Sheppard Paula, Monden Christiaan
Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.
Department of Sociology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.
Evol Hum Sci. 2020 Oct 19;2:e51. doi: 10.1017/ehs.2020.54. eCollection 2020.
There is still no clear understanding of the relationship between sibship size and child outcomes. Research from across disciplines, and across settings, reports conflicting results suggesting that the relationship is complex and ecologically dependent. Evolutionary models predict that parents will make reproductive decisions based on their ability to invest in each child, but that this is not necessarily equal across children. Here we use data from the Next Steps study linked to National Pupil Database to examine the relationship between sibship size and Key Stage 4 (GCSE) maths and English grades in England for children born in 1989/1990. We were interested to further examine if and how associations might differ at the ends of the socioeconomic spectrum and we also tested if direct measures of parental investment could mitigate any negative impact of larger families. Multilevel ordinary least squares regression models with a random effect for school show that sibship sizes are associated with school grades, as is socioeconomic status. Moreover, the association between sibship size and grades holds true across the socioeconomic spectrum. Birth order was only weakly associated with school results, and only significant in some models. Parental investment is important, however, and might offset the some of the negative impact of larger families, for both maths and English attainment.
目前对于家庭子女数量与孩子成长结果之间的关系仍没有清晰的认识。来自不同学科和不同环境的研究报告结果相互矛盾，这表明这种关系很复杂且取决于生态因素。进化模型预测，父母会根据他们对每个孩子的投入能力来做出生育决策，但这种投入在每个孩子身上不一定是均等的。在此，我们使用与全国学生数据库相关联的“下一步”研究中的数据，来考察1989/1990年出生的英格兰儿童的家庭子女数量与关键阶段4（普通中等教育证书）数学和英语成绩之间的关系。我们有兴趣进一步研究在社会经济阶层两端这种关联是否存在差异以及如何存在差异，并且我们还测试了父母投入的直接衡量指标是否能够减轻大家庭带来的任何负面影响。具有学校随机效应的多层普通最小二乘回归模型表明，家庭子女数量与学校成绩相关，社会经济地位也是如此。此外，家庭子女数量与成绩之间的关联在整个社会经济阶层中都成立。出生顺序与学校成绩的关联较弱，且仅在某些模型中显著。然而，父母投入很重要，对于数学和英语成绩而言，它可能会抵消大家庭带来的一些负面影响。
