Women who want to remain childless may be more intelligent than their counterparts who want to be mothers, suggests the findings of a new international study.
The study establishes that for every 15 extra IQ points, women tend to lose a quarter of their urge to conceive and rear and offspring. The results held water even after controls were added for the economic conditions and education of the women.
Findings Paradoxical
For the purpose of the study, researchers analyzed data from the UK’s National Child Development Study.
Satoshi Kanazawa, from the London School of Economics, was the lead author of the study. He noted that intelligent women were more likely to drink and smoke as they considered themselves to be ‘evolutionarily novel.’
The loss of maternal urge in intelligent women may eventually lead to a dumb society, caution the study authors.
Kanazawa found the study findings to be paradoxical. He said, “If any value is deeply evolutionarily familiar, it is reproductive success. If any value is truly unnatural, if there is one thing that humans (and all other species in nature) are decisively not designed for, it is voluntary childlessness. All living organisms in nature, including humans, are evolutionarily designed to reproduce. Reproductive success is the ultimate end of all biological existence.”
Kanazawa’s Comment Criticized
Kanazawa purportedly calls women with high IQ women as losers for not wanting children. The comment has invited criticism from many quarters.
“Anyone who is genuinely concerned with falling birthrates should be supporting policies such as paid maternity leave, subsidized day care, flexible work schedules, affordable health care, and so on that would make it feasible for more women who want babies to have them,” said Sadhbh Walshe from The Guardian.
The findings of the study have been discussed in the book titled “The Intelligence Paradox”. The chapter titled “Why intelligent people are the ultimate losers in life” has been specifically devoted to the correlation between a woman’s IQ and the number of children she has.
