Big heads, rejoice!

Among the many things that expectant parents hope for in a newborn is, a big head — maybe not so much at birth, but shortly thereafter. A big-headed baby is stereotypically interpreted as one that possesses intelligence, growth, and good genes (a popular notion no doubt encouraged by people with big heads), so it doesn’t take long for new parents to start wondering how their newborn’s head circumference stacks up against the average head size. New parents in particular are helpless in the face of child-related percentiles and metrics. So when my son’s first checkup revealed that his head circumference was solidly 50th percentile, I was shaken. Our pediatrician, unable to console me, resolved to never again show me raw growth data.

“Some dads,” she told me. “Shouldn’t see the percentiles.”

She was right, of course. The head circumference of a child has essentially nothing to do with intelligence and, as long as your baby’s head is average-size and regularly growing, there’s no cause for alarm when they come in a bit behind the curve. Still, a handful of preliminary studies have suggested links between brain size, head size, and intelligence. That research can’t necessarily be dismissed out of hand so it’s hard to figure whether or not head size matters — especially with all that percentile data clouding the picture.

Preliminary studies have shown that 1-year-old babies with bigger heads score higher on IQ tests later in life. And bigger heads do tend to hold bigger brains. “Even though head size also depends on factors such as the muscularity of the head and thickness of the bone, it’s very likely that a bigger head means a bigger brain,” Grant Hulbert, a biology professor at California State University once told the American Academy for the Advancement of Science.

More here
https://www.fatherly.com/health-science/baby-head-size-intelligence-brain/amp/