BLANKENSHIP, Iowa.  A longitudinal study by sociologists at the University of North Central Iowa has determined that children who select wealthy, intelligent parents tend on average to receive more invitations to Greek letter fraternities and sororities than their less fortunate peers. 

“Who’s the guy in the green shirt?”

“If we use these conventional yardsticks of success,” says Professor Thomas McKinnon, “we find that they have a tangible effect on a child’s future prospects and that there are three feet in a yard.”

The first-of-its-kind study, conducted over a period of twenty years, tracked student achievement against a control group and revealed that children of high-achieving parents also received more invitations to join bogus “Who’s Who” directories.  “We were thinking of doing a latitudinal study,” says McKinnon, “but the sales girl at the Dress Barn said it would make us look fat.”

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, after Lilt Home Permanent

The notion that a child plays a role in the selection of its parents was first suggested by French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau in his seminal work “30 Days to Better Bass Fishing.”  “The child has a right, nay a duty,” Rousseau wrote, “to secure its future by running a credit check on prospective parents, and to reject them if they have defaulted on car loans or bounced checks.”

“Hey, Jean-Jacques–get a load of this bad boy!”

Legal experts say there is leeway under the Fair Credit Reporting Act for such an inquiry, and that unborn youngsters are entitled to one free credit report per nine-month gestation period.  “You’re entitled to run a credit check on a prospective employee,” says Alton Miller, Jr., an attorney in Danville, Illinois, “and I think its fair to say that a parent will spend the next three decades working for the child.”