Twin Traits

Twins are lucky to be alive, decided the University of California's Institute of Child Welfare last week after a year's study. The infant mortality among twins is greater than among babies born singly. The same study, carried out by Paul Wilson, research assistant, showed that older women have twins oftener than young mothers, that twins have twin children no more frequently than regularly born parents. Comforting to twins was the scotching of the old scorn that twins are not as smart as other people.

If twins doubted the California organization's favorable judgment of their mentality, the Institute for Juvenile Re-search in Chicago substantiated the assurance. Louis Leon Thurstone and Richard L. Jenkins, who compiled the Chicago institute's facts, went further in destroying old taunts. Twins of the same sex are fully as bright as twins of opposite sexes.

Other findings by the Chicago investigators:

A first child is usually less bright than the rest of the brood. He also behaves worse. But if the next child is of opposite sex, the second child stimulates and regulates the first. A child six or more years the junior of a brother or sister is generally dull. Intelligence and vigor depend on the social activity within a household and upon the heredity. Apparently it does not matter whether a couple is young or old to have intelligent offspring.

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