Diminishing Intergenerational Closure

A mother and father always worry a great deal more about their first born child than maybe the third or fourth child. When a person is new at doing something, such as being a parent, they act with a lot more precaution. Parents will make sure to know where their child is at all times, what their child is doing, and who their child is with. The Coleman article suggests that in order to stay on top of their child’s whereabouts and activities, parents will often make an effort to become friends with the parents of their children’s friends. This type of occurrence is called intergenerational closure.

As the oldest child of four, I agree with Coleman’s assertions. In my youth, my parents made an effort to be friends with my friends’ parents. They would sit on the sidelines at soccer games with my friends’ parents, go out to eat with them, invite them and their child to my birthday parties, etc. My parents also made a similar effort with the second child in my family. However, I’d like to argue that intergenerational closure diminishes with sibling position.

By the time the third and fourth children in my family came around, my parents acted a lot less frantic and worrisome about where the younger children were and what they were doing. They had already been through the trials and tribulations of raising babies, toddlers, and teenagers, so raising two more children was nothing new. Since my parents had been through this before, they seemed to not make as great of an effort to befriend the parents of my younger siblings’ friends. Therefore, there was a diminishing degree of intergenerational closure between my parents and the two youngest in the family.

This lack of intergenerational closure also contributes to Coleman’s idea that IQ scores in children decline with sibling position. When intergenerational closure occurs, parents are often more in tune with how their child is performing academically. Through communication with other parents, a child’s parents gain a better understanding of what material is being taught in the classroom, how other students are performing, and what the teacher is like. Without intergeneration closure, this communication does not exist. I push Coleman’s discussion further by suggesting that less adult attention is not the only cause of lesser intelligence in children. I believe that diminished intergenerational closure, leads to diminished educational social capital for a child and hence also contributes to the child being weaker educationally.