My mom is definitely smarter than her brothers and sister. Hard to tell about my dad - he was the youngest, but when he and his sisters were growing up, the girls would have been encouraged to marry and have families, not pursue academic endeavors. Dad was the only one of the 4 to go to college.
I’m the firstborn of 5. My brother (#3) and I are the only 2 to have graduated college - he is a CPA who is currently a CFO and even has his MBA, and I have a bachelor’s in Aerospace Engineering. My 3 sisters never pursued higher education or particularly challenging or technical jobs. I don’t know how much that has to do with intelligence and how much with personal motivation.
My husband is the oldest of 3, and he’s definitely more intelligent than his brothers.
Of course, the study is basing this conclusion on 3-4 IQ points, so it doesn’t carry a lot of weight in my book.
My younger brother’s smart in a different way to me. I’m not sure how you could measure which of us is smarter but I think he’s got a faster wit than me. I’m just bookish, while he’s sporty.
Well, no. Oldest was born with Downs Syndrome. But that’s just a really crappy roll of the dice.
Of the next three, we have a National Director in one of the largest Accountancy/Consulting firms in the world, a Biomedical Devices Software Validation Engineer, and a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine. Huh. Which is smarter that the others? Beats me - I doubt you could find any practical distinction.
How do twins factor in for “first child”. I have a twin brother, and I was born two minutes before him. I’d have to really stop and think which one of us is smarter, truly, but I think I’d edge out by just a tiny bit. But the spread between him, me and my little brother is probably very very small.
I raised 7 children and the ones with the highest IQ was the 4th,6th and 7th. All though my eldest is very intelligent the 6th one could read at 18 months.
The only major testing that children in Ireland do is the Leaving Cert (determines points for college). Based on this, sister 2 would be seen as the most intelligent, then me, then sister 1 and last would be sister 4. Sister 1 being the oldest and 4 being the youngest.
I would agree that sister 2 is the most intelligent, but sister 3 has a degree in chemistry and works for a pharmaceutical company and knows all sorts of stuff that none of the rest of us do.
Myself and sister 4 are twins, and my family would agree that Im more intelligent then she is, weve both done well academically though, she has a degree in nursing and Im nearly finished a masters in business.
I’m more “book smart” than my older brother and have a more professional type of career, but I consider him to have a lot more street and social smarts than I do.