Younge Younger Research Paper

A teenaged girl trudges through the door, her expression sullen as she slams it behind her and slings her seemingly leaden backpack onto the ground with a thump. Stomping into the kitchen, she swings open the refrigerator door and ignores her mother’s greeting, hiding her face with an unruly chunk of hair. The door is crowded with colored magnets displaying an array of assessments and report cards stamped with As, as well as awards and letters of achievement, such that only a few spots of stainless steel peek through from beneath the papers. In the gust of air, one of the sheets floats to the ground, one of the few that belong to her, it seems, out of hundreds. The rest can be attributed to her sister, who is just a few years older, but in her parents’ eyes, twelve times smarter. With a sigh, she emerges with an apple and closes the door, heading up the stairs to her bedroom before her mother can ask to see her new test grades. None of them would be refrigerator-worthy, prompting a grueling discussion with her parents at the dinner table about how she needs to try harder, study longer, and make better grades, just like her older sister.

Parents often compare their children’s academic performance, often believing that the eldest children, especially eldest daughters, are smarter than their siblings. A recent study from Brigham Young University suggests an explanation for this. After interviewing a group of 388 parents and their first- and second-born teenaged children, it was discovered that a student’s performance in school has a direct connection to their parents’ perception of their intelligence and capabilities. And to add onto that, the study revealed that parents often believe the firstborn to be better in school than the subsequent child, even, on average, when their performance was