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If you are considering to expand your family, then perhaps you need to think again. According to a latest study, children in larger families are likelier to face difficulties in cognitive achievements and may also experience other behavioral issues. "Families face a substantial quantity-quality trade-off: increases in family size decrease parental investment, decrease childhood performance on cognitive tests and measures of social behavior," the study said. "Importantly, we find that these negative effects are not merely temporary disruptions following a birth but in fact persist throughout childhood," the researchers wrote. "A lot of what happens in early childhood has lasting impact," said one of the study authors Chinhui Juhn, professor at the University of Houston in the US. "In many respects, this matters more than a lot of things that happen later in (a child's) life," Juhn noted, as reported by Times of India
For the purpose of the study, the researchers used a dataset that monitored the outcomes throughout childhood and analyzed the outcomes of older children by comparing the two, before and after a young sibling took birth in the family. The researchers found that the more the children, the lesser is the investment of parents on each child, which is defined on the basis of time spent with children, home environment safety, affection and resources such as money, books and other materials. "If you are in a well-resourced family, some of these things do not apply," Juhn said. "When the second child comes along, there is less time and attention. But in an environment with more resources, it is not as binding," Juhn pointed out. The study appeared in a paper of National Bureau of Economic Research, a research organization, as reported by Business Standard