Travers First Born Children

In Psychology Today, a recent news article by Travers (2015) states that first born children have an abundant amount of opportunities during their adult years. These opportunities include acquiring more currency and obtaining higher degrees. Travers even believes that first born children can become presidents and that first born children also get to live longer. Travers highlights many of his own beliefs, but his main focus in this article is that first born children have better second language skills. Travers highly believes that birth order is the primary outcome of developing better second language skills. To prove his point he uses a variety of information and evidence. In this article Travers (2015) uses two forms of evidence that help him support his argument; he uses authority figures, and empirical evidence. When it comes to authority figures Travers introduces Dr. Karin Keller, of Switzerland’s University, as one of his authority figures. By introducing a Doctor from a university, Travers gives his argument value. He states that Keller (2015) conducted a study on a total of 1209 immigrant families located in

I was able to find three pieces of data that are accurately presented. First Travers states that parents are more likely to give their full attention to their first child and gradually diminish their full attention as more siblings are born into the family, just like Keller states in her original work. A second piece of information that Travers correctly states is parental investment. Travers states that each addition to the family results in less resources. Finally just like Keller, Travers states that the findings are small but reliable. Just like previously stated the findings of the study are small but conclusive. Travers article had a lot of similarities to Keller’s original work and this makes his argument believable and