BellaOnline Forums Education Gifted Education Season of Conception Tied to Grades?

According to recent research, your child's performance in school may be tied to the season in which he/she was conceived.

See the article: Season of Conception Tied to School Performanc in Yahoo! News.

That's very interesting, because my sister is the only one of the three of us conceived in the May to August window and while my brother and I have always been excellent at math, my sister is "just" normal. On the other hand, she is a highly gifted artist, unlike my brother and I. Of course, she is also the only right-brained one of us as well, which is what I would tend to attribute that to. My brother and I find Math and Science fascinating and she could pretty much care less.

Julie

Hi-

I'm the new editor here at the Gifted Ed forum. I'm hoping to generate more activity before too long. Thanks for posting, Lynn!

I read your article and it is interesting, but very vague. I wonder what the author means when he says there is a "significant" difference between the summer conceptions and those conceived in other months. Sometimes what a researcher finds significant is a pretty small number.

What are your thoughts on the article?

Without knowing which statistical method was used, it would be hard to say. However, for each method, there is a calculable point which defines significance. In this instance, I would imagine that's what the author meant by "significant" - "statistically significant." And of course, depending upon the population, a small number could indeed be statistically significant.

As for whether the research is relevant and whether the results are replicable through other populations, I would say that may be questionable. Neither I nor my sisters seem to fall into this pattern--and each of us was conceived during the period the author states is problematic. But then, there are always outliers in any population and we may fall into that grouping.

Its all in how you read (or want to read) the data.

I will say it doesn't hold true in my case or for either of my sisters.

How fortunate that I was conceived before May and our child was conceived after August.

On a similar "when you are conceived/born has an affect on your later life" topic, I read recently that "If you were to examine the birth certificates of every soccer player in next month's World Cup tournament, you would most likely find a noteworthy quirk: elite soccer players are more likely to have been born in the earlier months of the year than in the later months."

Now I guessed the reason for this (or rather, the same reason the article gives) before even reading beyond that first line in the article, but if you care to read it yourself, you can at:
BellaOnline ALERT: Raw URLs are not allowed in these forums for security reasons. Please use UBB code. If you don't know how to do UBB code just post here for help - we will help out!

I am a bit suspicious of this -- I'd like a lot more details. If it is strictly seasonal -- does it account for location? North or south of the equator? Does latitude make a difference? If, as they suppose, it is related to exposure to pesticides, those things should definitely make a difference. Florida may use them more or less year round, whereas Alaska, probably a much shorter window. And south of the equator should have a flip effect.

Rose Marie-

Thanks for that soccer article. I enjoyed it, and it certainly does give us food for thought.

I did find the original article a little vague, but it's interesting to ponder. I've long wondered about how children are affected by things while in utero. How might seasonal affective disorder or the mother's emotional state play into development?

Hahaha! My daughter was born in June. In our swim team's league,the cutoff is June 1 & the kids compete in 2 yr-age classes---"Under 12" "Under 14" etc.

So, every other year, she is among the oldest kids in the age class, and the next year, she is among the youngest. And, guess what---every other year, she beats the pants off most of the other kids (except the ones born in June) and the next year, she can't even place.

I suppose the 2-year grouping of the swim teams is fairer to the kids than the soccer thing! It gives everyone a chance to "be the oldest."

The only thing I have read that comes to mind about how the mother's state of mind can affect offspring is that stressed mothers who are pregnant with males are more likely to have homosexual sons. I think the book that detailed studies on this topic was titled "Brain Sex" and it went over how they checked on what percent of male offspring were homosexual for women whose husband's were not at war while the woman was pregnant versus those whose husband's were at war and also tracked at one point in the pregnancy the husband was at war (as I recall, the month most associated with homosexuality was month 5, but don't quote me on this). There were other studies that used past events to try to track this as they didn't feel it would be moral to purposely put a woman under stress while pregnant to see what would happen. But they figured it was due to stress putting off some hormone (forgot which) and so shot up various animals (different kinds - I can't recall the exact list, but think it included primates, mice, etc.) with the hormone at what they suspected to be the "crucial" point in the pregnancy and then observed the sexual behavior of these animals down the road, and found that they could *make* the animals homosexual simply by shooting them up with the hormone at the given time that was 'critical' along this line.

Now my mother always seemed a highly stressed person to me, and yet my brother isn't homosexual, so I do suspect there is greater variance for humans than other animals here.

Elly, that is telling. How does your daughter feel about going from "best" to "just ok"?

Rose Marie, that study sounds fascinating. I don't want to go too far OT, but I do believe that some people are born gay. Maybe stress is one reason why.

Lorel