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Take a Younger Sibling to Play Day

I've written before about the effect of birth order on intelligence. It's not my favorite topic, because it pits older siblings against younger siblings and inevitably makes parents feel guilty. Here's a new study from Brigham Young University economics professor Joseph Price that offers a possible explanation for the IQ edge that firstborns supposedly have, on average, in addition to higher earnings and educational attainment. The central finding is that "first-born children get about 3,000 more hours of quality time with their parents between ages 4 and 13 than the next sibling gets when they pass through the same age range." More inequity. More guilt. Parents spend time evenhandedly on any given day. But, the study found, parents spend less time with children daily as families grow older. "First-born children get more quality time simply because they pass through childhood when there is more overall family time to be shared." What's more, the time that younger siblings do spend with their parents more often involves TV. Lucky them. I guess the good news is that more time with parents is good for kids' brains.