In the past it was believed that the way parents raised their kids had an effect on how intelligent those children would grow up to be.

However, a surprising new study has now shown that parental socialization has no effect, and in fact intelligence is simply genetic.

Many parents believe that activities such as reading bedtime stories, engaging in conversation and eating nightly dinners together positively aid in a child’s development. However Criminology professor Kevin Beaver, who undertook the recent study, has said that the results show that in fact these activities will have no future effect. He suggests that

“…in reality the parents who are more intelligent are doing these things and it is masking the genetic transformation of intelligence to their children”.

Professor Beaver has stressed that these results do not mean that parental neglect or traumatisation of a child will not have negative effects on a child’s intelligence, but simply that

“…the way you parent a child is not going to have a detectable effect on their IQ as long as that parenting is within normal bounds”.

In order to test the theory that intelligence is passed down from parent to children genetically, not socially, the study included adopted children who share no DNA with their adoptive parents.

The study, entitled ‘A closer look at the role of parenting-related influences on verbal intelligence over the life course: Results from an adoption-based research design’ has been published in Intelligence journal , and the whole article is available for a fee on Science Direct website.