Tiger mothers predestine their children to do well at school even before they are born, research has suggested. Babies born to highly competitive women who believe that they have the power to shape their children's prospects go on to achieve better GCSE results, academics found. The research, by academics at the London School of Economics, was based on a study that tracks more than 10,000 children born in and around Bristol from 1991. Early in their pregnancy mothers were asked questions such as ''Do you believe things happen no matter what you try to do to stop them?'', and ''Does planning ahead make things turn out better?'' They were then interviewed annually until their children were five. Using their answers, the women were grouped by a psychological measure known as locus of control, which reflects whether people think outcomes are influenced by their own actions. The research plotted the GCSE results of teenagers whose mothers had shown high internal control tendencies in their twelfth week of pregnancy. Francesca Cornaglia, an economist at Queen Mary University, London, said: ''Other things constant, children whose mothers ranked in the top 25 per cent of the internal locus of control scale tended to obtain GCSE scores about 17 per cent higher than children of mothers in the bottom 25 per cent.''

Read more... The Times