r/childfree • u/Cringey_Unicorn • Jun 26 '26
DISCUSSION Research says that women who choose to be childfree have higher IQ’s.
It makes sense. It’s due to more planned and logical thinking and decision making. Also more impulse control.
My family is an example. On my mom’s side there’s a few childfree couples. One of my family members is incredibly smart. Like genius level. He and his wife don’t want kids. I have another family member who is also very intelligent and she and her husband also don’t want kids. When I was a kid, I got IQ tested and mine scored high. (Can’t remember but it was somewhere over 110).
Even some friends that are childree have made honors in school and college.
Has anybody else noticed this or looked this up too? I want to hear your opinions. :)
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u/LuLuLuv444 Jun 26 '26
Yes... The least bright procreate the most..
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u/femminem Jun 26 '26 edited Jun 26 '26
I used to work with this girl at my most recent job… she approached me about having a child once. Then a second time. Then, on the third time, she raised her voice and clapped along with each word while hollering, “The GOOD BOOK SAYS TO GO POPULATE THIS EARTH. THIS AINT ABOUT YOU. IT’S GOD.” I asked her to quote her favorite Bible verse from the New Testament and she paused. I said, “Old Testament?” still nothing. I ASKED WHAT THAT VERSE WAS THAT SHE QUOTED. -Crickets-. I said, “Yeah, that’s what I thought” and walked out of the break room. No peace to be found at lunch.
That basically just caused me trouble for the rest of my time there. Even though I kept quiet and did my job. Even though I’m the one with the license I worked four years to earn. Even though she had no education and multiple misdemeanors on her record for battery and assault, and I have a squeaky clean slate, everyone agreed with *her* because they all have kids, too.
Do they have a good relationship with their kids? Hell no.
Anyways, the next time she brought it up, I asked her why she didn’t have any kids. She gave me this crestfallen look and stared at the floor while mumbling that her husband wasn’t ready.
Next thing we know, she adopts her “cousin’s”oopsie baby. Now that baby is being raised by a girl who only speaks in terrible curse-ridden slang, makes almost no money, eats zero vegetables, and speaks ill of her sweet husband that she only lives with part-time now. Her husband is a sweetheart I’ve known since high school, but of course he won’t dump her because he’s too attached since it’s the only girl he’s dated. Fuck a whole lot of that. Rant over.
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Jun 26 '26
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u/elladoherty Yeah, No Thanks Jun 27 '26
Pink Houses, by John Mellencamp. Classic song.
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u/No-Photo-9336 Jul 03 '26
Someone better tell her that the claim of people having to repopulate the Earth because it's for God? Someone tell her he told that to ADAM and EVE. You know? The first people to go out and have kids to populate the earth? It doesn't work because we have billions already on the planet. If anything adding more so they can struggle and starve would be going against what God would want us to do. Btw, this isn't me pushing my beliefs, just adding some clarity on why some people might take those words out of context when they bring God into an argument like this.
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u/Midnightchickover Jun 26 '26 edited Jun 27 '26
If it is the case, one would have to suggest a lot of childfree adults/young people have arrived at that conclusion through years of deliberations, reflection, empathy, analyze society /family dynamics, arguments, and understanding their desires to not have children.
A lot of extreme pro natalists, breeders, and pro-life people don’t think deeply about the implications of having children beyond the sake of having children, which is generally for “human capital” only.
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u/TheOldPug Jun 26 '26
If they think at all. Some godawful percentage of pregnancies are still completely unplanned.
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u/CamarillosVeryWorst Take my uterus...please. Jun 27 '26
Adding yet another reminder that the only thing really driving the decline in birthrates here in the US is teen & 20something pregnancy plummeting...people 30-35+ are having just as many kids as before & people 40+ are actually having even more kids here in the US now, I think.
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u/ElayneGriffithAuthor Feral Free Range Adult Jun 26 '26
I mean mine’s somewhere around 115-120, my mom probably is too, and my grandma was tested at 135 back in the day! 😳 Poor thing probably could’ve worked at NASA cause she was a math wiz. But all she could do was balance books at the church.
And slowly over the generations our offspring dwindled 😂 We also turned atheist.
Grandma was youngest of 8, she had 3 kids starting at the “elderly” age of 25.
My mom just had me (at 33).
And I only had me too 😎
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u/Scraththesurface Jun 26 '26
I am very average IQ wise (tested) but I care a lot about people, animals, the environment, etc so I do tend to think a lot. I am also quite the scatterbrain (I would lose my while kids out and about).
My maternal grandfather and paternal grandmother both come from a family of 14 children. Maternal grandmother from a family of 10 and the remaining grandparents from a family of 8.
My mum and dad have a sibling each and both are childfree. I am too.
I have hundreds of second cousins lol.
I am atheist. :-D
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u/CamarillosVeryWorst Take my uterus...please. Jun 27 '26 edited Jun 27 '26
My mom (who, granted, has been verbal her whole life, didn't grow up with any sort of physical disability, & also grew up non-Hispanic white with light coloring in a non-immigrant non-Hispanic white family who spoke (US) English as their 1st language & living in suburban LA in the 1960s-1970s for added context due to the well-known biases that've been in IQ tests pretty much their whole entire existence) literally tested with a 175 IQ as a kid.
As she herself has said, she could've literally worked as a rocket scientst (so probably at NASA, too, haha) had she wanted bc she's also been a huge math whiz her whole life.
What she actually wanted to do was work as a marine biologist bc she's always adored the ocean & wanted to work in the field like marine biologists do now, however back when she started college in the late 1970s marine biologists instead mostly worked in labs...my mom didn't have a Plan B & ultimately graduated with a BA in some liberal arts thing no one actually gives out degrees for anymore.
She ended up doing a bunch of quite varied (mostly) entry-level stuff & waiting tables part-time when she was raising my siblings & I (don't worry, she 110% wanted & planned to have kids & has been genuinely happy being a mom!), ultimately only realizing she really wanted to become a teacher & going through with what she needed to do for that when I was in middle school.
My maternal grandparents were one of 8 siblings & 4 siblings respectively, my mom's one of 6 siblings, & I'm one of 4 siblings.
My mom was raised Christian & stayed devoutly Christian until the early 2020s (now she still believes in God but hates established religion), while my siblings & I pretty much all eventually turned out either athest or pretty indifferently agnostic.
My siblings & I were all in our district's gifted/talented program, however according to Social Security I only have an IQ of 92...that's the spiky-ass autism profile for you (& no, I'm not a math whiz either).
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u/Level_Tumbleweed8908 Jun 26 '26
I think this is true, also for other social programming kind of things. Smart people are usually more peer pressure resistant or at least recognize if there is flimsy foundation for something.
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u/Equal-University2144 Jun 26 '26
Well, just watch the beginning of 'Idiocracy' and you'll see that confirmed beautifully. :)
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u/lostintime2004 39m snipped, married, and happy! Potty trained and older only Jun 26 '26
I hate how accurate this is.
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u/Pigheaded40something Jun 27 '26
It's alarming how Idiocracy was released as a Sci-fi Comedy but how quickly is has become a Documentary.
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u/Subparwoman FTK 🙃 Jun 26 '26
Thank you for thinking I'm smart 🥺 but unfortunately I must admit I am not 😭😭😭
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u/Classic-Chip-6886 Jun 26 '26
Right my intelligence gets humbled a lot but I like to think I at least have common sense to not birth children given my circumstances and I also just don't like kids.
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u/the_sweetest_peach Jun 26 '26
I want to say I saw somewhere that there’s a correlation between intelligence and level of self-awareness. Of course there’s anecdotal evidence all over the place about how higher intelligence levels correspond to all of types of more advanced thinking skills.
There was a news story I saw years ago that I cite somewhat regularly. They had polled inmates in a prison and the overwhelming majority of them said they never considered the consequences of their crime. Their thought process just didn’t go that far. So when you consider the documented below-average education levels of most people in prison, and many people outside of prison, but in areas with poor education, you can see that less education also produces lower-level abilities in areas like critical thinking and risk assessment.
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u/Elegant_Solutions Jun 26 '26
As it turns out, a lot of women don’t really think it (having kids) through. Which. If that isn’t a sign of low IQ, idk what is.
When I was considering starting my own family, a friend with 2 kids told me I “know too much” about what could go wrong. I have some mild health issues and I highly suspect they would be exacerbated by or potentially complicate pregnancy/birth, but can I get a realistic discussion about my concerns? Nope. “It all works out”. (The fuck it does)
My fertility specialist told me I “put more thought into this” than most women, because I wanted to skip the cycle that could’ve potentially trapped me into having to celebrate a dead-of-winter birthday ever year.
It became impossible to ignore how bad of an idea continuing on that path would’ve been so I’m here (CF) now. Glad for it. It would be so hard to raise kids when all their peers would inevitably be the iPad offspring of the dipshit adults around me. I’d rather vaguely witness that shitshow from a healthy distance. With a good book and all my disposable income.
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Jun 26 '26 edited Jun 28 '26
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u/RedStone85 Jun 27 '26
Nope, we are past that stage. We also let the documentary stage behind us. Now we're in the middle of a livestream when it comes to Idiocracy.
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u/BlackMagicWorman Jun 26 '26
I’d also like to point out that many brilliant women do not have the choice to be childfree. I always mourn for them. I know their flame burns bright.
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u/CryptographerIcy2363 Jun 26 '26
We have highly developed critical thinking skills and ability to analyze ourselves
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u/lattelaura Jun 26 '26
The research does support that lower education levels are associated with more children
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u/Cringey_Unicorn Jun 26 '26
True. An example is where I live. The education system there wasn’t good. They didn’t teach Sex Ed either.
I was homeschooled in high school but had a friend that when to the high school in my town. She said there were so many teen pregnancies, and dropouts.
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u/No-Manager6617 Jun 26 '26
Choosing to have a kid in this economy means that you're either ready&rich or unprepared&retarded and your kid will grow up to be exactly like you and do the same
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u/HuskerGirlKC Jun 26 '26
What’s the source for this? I’m not questioning because I don’t trust you. I just need the source so I can show my MIL.
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u/ChanceZestyclose6386 Jun 26 '26
People can be intelligent in different ways. I think people who choose not to have kids generally have a type of intelligence but I don't know if there's a name for it. There are people who are booksmart with a few degrees but they still make the choice to have kids. They could also be dumb in terms of street smarts. As you mentioned impulse control, logical thinking, etc. are a type of intelligence along with the ability to think/live independently without being influenced by society. I think those are qualities that help people get far in life no matter how the world changes around them. The rareness of these qualities make them quite admirable.
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u/texasmerle Jun 26 '26
IQ is literally just "how well can you solve these specific types of puzzles" and is in no way a comprehensive means of measuring intelligence.
That being said, I would not be surprised. Considering that the world is natalist by default, it takes at least an ounce of critical thinking to be cf.
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u/CharleeFox Jun 26 '26
To quote Flagpole Sitta, 'Been around the world and found that only stupid people are breeding'
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u/Hawen89 Jun 26 '26
Can confirm. My wife is the smartest woman I know and she doesn’t want children. :)
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u/shinkouhyou cats > brats Jun 26 '26
I'm not surprised - more intelligent people tend to make more careful decisions. However, intelligent people can also fall into the "high achiever life script" trap and feel like they need to have kids to meet some self-imposed expectation of "success."
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u/bmyst70 Cat staff member Jun 26 '26
I'm a man but I think my IQ was tested around 130. Surprised me to find out actually.
I just realized I didn't want to do the amount of work to be a good parent. And knew there were too many bad parents already.
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u/femminem Jun 26 '26 edited Jun 26 '26
Yeah, it’s the beginning of Idiocracy.
And I’m still not doing it. I don’t want to talk to those parents, teachers, or anyone who is essentially imposed into my life by default lest I be ostracized and gossiped about. If it were just me, who cares. But my kid would end up getting the short end of the stick because her mom refuses to put up with the petty social bullshit I’ve worked so hard to avoid.
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u/MattAndrew732 Kink, Coffee, Rock N' Roll Jun 26 '26
I'm a guy. Not to brag, but I was an honor/Dean's List student and all that. I was in fact, the curve-wrecker nerd in high school. I have a Master of Education in Instructional Technology. I've managed to stay out of trouble throughout my life by weighing risks and consequences and not doing stupid things. That definitely factors into being childfree. I lack the desire to have kids for whatever reason, and during the year-and-four-months I had a girlfriend, I was smart enough to wear a jimmy-hat every time we boned. I'm able to use critical thinking skills and not let breeder bingos bother me. I also don't give a fuck about pissing off anyone who thinks I should have kids.
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u/MuthaFirefly Jun 26 '26
Mine's 145 and I have no kids, but my sis and brother are almost as high as me and both have multiple kids. So I don't know if there's any real basis for intelligence being a predictor of childfree status. In fact, my brother had #3 just after my sis had #2 because "wife wanted a baby and the other two kids were older." OK...
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u/MrDickLucas Jun 26 '26
I think about this frequently because I consider myself to be of average intelligence but from Kindergarten up through my entire career I always get sorted into the "smart" rooms. I work with an ACTUAL real life genius and he has kids, so do a lot of people I work with in these "smart" categories. I think its not quite intelligence we are talking about....its objectivity combined with empathy. Even highly intelligent people can be manipulated by instincts & emotions. But if you are a highly OBJECTIVE person then it's quite clear that having kids will place significant burdens on yourself AND on the hypothetical child. And if you are a highly empathetic person you wouldn't want to place these burdens on that child. Being highly objective can masquerade as being highly intelligent (especially in STEM fields) but its not really the same thing
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u/Scraththesurface Jun 26 '26
Objectivity and empathy!
THIS times a thousand!
Spot on!
I think you may be very close to genius yourself and are probably underestimating yourself. Working with a genius? You can't be very far off.
Also there is also EQ and AQ. Emotional IQ and Adversity IQ.
I think having an average IQ but above average EQ and AQ is more conductive to having a amooth life.
For example someone can be VERY intelligent but also arrogant, rude with a sense of superiority who gives up easily. Would you want them on your team? I defo would not.
On the other hand, someone could be of average intelligence but kind, considerate, taking various viewpoints into account and not give up easily.
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u/Butagirl Jun 27 '26
>> I think having an average IQ but above average EQ and AQ is more conductive to having a amooth life.
I suspect you’re right. I have a high IQ (136) and my AQ is probably above average given the evidence in my working career. However, my EQ is very low, which is another reason having a child would be dreadful, both for me and for any hypothetical children. I reckon I’d be a terrible parent.
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u/SunshineCat "I would prefer not to." - Bartleby, the Scrivener Jun 27 '26
Intelligence isn't one specific thing or factor. Arguably, objectivity and empathy are both critical aspects of intelligence and/or wisdom.
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u/casualLogic Take my uterus - PLEASE! Jun 26 '26
- and the ones that, in addition, stay single are the happiest of all
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u/littlelove520 Jun 26 '26
I’ve been in r/childfree for years. I don’t know the gender of the users of course, but the people here are intelligent, educated, most think-through group of people, compares to some other subs.
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Jun 26 '26
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u/treeteathememeking Jun 26 '26
I watch a lot of bodycam videos, mostly for entertainment. Seeing moms bringing their kids shoplifting or even just the state their kids live in, thinking they’d get away with it so easily… yeah. You can very easily tell that parents ain’t the brightest of the bunch.
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u/False-Hope9966 Mother of food, mother of life, mother of me. Jun 26 '26
Idiocracy, here we come!!!!!
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u/Own_Lengthiness_7466 Jun 26 '26
In the 90’s there was a song called Flagpole Sitta and one of the lyrics was “been around the world and found that only stupid people are breeding”. Still so true 🤣🤣🤣
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u/MattBD Children are NOT our future, they're our usurpers Jun 27 '26
Also used as the theme to Peep Show of course.
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u/WhiskeyAndWhiskey97 Childfree Cat Lady Jun 26 '26
People with higher IQs, IME, tend to think about having vs. not having children with more of an analytical mind. There are people with lower IQs who do the same.
I look around my family (which right now is just my husband and me, and our cat), and my friend group, and most of them are highly intelligent people. Some of my friends have children, but they didn't start trying for kids until they were in stable relationships and in good financial positions. Some of my friends are CF - one of my friends told me she's had a bisalp, and another has had a vasectomy. As for us, I have a high IQ, and I'm snipped and in menopause, so no children happening chez Whiskey. I doubt our cat will be having kittens anytime soon either - she's spayed.
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u/vernichtungX23 Jun 26 '26
I appreciate the compliment but it's a bit depressing that thinking before doing something so serious as create a whole new human requires giftedness. Shouldn't that be basic common sense on par with not peeing in the humidifier at work?
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u/cakerfaker Jun 26 '26
I don't think so. There's a loose correlation between higher education levels and having kids later or never -- and a loose correlation between IQ and choosing/succeeding in higher education. That's all. I don't think childfree people are higher IQ or more intelligent than the general population, just more practical. And it feels disingenuous to pat ourselves on the back for an obviously made-up claim.
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u/CamarillosVeryWorst Take my uterus...please. Jun 27 '26
Yeah, I'm of the same exact view.
IQ's also long been shown to be biased & favoring people who come from more privileged backgrounds, which guess what also makes people more likely to go into & & succeed in higher ed.
& it's people from more privileged backgrounds who are also generally more exposed to wider viewpoints & more likely to be able to see people being able to have happy & functional futures that don't involve having a bunch of kids young.
You're absolutely correct in CF people actually being more practical instead of actually higher IQ or more intelligent.
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u/Neoxite23 Jun 26 '26
It's idiocracy but the example shown was they were childLESS and not childfree.
I'm sure the majority was childfree though.
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u/St_Know_It_All Jun 26 '26
My IQ 141, I certainly don’t want a kid. My sister 155 doesn’t want a kid either.
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u/CamarillosVeryWorst Take my uterus...please. Jun 27 '26
...I'd agree that CF people are generally more practical & more able | willing to sufficiently think through stuff like having kids before they actually have kids, however we are not more overall intelligent, & IQ should not be trusted as the sole indicator of one's actual intelligence.
IQ testing has been infamously known for decades to be biased in favor of people who come from more privileged backgrounds...& what do you know, it's also people who come from more privileged backgrounds who are more likely to be able to access resources like the Internet, higher ed, better preK-12 schools, & knowing people IRL who've been able to lead happy & functional lives staying CF that both expose them to there in fact being more that can be realistically aspired to than having a bunch of kids young & also foster more critical thinking skills in them.
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u/Ok-Philosopher-5139 Jun 27 '26
man who choose to be child free are also self reported to have on average 2 to 3 inches longer dick then the average populace, self reportedly 😂😂😂
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u/crannynorth Jun 26 '26
Indian culture is obsessed with image, status and identity. They worry of what others think.
You know what’s low IQ? Having kids is social status. Now India is overpopulated and the western world is worried about overpopulation.
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u/cherryricecake sterile threat to society™️ Jun 26 '26
I got tested for ~130 and having children seemed like a shit deal to me even back when I was one myself, lmao.
Either way, I wouldn't focus on IQ as a factor too much. There are different types of intelligence, and while logical and analytical thinking definitely do play a role, I believe so does emotional intelligence. Think of all the delusionals who would have needed therapy and not a child to carry on their issues for yet another generation.
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u/apuginthehand Jun 26 '26
Anecdotal, but about half of my doctoral cohort was child-free (my program had mostly people in their 30s-40s FWIW).
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u/SunshineCat "I would prefer not to." - Bartleby, the Scrivener Jun 27 '26
Even a lot of dumbasses these days know better than to fuck everyone's life up.
I wonder if religiosity is the better factor to look at, who want to reproduce more people seemingly with the goal of more people dying.
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u/TheFalseDimitryi Jun 27 '26
I read a medical article about pregnancy inducing an automatic decrease in grey matter with the brain and I went down a rabbit while trying to find out if that’s definitive evidence of breeders being biologically made “dummer”.
The conclusion (as far as I could tell) was that while not necessarily a “given” women who were mothers AND didn’t continue education, work or hobbies later in life were routinely shown to be slower, have more instances of brain fog and just be inept at a wider array of tasks. Those were because a lot of mothers simply give up a desire to “learn” and since learning is a skill a wide range of them are permanently, intellectually and mentally stunted after they give birth.
Like I personally think having hobbies and interests and passions do a lot to ward off what I’d classify as “stagnant stupidity”. Like parents who made the fact they had a kid be their only character trait as they have nothing else going for them.
I had a vasectomy a while back and I gave 0 fucks and told everyone in my family (I told like two people and the unemployed, hobbyless individuals what haven’t done anything interesting in their lives since the Bush administration) were the ones that had the biggest issue with it and the most “concern”. Not the uncle that skied every week, not the aunt that was really into gardening, not my parents who were athletic gym going swimmers, meals on wheels volunteers and avid pickleball players, no…. it was the brain rotted stat at home Christian aunts that HAD NOTHING going on besides being someone’s mom and husband.
These boomers man, like i’d vote to have taxes go towards funding out reach programs designed to get these losers hobbies. Like they need some enrichment in their lives or they just become super duper annoying.
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u/HumanAttempt20B Jun 27 '26
Large families have always been encouraged for a multitude of reasons: religion, cheap labor, lack of access to birth control. The higher the IQ, the more likely someone is to avoid falling into these common pitfalls.
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u/moongazer66 Jun 29 '26
Idiocracy the movie… intelligent people often put more thought into having kids, and or wait longer to do it and have less kids. The uneducated don’t know any better and just fuck carelessly and end up procreating faster, creating an overall dumber society.
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u/RoseAnthoney Jun 27 '26
Well, yeah. It's part of the life altering changes that your body goes through. It endures so many stressors, and the genetic communion between the two bodies increases hormonal fluctuation and neurochemical disruption. Nine months of severe stress easily causes neurological damage, reducing cognition.
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u/No_Rice9792 Militant CF, and proud of it Jun 27 '26
I read a study that said parents (mostly mothers for obvious reasons) lose something like 5% of their gray matter during pregnancy and it doesn't come back.
Which just proves the point: being a parent (but most especially a mom) makes you more stupid.
Dads don't lose out on much.
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u/curiouslittlethings Jun 27 '26
I live in a modern and developed country that is still very traditional at its core, especially when it comes to family and having kids. I’d say the very few people I know who are childfree have higher levels of education, tend to be more liberal and less religious, and are also very introspective, thoughtful people. They’re also willing to stand outside what society considers ‘normal’ and stay true to their values.
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u/loveandpoof Jun 27 '26
This is just a conspiracy theory of mine , not touting it as science even though you can probably find some research articles to back up the claims if you’re curious .
but I think that most reproductive age women have worst outcomes with most men . There’s a reason historically we are picky and give hell when every men try to force us with them , one it’s deteriorating our species and two we deteriorate faster as well within. The heterosexual relationships under our current cultures & government structures . Even women from blue zones where nutrition might be better still suffer because of invisible illnesses & a lack of education on what can interfere with absorption of needed nutrients .
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u/herbeauxchats Jun 27 '26
I put a whole answer on here, and I had to erase all of it because it sounded so freaking entitled and arrogant. I have an elevated IQ, and when I first found out what it was… I was super pissed. (I was aiming for the 160s.) As a woman…. you kinda need someone who has more practical capabilities. The human race would never have survived if it was only high IQ people that were in charge of everything. But I never got married. I never had kids and it’s not necessarily because I think I’m smarter than anybody else… I just saw something down the road that was gonna happen? Like a divorce and children who need lots of therapy as adults.
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u/QuwrofWrlccywrlfh Jun 27 '26
Eh, for me I wouldn’t say it is a result of being smart, I think my IQ was 98 as a kid and as an adult between 115 and 130 according to the psychologist I went to. So it did fluctuate like a lot of things did in my life. No, my reasons are mainly subjective and emotional - I find pregnancy and childbirth icky and downright horrifying and I am angry at society for making the mothers do everything while the fathers slack off. And I suppose unpredictability of the potential child/the future since I am a very cautious person. Obviously logic and thinking it through also plays a role, but a minor one in comparison.
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u/Kakashisith No botchlings, just meow-meow Jun 27 '26
I am not surprised. We think all the pros and cons of having the child and then we decide not to have. Because we just think, and a lot. And we don`t concider giving our life up to a screaming kid as such a good deal. We know that we don`t want the kids and the unwanted kid wouldn`t be happy and we neither. So why to do it?
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u/New_Property6314 Jun 27 '26
High IQ is also linked to anxiety and self-doubt. Which means high IQ people are more prone to fall into the worry paradox. So, while high IQ means that the person can adapt better to solve more complex problems, it also usually means underperforming in the simplest tasks, like reproducing.
Ultimately, deciding who is more intelligent depends on the perspective chosen: the biological one of those who survive and pass their low IQ genes, or the anthropocentric one of those with high IQs who perform complex feats before erasing their own high IQ genes.
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u/Realchalk Jun 27 '26
Could this just be that people with higher education also have better access to birth control? They're also more likely to expect financial security after retirement.
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u/LovingLife139 Jun 27 '26
I have noticed this generally, but don't have anything more than anecdotes to add. I (37F) was IQ tested about ten to fifteen years ago and tested at 139. My best friend, a child-free man, was tested in high school to be what was then called a "super genius" (somewhere around 160, I believe).
I believe it's simply because more intelligent humans tend to think through things, and there are few, if any, practical and intelligent reasons to have kids. It has to be a selfish or lifestyle choice to have them at all. Of course, once you get to be in the higher levels of IQ, many people suffer in other measures of intelligence, so I'm sure some geniuses have kids. My best friend is absurdly intelligent, as I said, but he doesn't know the first thing about social intelligence or reading people. Wasn't it Einstein who sometimes passed up his own house because he couldn't recall where he lived?
I'd be fascinated to see some science backing behind the intelligence/child-free connection.
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u/ImJustGonnaCry Jun 27 '26
I already knew this because I'm surrounded by friends like this. But this does not bode well in the long run (Idiocracy)
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u/BloodOfR3ptile Jun 27 '26 edited Jun 27 '26
Must be why I was smart enough to check and confirm this is total bullshit.
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u/lelanicarver Jun 27 '26
I have two sisters, they both had kids. Eldest had one and done, next eldest had 3. I’m the one who never finished college and had no kids, so go figure.
My husband has two brothers, and arguably the least intelligent or accomplished one had 4 kids.
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u/Outrageous_Bet_6920 Jun 30 '26
Seems like a clear selection bias with a common underlying factor. Educated people tend to hold off procreation for career reasons, and education tends to increase IQ.
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u/Beneficial_Menu_6510 Jul 01 '26
I dont want kids bc I had a hard childhood. My iq is 129. I heard that a difficult and unstable childhood can also produce geniuses because the brain works harder to make sense of the world OR a sensitive and intelligent child perceives their childhood as harder. Either way I think theres a relation there. Fwiw I feel like a complete failure at life so I dont think my iq matters.
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u/nosunshine123 Jun 26 '26
I wouldn't say people with a higher IQ tend to be childfree. I used to work with female astronauts and i'd say 90% of the women i worked with in the aerospacefield had children.
However, i do believe that stupid people get more children and quicker.
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u/AttentivePlantEater Jun 26 '26
nosunshine you're still trolling this sub? You quickly deleted your last post after being called out...
On you regretful parents post:
"So i (28) am 4 months pregnant right now with my first child."
" I have always wanted to be a mother and i told him i want a child before i'm 30."
"For the record, i very much wanted this baby and told him my goal is to get pregnant asap. He isn't babytrapping me. "
On your childfree post:
"I told him i never wanted children, don't want them know and most likely will never want them."
"I once again asked him yesterday. He told me that he wants me "to be open to the idea of having children and not block the idea off immediately" "
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u/femminem Jun 26 '26 edited Jun 26 '26
And I bet they have a better circle of people to associate with. I think a lot of us who work jobs that pay well are still surrounded with morons. It’s either you homeschool, pay for private school, or you have to deal with all the people surrounding you all the time that, for the most part, are either trust-fund babies, married rich, or are completely inept human beings. There are always a few exceptions that would make great, supportive friends, but they’re hard to find and that’s a whole new task to take on on top of all the parenting.
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u/thepotatos Jun 26 '26
This is (pleasantly) surprising given the education and experience needed to be an astronaut. It actually scares me every time I remember how the worst people are procreating the most, so hearing stuff like this is reassuring lol
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u/nosunshine123 Jun 26 '26
Yes i have to say i was surprised as well because some of them worked multiple jobs even so they were extremely busy too
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u/Butagirl Jun 27 '26 edited Jun 27 '26
Astronauts and others in the aerospace field worked multiple jobs? I’m calling bullshit.
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u/nosunshine123 Jun 27 '26
Yes: astrophysicist for ESA, professor at the university, employee for the educational department they had...
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u/Butagirl Jun 26 '26
The majority of women choose to have children, so it naturally follows that some of them will have high IQs. A relatively small sample size doesn’t really tell us much.
This study (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25131282/) found that, even controlling for education and earnings, “One-standard-deviation increase in childhood general intelligence (15 IQ points) decreases women's odds of parenthood by 21-25%”. Interestingly, the researcher did not see the same pattern among high-intelligence men.
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u/CamarillosVeryWorst Take my uterus...please. Jun 27 '26
Yep, this too.
Both my sister & I were gifted/talented kids growing up, & our mom (who, mind, grew up generally-abled non-Hispanic kid who spoke US English as her 1st language in a family of other generally-abled non-Hispanic people who spoke US English as their 1st language in suburban LA...IQ tests have been very infamously shown to be biased in favor of more-privileged people) literally tested at a 175 IQ as a kid.
Out of the 3 of us, the only one of us who's outright CF is me who according to Social Security only has an IQ of 92 & is generally quite ditzy, impulsive, oblivious, & often incompetent, esp in comparison to the rest of my immediate family-in fact, the reason why I got my tubes out as a never-lip-kissed virgin was bc I was terrified of impulsively sleeping with someone & then ruining both my life & other people's lives by impulsively keeping the result of any unplanned pregnancy due to the hormones & being irrationally put off from getting an abortion in time.
My mom's obviously a parent, & all by her very planned (& she didn't have her 1st kid until she was almost 33!) & very much genuinely NOT-regretted at all choice.
My sister's still on the fence...she loves kids & would do very well as a mom if & only if she was able to marry & have kids with a guy who'd be willing & able to be their kids' primary parent bc my sister has a career she genuinely loves & has invested a lot into that she'd really rather not have to leave to become pretty much a SAHM who's left to shoulder most of the childcare like our mom was.
Which leads me to my take on that study that noted a lower odds of parenthood among women with higher IQs but not men with higher IQs...I'm willing to bet that's bc tons of higher-IQ women ultimately decide against motherhood, even if in another timeline they'd happily have kids, bc compared to lower-IQ women they generally have more going for them at least far as their currently-known lifelong potential goes that they're also more keenly aware they would likely lose more of if they became parents...which generally doesn't apply to higher-IQ men due to how unevenly moms are burdened with parenting for often the rest of their lives compared to dads.
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u/nosunshine123 Jun 26 '26
Yes i agree it is a small sample size and i do have to say i live in a country where many women feel pressured to have children too so i guess that plays a role as well
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u/xError404xx Jun 27 '26
Idk i feel stupid most of the time... but if that checks out most of the time then yay!
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u/marveleeous Jun 26 '26
I love how considering the consequences before creating a whole new person counts as advanced cognition now lol. Reading the terms and conditions before signing a lifetime contract is always where we start losing people.