not a number of children thing. 

I realize that it is not uncommon for families with large numbers of children to be living on smaller wages and not have a history of family upper education. If these factors are not controlled for, I believe that they will significantly confound the results. 

It shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone that children who come from families who are economically stable and whose parents have gone to college, especially if those parents have advanced degrees, do better in academic settings and on academic testing. The reverse is also true. I'll even go so far to say that more children in an already stressed household will add to.the collective stress. And if you've read here for any length of time, you know that stress and fear and worry make for a brain that is not focused on learning. The bottom line is that children in underprivileged households tend to struggle academically. This isn't a family size problem at it's root. 

My children do not fit the story which the researchers would like to tell. They all do quite well academically. Their vocabularies are large. (Too large I sometimes think.) I give them attention. I read them books. I discuss things with them. Am I perfect? No. Does something fall through the cracks sometimes? Yes, but show me the parent who has not experienced this. Does a child sometimes feel neglected or not understood? I'm sure they each have at one time or another. But this, too, is a parent-thing and not unique to our family size. 

But my children are also children of privilege. While there are certainly seasons where money seems exceedingly thin and I wonder if we will make it work, overall, we have more than many people. J. and I are both well-educated and have multiple degrees from prestigious universities. Our parents all had/have college degrees. Our grandparents had college degrees. We each have grandmothers who had master's degrees in classics who lived in an age where women typically didn't go to college. Heck, we even have great-grandfathers with college degrees. And that right there is privilege. 

Are the mothers in this study working? How many jobs? Working to pay rent and put food on the table can take hours if the wages are low. Are the fathers working more than one job? It's hard to have enough time for anything if you are barely squeaking by. This is an economic issue not really a number of children issue, though more children can add to the stress. 

And let's talk about bias for a moment. It may be the tone and word choice of the author of the article, but I can't help but think these biases appear in the study as well. There are two... The first is just a bias against large families in general. Phrases such as "not enough time" "not enough money for after school tutors" " non-essential resources being diverted by younger siblings". That last one is my favorite (insert sarcastic emoticon here.) Then there is the wee bit of crowing that happens with statements with the tacit implication of, "See! Having just one child is actually good!!" That alone feels as though they might as well put their bias on their T-shirts in case it wasn't blatant enough. 

[Before you begin to type... I don't care how many, if any, children you have. Just because I have a lot of children doesn't mean everyone does. I also know that one child families have to put up with their own onslaught of outrageous comments and biases. Please, how hard is it to not comment or make assumptions about someone's family size? I know lovely, functioning adults from all types of families.]

The second bias is an able-ist one. Oh, how we love to assign value to a person based on their intelligence. It is so pervasive that it's not generally noticed. Parents who have children with intellectual disabilities are given obnoxious amounts of sympathy for having to do such a hard thing... raising and loving a child who might not be... (gasp!)... smart. Raising and loving R. and H. is not difficult. Medical stuff? Yeah, that can be challenging because it can be scary. But the really challenging part is everything else. That would be navigating a society that is set up for the intellectually abled. Finding friends, activities, and so on is challenging not because of who they are but because society just doesn't provide places for them to participate. If we were a society who actually valued people for exactly who they are, their intellectual status wouldn't matter and studies such as this one would never have been considered as it would be pointless.

Why don't we spend time and money researching ways to make life more equitable for everyone regardless of family size or ability? That seems far more useful. 

And because this is already too long, you'll appreciate my self control in not moving on to the whole assumption that intellectually able children need after school tutors as well as their parents continual attention in order to be functioning adults.