It’s been all over the news and it’s garnered a lot of publicity: A recent British study concluded that children born via in-vitro fertilization (IVF) appear to have stronger vocabularies than their unplanned counterparts.
It’s a controversial topic, of course. And it’s spurred a great deal of debate over whether these findings prove “nurture” is stronger than “nature” when it comes to early development of language skills in kids.
So what does that mean when we boil down the analysis? Read on…
Psychologists and psychiatrists are highlighting their theories that it isn’t IVF, per se, that’s increasing the vocabulary of the children who have been studied. Instead, it’s the socioeconomic background of those kids’ parents. Because the parents of IVF kids are generally financially stable, they have more options available to them in terms of how they raise their offspring.
In a nutshell, it’s a case of moms and dads of greater means being able to afford tutors, being able to take educational trips and being more “hands on” in terms of learning. Even more frequent jaunts to the library seemed to make a huge difference for the children who were part of the study.
Not surprisingly, this connection has some folks up in arms, especially among British sociologists concerned about the future of the UK’s kids from lower income families. Yet it’s an intriguing thought that planned pregnancies might result in children who are more significantly challenged academically.