Are you intelligent? Thank your Mother, not your Father!

The best gift a man can give his children is a good mother. That much is true. Mothers raise boys to men; girls to women. From primeval times, she has been more than just a sex companion, but man's fellow worker and supporter. Her steadfastness, determination and hard work are the cornerstone of family life. In Africa as in indeed much of the world, she spends the most time with the children.

_{He inherited his mothers eyes, what about intelligence? CCO: Public Domain}

Her discipline, her manners and direction, her example, the environment she creates, these are what in both nuanced and bold ways, form the wood work of child growth, the fabric of family life, of the immediate society and by extension, of the nation. Such is the value of a good mother; every man does well to get that choice right!

_{CCO: Creative Commons:}

Brains or Beauty?

For decades, men’s pick of a wife companion has been underscored by a choice between two qualities: beauty and brains. More often than not, the scale has shouldered in favor of beauty, the reason being it guaranteed high social standing and aesthetic appeal of offspring. That guarantee seemed the only advantage to being a woman, and those seen as lacking in beauty, even if they were brainy, stood disadvantaged.

What other reason could a man possibly have for marrying you? Where is value in you? Brains? Well, that was irrelevant as fathers apparently took care of whatever material and hereditary consequence followed from the requirement for brains. He was the bread winner and you only a housewife, and then how smart children would turn out to be, too was incumbent on his genetic make, with the exception of course of the undesirable ones!.

In a sense, women have always universally been associated by both scientists and laymen with influencing the physical brand of the offspring, and the father with their positive mental brand. If a child turns out ‘ugly’, it is because the mother is ugly, and if the child turns out ‘smart’, the father is to credit - a gender stereotyping that has survived for centuries.

_{Traits from mum or dad? CCO"Creative commons:}

Psychologist Galton, a cousin of the evolutionist, Charles Darwin, who coined the terms nature versus nurture and eugenics, besides believing intelligence to be a result entirely of genetics, even went as far as encouraging on one hand, intelligent individuals to marry and have many children, and on the other hand, discouraging less intelligent individuals from reproducing.

Women of course more often than not, were the major victims. Going by recent genetic studies however, that thinking could yet change, in such a manner as brings respite to the brainy women.

But before we delve deeper into those studies, and their revolutionary claim henceforth, suffice to observe that, genetic studies are wrought with a lot of contentions, and of them, one more so hotly debated is how human traits develop, how they modify and how they eventually persist, within an individual. For decades, the argument has been, and still is, between two views I touched on in one of my previous posts, namely ‘nature’ and ‘nurture’.

It has to be said that – until recent decades when the concept of epigenetics came up to ruffle the status quo - these two views have from since the birth of modern science in the 20th century, been the loci around which has gravitated every explanation to the perpetuation of the question: Are you a result of nature (inheritance/genetic background) or nurture (mothering/environment)?

It is a hoary age-old debate, but there are at least a few areas of consensus, for example, that traits are mostly inherited, and that child development involves a complex interaction both of nature and nurture. It follows that whereas the genetic instructions a child inherits from parents may indeed set out the roadmap for development, the environment in which one such child grows impacts on how these directions are exactly expressed, shaped, or indeed silenced.
alt

In addition, we also know that of the 23 pairs of chromosomes we have, one comes from the mother and the other comes from the father (excluding sex chromosomes!).

But perhaps most importantly, in the context of this discussion, we also know that a child’s environment determines how these genes come to have an effect.

A crucial part of this environment is the parents, and we must agree that most of it is the mother. What these means is that maternal effect on our traits is both genetic (as she contributes one of the gene copies) and non-genetic as constitutes the large part of the environment in which we grow. All factors considered, on the nature versus nature debate ledger, we can comfortably say that mothers determine and pull much of the weight when it comes to the environment.

Maternal genetic effects occur when the genes that are expressed in a mother’s genome affect her offspring’s phenotype, according to Wolf and wade (2009). These effects – both genetic and non-genetic- in part arise from several diverse scenarios wherein mothers provide a particular component of the environment that the offspring come to experience, including nutritional provisioning.

The controversy however - that which continues to divide the research fraternity, is on the ‘nature’ (inheritance) side and the parent-gene specific effects therewith.

We inherit traits from mom and dad, including among others, physical features (eye color, height, hair color and facial features), personality (say being an optimist or pessimist etc), blood type, susceptibility to some disease, and intelligence.

_{Children inherit traits from parents}

For the most part, we inherit these from mom and dad, although they can skip a generation, in which event you inherit grandmother’s eye color, which may indeed differ from the color of mom and dad.

The vital question is: From whom, between the mother and the father do you inherit specific traits? Cognizant of the fact that research on this is as inconclusive as it is differing, and is probably still decades away from finding common ground, I am intrigued with the recent findings of a study on inheritance, specifically of intelligence.

Now for a start, where studies on inheritance, particularly the genetics of intelligence are concerned, one has got to be careful. They are smeared with the sticky tar of subjectivity. Intelligence research, used in several aspects of everyday life such as screening job applicants, educational programs, testing to identify the children that need additional educational help, is wrought with controversy.

Its history is rife with contention, so much that Steven Gould dedicated an entire book the Mismeasure of Man to how biological research has been co-opted into the service of economic repression, racism, sexism, misogyny and even homophobia, among others.

Overall, they are founded on a weak objective footing, and the field is wrought with foundational weaknesses, you only have to consider the fact that we are still unable to separate it from culture, and cannot even yet agree on one definition of it. R.J Sternberg puts it far more aptly than I can when he observes: “Viewed narrowly, there seem to be almost as many definitions of intelligence as there were experts asked to define it”. In psychology, artificial intelligence and others, researchers have varying versions.

That said, and in spite of it, at least we can all agree on one thing, namely that in whatever form viewed; intelligence has a heritable component, and is affected by genetic factors as first claimed as early as in 1929. The landmark 1990 Minnesota Study of twins affirmed this when it found that identical twins that were reared apart were as similar as identical twins reared together

What is revealing about this is that until a few years back, we believed this component depended on the father as well as the mother. A 2016 research highlighted by Psychology Spot however suggests otherwise, and concludes that only a mother’s genetics determine how clever the offspring become, and the father indeed makes no difference – a heck of a discovery that is a game changer in family dynamics.

It is of course not remotely plausible that all genes which affect a child’s intelligence are inherited from the mother, and far from suggesting so, the study only claims the majority are. Its findings, initially found on mice and extrapolated to human brains in a survey of over 12,000 people, found that mothers are more likely to pass on their intelligence genes to children.

That is because the genes that determine intelligence are located in the X chromosome. It follows that because women carry two X chromosomes as opposed to the father who has one, the child is twice Just as likely to inherit intelligence from the mother rather than the father. And not only that, following a genetic imprinting mechanism whence some genes are preferentially suppressed, scientists further believe that whatever genes for advanced cognitive function are inherited from fathers indeed get to be automatically deactivated.

Latest research discoveries

According to scientists, a category of genes called ‘conditioned genes’ work only if they come from the mother in some cases and in other cases from the father. Intelligence is said to be among those conditioned genes that have to come from mothers.

In the study involving the genetically modified mice, an extra dose of maternal genes was applied. The result was that mice to which an extra maternal dose was applied developed bigger heads and brains, but small bodies whereas those to which was applied an extra dose of paternal genes developed small brains but larger bodies.

Researchers upon identifying cells that contained only paternal or maternal genes in six different parts of mice brains which control different cognitive functions, conspicuously found no paternal cells in the cerebral cortex which is responsible for the majority of advanced cognitive functions such as intelligence, thinking, reasoning, language and planning. Instead, paternal genes accumulated in some of the emotional centers of the brain, such as the amygdala, the hypothalamus and the preoptic area and septum, parts of the limbic system involved in such functions as food, sex and aggression.

Furthermore, children almost exclusively inherit mitochondria from mothers. And whereas these don’t pass as ‘intelligence genes’, still they matter because brains voraciously consume metabolic energy, and that metabolic energy is supplied by mitochondria. It suffices to therefore conclude that better and more mitochondria are likely to result in better brain function.

Effectively, mothers are responsible for the most influence on children’s intelligent, and evidence runs back for decades. The 1994 survey of more than 12,000 people aged between 14 and 22 at the Medical research Council, Social and Public health sciences unit, after accounting for children’s IQ, race, education and social-economic status, found mother’s IQ to be the best predictor intelligence.

Mother's influence not only about genetics
alt

_{Mothers influence beyond genetics: CCO: Creative Commons}

Putting scientific hypothesizing aside, there is further evidence that smart mothers raise smart children. According to researchers, and following what is widely accepted, genetics are not the only determinant of intelligence, and in deed account for between 40 to 60%. The remaining chunk, you guessed right, is dependent on the environment, on nurture, as we alluded to at the beginning. But even in this non-genetic part on intelligence determination, mothers again have been found to play a significant role, with some studies suggesting that a secure bond between the mother and the child is itself intimately linked to intelligence.

Upon analyzing how a group of mothers related to their children for over seven years, researchers at the University of Washington concluded that a secure emotional bond between a child and a mother is critical for the proper growth of some parts of their brain. In the study, children that were emotionally supported and had fulfilled their intellectual needs, had on average, a 10% larger hippocampus – that area of the brain associated with memory, learning and stress response - at age 13 compared to children whose mothers had been emotionally distant.

_{CCO: Creative Commons:}

A strong child-mother bond is thought to give children a sense of security, and that in turn frees them to explore the world. The result, according to Charlotte England writing in the Independent is confidence in problem solving, a key indicator of intelligence.

This affirms the early assertion that the best gift a man can give his children is a good mother. Because besides everything, devoted and attentive mothers will always help children to solve day to day problems, further helping them quickly reach their intelligence potential.

Fathers Whither?
alt

_{Father and son: CCO: Creative Commons}

Meanwhile, does it mean that the relationship with fathers is irrelevant? Of course no, just that owing to our social structure, including among others, gender stereotyping, it is often the mothers that spend more time with children. If anything, researchers also point out a whole range of other gene determined traits, such as intuition and emotions, which can be inherited from fathers and are key to unlocking children’s potential intelligence.

The good news is that gender stereotypes are slowly giving way in such a manner that men are now being increasingly seen as needed to do a lot more parenting than they have traditionally been able to.

Gender roles are slowly changing as evidenced in a recent global study conducted across 22 countries. Most people now believe that men should be involved in parenting more than ever, and women should not be confined in domestication.

Gender roles are now slowly changing to co-opt men, according to recent global study that was conducted across 22 countries. It is now more than ever before, the believe of most people that men should get more involved in parenting. Men are, to put it bluntly, now expected to take care of the family and mind the children as much as the women do by over 70% of people, as reported Reuters

So maybe fathers spending more time with the kids will sway back the balance in regard to who between them and mothers assume the greater influence on children's intelligence.

Until then, the woman has some really good reason to walk chin up! The Nobel laureate is because she is!

References

alt