Based on a 30-year study analyzing how children's development is affected by the size of their family, researchers have found that having a larger family may worsen the cognitive abilities of children.
According to the researchers, this is most likely due to the reduced attention and resources given to each individual child, as every new child is born. Moreover, the research also found that the eldest child's cognitive scores decreased the most as they gained more siblings.
A few interesting observations came about from the study. They found that the youngest were often the most well-behaved, based on their mothers' assessments. Furthermore, the assumption that being an only child will cause behavioral and cognitive issues was not supported by the data. Instead, the reverse was true with the first-borns exhibiting more behavioral problems with each addition to the family.
Although the study seems to have been done with a fair amount of rigor and forethought, I think it all comes down to how parents raise their children.
It is true that with the pressures of society today, parents have the tendency to spread themselves too thinly if they were to have more than two children. However, I think it is entirely possible for parents to have a larger family without compromising their children's development. The opposite is also possible. Not all only children will receive an abundance of resources.
It might be good to understand how the parents, who participated in the study, raised their children so that we can figure out if the main factor for the deterioration of children's cognitive scores was really due to having more siblings or if there were other external factors. Otherwise, I will tend to look at this study with a grain of salt.
(Image credit: National Cancer Institute/Unsplash)