Do ‘clever’ women have fewer children?

Do ‘clever’ women have fewer children?

According to findings by LSE psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa, the more intelligent the women, the less likely they are to have children, according to his  research, discussed in the book The Intelligence Paradox, which found that maternal urges drop by 25% with every extra 15 IQ points.

This rather scathing article, from the Independent, questions whether smart women are merely making ‘smarter choices’, but to me, these findings make a rather different point about what it means to be ‘intelligent’.

I have been reading a book about the inverse link between empathy and intelligence called Zero Degrees of Empathy, by Simon-Baron-Cohen, which discusses the fact that empathy is inversely proportional to logic, or to put it more bluntly, the sort of brain that finds it easy to find patterns and sequences finds it harder to understand others’ needs. The epitome of this type of brain is given a label  – autism.

Given that a logical brain is often well suited to academia and other ‘intellectual pursuits’, ‘intelligent women,’ by this measure may be simply less well adapted to looking after the needs of a baby, which often requires higher levels of empathy. Just a thought.