Tell Mom and Dad Grace That I Was Right

A new study out confirms what I've always complained about after 1985 (the year Brother Grace was born)...the older kid in the family gets shafted. Well, not completely--they get more discipline and less leeway.

Now, a new study has confirmed what first-borns like Joshua have always suspected: The oldest kid in the family really does bear the brunt of parental strictness, while the younger brothers and sisters generally coast on through.

A ha! Let's read on...

“The folklore is that parents punish the older child more than the younger ones,” says Lingxin Hao, a sociology professor at Johns Hopkins University and an author of the study, published in the latest issue of the Economic Journal. “But it isn’t just folklore — this is a national pattern.”

Told you!

But there's an upside to this...

The study showed that older siblings were much less likely to drop out of school or, in the case of girls, get pregnant, than the youngest in the family, perhaps because they’ve had a lifetime of being held to higher standards.

That stricter parenting style often shapes the first-born kid into a play-by-the rules perfectionist, so parents tend to rely more on their oldest child than the younger kids, says Kevin Leman, a Tucson, Ariz., psychologist and author of “The Birth Order Book.”

This sounds familiar...

“When a job needs to get done, it’s the habit of the parent to call on the first-born, because they’re the most reliable and conscientious,” Leman says. But it's no accident that the oldest has become a responsible wonder child; it's the parenting strategy that made them that way.

Yep, that sounds about right. And so does this:

Younger siblings, the researchers found, really are more likely to take more risks than the oldest kid in the family.

Yowza....I knew that but it's kind of harsh to see.

So all of my complaining and moaning growing up (and let's be honest, still today) is not unsupported. There's actual data to show this. In a of ways the Grace family falls right into this pattern. I was held to a stricter standard when it came to school and such and Brother Grace wasn't and yet he takes more chances than I would ever be comfortable with--yet he's still getting his bachelors 5 years after he graduated high school. Maybe there's a Darwin-ian type balance here after all.

Goes to show you that I'm usually right...

Once again--that abstinence only sex ed is just raking in the results

A new study shows that 1 in every 4 teenage girls has an STD.

ONE IN FOUR. TWENTY FIVE PERCENT.

Oh yeah, tell them not to have sex and that'll work. Don't teach them how to adequately protect themselves. That's a GRAND idea.

Some doctors said the numbers might be a reflection of both abstinence-only sex education and teens' own sense of invulnerabilty. Because some sexually transmitted infections can cause infertility and cancer, U.S. health officials called for better screening, vaccination and prevention.

My point exactly. But wait! There's more!

Only about half of the girls in the study acknowledged having sex. Some teens define sex as only intercourse, yet other types of intimate behavior including oral sex can spread some diseases.

So the other half were what? Keeping it a secret because its frowned upon and they weren't taught to protect themselves? That sounds about right.

"Those numbers are certainly alarming," said sex education expert Nora Gelperin, who works with a teen-written Web site called sexetc.org. She said they reflect "the sad state of sex education in our country."

Amen, sister! The sad state indeed.

Um...yeah...I'm NOT going to need you to come in on Saturday

I knew this was coming years ago. Those people that believe the US can survive as a service-based economy only got dealt a blow today in the form of this report that shows that the US service sector not only failed to grow in January, but contracted.

It's amazing to me that people who believe they should diversify their stock portfolios don't always believe we should diversify our economy--spread it over manufacturing, production, service, etc. A service economy alone will only grow so far and then it'll snap back like a new rubber band and hit you in the ass.

That's right, America. We just got snapped in the ass.

How's that abstinence only education coming?

Shouldn't you be working on that novel?

A report out recently shows that teen pregnancies and births are on the rise. Is this a coincidence? I think not. At the same time schools are relentless in their quest to not talk about sex in sex education, kids are having sex anyhow and getting knocked up.

Are you surprised? Because I'm not.

But don't worry, we'll continue along this path because we're so bassackwards that we won't actually TALK about PROTECTION, we'll just tell people NOT to do it.

Yeah. That works.

Another piece of research that is a brilliant waste.

Apparently men are taken more seriously than women when they cry.

Um...this comes as a surprise to whom and for what reason? Men are taken more seriously than women ALL the time...this isn't news.