by Laurenc Devita

Created on: December 13, 2008   Last Updated: December 17, 2008

"Dysgenics" is not really a scientific term, but word that betrays a class value. It claims to describe a situation where people with "bad" qualities are more represented in the population than people with "good" qualities. Implicit in the word are middle and upper class values of what is "good".

Dysgenics attempts to create concern because of indicators that women with higher I.Q.s are having fewer children than other (presumably less intelligent) women. This can be described as the problem of "poor people having babies," and it assumes that people who achieve high status in society are somehow inherently superior to those who do not, in much the same way as some religions assume those who are better off are somehow closer to God. The dysgenics argument is a scientificalized version of the notion of "bad seed." It is rarely found alone, and is generally in the company of its mirror self, "eugenics", the belief that our kind can be made better through selective mating.

A serious consideration of the concern over poor people having babies and smart women not reveals a significant misunderstanding of genetics and human evolution, even without the problem of class bias.

First the major points:

1. Well off, intelligent, childless women are often known as "aunts." In every society except the most damaged, aunts make a significant contribution to the welfare of the children of their siblings, particularly sisters. Their contributions might well offset some of the "deprivation" suffered by poor kids from fecund mothers.

2. Genetics is far from simple. Stupid moms can have really smart kids.

3. A smart dad who wanted his kids well taken care of might select a mate on the basis of something other than SAT scores, thereby increasing his reproductive rate and improving the "gene pool".

4. Society doesn't need really smart people, and doesn't want them; typically society selects the mediocre to favor, for many microsociological reasons.

5. Intelligence is far from that simple. Scoring highly on an I.Q. test indicates the person can take that test well. Implications can be drawn from that, but they're implications, nothing more. Even assuming it indicated a very intelligent person, it is unlikely it would indicate a necessarily more successful person in any other sense.

That brings us to the more subtle points. What is good for the species is reproduction. Species success isn't about a handful of real smart critters, it's about relative numbers.

When we worry about rotten genes we're

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