KEY POINTS:
Maybe there's something in the water, but there are hardly any mothers around who don't think they are raising at least one genius.
I am convinced that I'm raising intellectual giants, and that may even include my youngest son, who, despite appalling punctuation and a distinct lack of application, has an innate ability with all manner of technical gadgets.
He doesn't need to pore over cryptically written instruction booklets, the way I do. He just knows. These things make sense to him.
All right, so genius might be pushing it, but we mothers aren't that far off. The evidence suggests that our children are very likely smarter than we were at their age, and may well have been considered geniuses 50 years ago.
We know this thanks to Professor James R. Flynn, emeritus professor of political science at Otago University, who discovered back in the 1980s that IQ levels have been rising at an average rate of 3 points a decade in every country in which data has been kept.
So great were the advances that if the children of 1932 had sat an IQ test normed for 1997, they would only have managed an average score of 80, which would mean that half the children of 1932 would be classified today as having borderline mental retardation.
The professor posited that it was environment, not genes, which accounted for an average increase in IQ of 15 points between generations - the "Flynn effect", as it became known. Better nutrition, for example, and a more stimulating environment generally.
A study of Kenyan children between 1984 and 1998 suggested the improved IQ levels were because of parents' literacy, family structure and children's nutrition. A Brazilian study last year credited cognitive stimulation and nutrition.
So it was a little surprising to see Professor Flynn at the centre of a story in the Sunday Star-Times, in which he appeared to lament the childlessness of educated women and to advocate putting contraception in the water supply to counteract the "problem" of uneducated women producing a generation of dummies.
Aside from the professor being, as he explained later on television's Close Up, opposed to eugenics, there was, he said, a "weak connection" between IQ and university education, and an even weaker connection between genes and IQ - because "environment is so important".
"There are thousands and thousands of bright women and men who never went to college. My father was bright and he never went to high school," he said.
But much consternation has ensued in some quarters at the release of statistics showing that women without tertiary qualifications are carrying the childbearing load (at 2.57 children per woman), while university graduates are managing only 1.85 and those with PhDs a very poor 1.41.
We don't have to get too hysterical about this, says Professor Flynn - though clearly some of us want to. Instead, we could eliminate poverty, make university education free, and make it easier for all women to work, study and have children.
Of course, this is nowhere near as sexy as putting the contraceptive pill in the water supply - which is probably deeply appealing for those in the community who believe "the wrong people" are having too many children.
The idea that a fecund and intellectually inferior brown and poor underclass is outbreeding "the right people" is a perpetual worry for some.
Take Barbara, for example. She wrote a few weeks ago: "I always want to shout out when I hear of the poverty among Islanders and Maori, 'Why do you have more children than you can afford, intellectually, financially and emotionally?' The people that are seen weekly in the headlines as 'failing' appear to inevitably have far more kids than they can manage. I have not yet heard anyone speak out about the large and often unmanageable families Islanders and Maori seem to produce."
Just to get things in perspective, the birth rate for Maori women is 2.59, and for Pacific women 2.94. For Pakeha it's 1.77. As a nation, we need 2.1 to replace ourselves - so, if anything, Maori and Pacific women should be thanked for doing our bit to replenish our population.
As someone who's gone beyond the call of duty to produce a bonus child, I'd have expected a little more gratitude for the sacrifice.
According to Barbara, it's irresponsible for people who don't own a home, have poorly paid jobs or no jobs at all, to even contemplate having children.
But who'd have babies at that rate? By her criteria, I'd have been one of the irresponsible breeders. Should I have tried instead for the apparently critical PhD, the house, the cars, and the healthy bank balance?
It's not hard to see why the more highly educated are opting out. No woman who sat down and thought about the pros and cons of having children would ever have one. Who in their right minds would choose an 18-year unpaid commitment over freedom, stellar career, wealth and weekend lie-ins?
Not me, if I'd thought about it in those terms. Thankfully, having a child is still an emotional decision.
* Tapu.Misa@gmail.com
