Chase: Weakness of Eldest Sons 



211 



constitutional superiority. I believe 

 this conclusion is not out of harmony 

 with our observations on those about us 

 in daily life. 



Of course, statistics on this point are 

 always open to the obvious explanation 

 that children of immature parents are 

 likely to be of inferior physique. That 

 is an entirely different question, which 

 depends on the age of the parents, and 

 not on the order of birth, or the size 

 of the family. However, in order to 

 find whether any light was thrown 

 on my results, I secured information 

 from as many of the brothers as possi- 

 ble — 30 pairs or 60 individuals — as to 

 the ages of their parents, and then com- 

 pared the records of the individual 

 students with the ages of their parents 

 when the individual was born. 



Out of the 60 different cases, there 

 were seven men who had records of over 

 700 points in their strength tests. The 

 strongest man in the group totaled 859 

 points; I learned that his father was 



40 years old and his mother 42, at his 

 birth. The second strongest had 809 

 points to his credit ; the age of his father 

 at the time of his birth was 49 years, 

 and of his mother, 35. Of the other five 

 strong men, in order of rank, the ages 

 of the parents were as follows: 



Father 50, mother 30; father 33, 

 mother 31 ; father 28, mother 28; father 

 47, mother 33; father 42, mother 28. 



The average age of the fathers was 



41 and of the mothers 32. 



I shovild be the last one to attempt to 

 lay down any conclusions from such a 

 small number of cases, but I may at 

 least point out that these figures are 

 unusual, if we accept the widely-quoted 

 view that the best period for the pro- 

 duction of children is between 20 and 30. 



Summing the ages of the parents of 

 the students whose strength I have 

 called "normal," I found that the 

 fathers averaged 38 and the mothers 

 31 years of age, at the birth of the sons 

 in question. When the weakest students 

 in our list were considered, their parents 

 were found to have been, on the aver- 



age, 36 years old (father) and 30 

 (mother) at the time of their birth.' In 

 such a small group, the sHght decrease in 

 age of parents, correlated to weakness 

 in sons, can hardly be held to have any 

 significance; and that it has no signifi- 

 cance in these figures is further indicated 

 by another test I made to check it. I 

 picked out all the parents who had their 

 first child after they were 30 years old, 

 and compared the strength records of 

 these first children with the records of 

 the other first born, who were born 

 before their parents reached the age of 

 30. The children of older parents 

 averaged 500 points against 494 for 

 the children of younger parents — a 

 difference so slight as to amount to 

 identity. It is obvious, then, that as 

 far as these cases are concerned, the 

 age of the parents has little appreciable 

 effect on the strength of their children; 

 but it must be noted that practically 

 all the parents under consideration were 

 mature, and even considerably beyond 

 the usual age for the beginning of parent- 

 hood. 



The question whether first-born chil- 

 dren are inferior is still far from settled. 

 Assuming for the moment that they are 

 inferior, we still have to seek a cause 

 for such inferiority. One of the most 

 popular explanations does not concern 

 itself with heredity at all, but supposes 

 that the younger children profit by 

 being kept constantly on their mettle, 

 in order to make a favorable showing in 

 comparison with the older ones; the 

 eldest, on the other hand, are not 

 obliged greatly to exert themselves in 

 competition with the younger ones. 

 My investigation of these Amherst 

 students does not, of course, pretend to 

 settle any of the questions involved, 

 but I offer it as a contribution which at 

 least avoids the fallacy charged to Pear- 

 son. Summing up, it indicates that the 

 eldest sons are physically weakest, and 

 that this weakness has no relation to 

 their weight or height. If the sge of 

 their parents at birth has any influence 

 on the figure, it is slight. 



