Right now, there is a lot of talk about birth order. The big question behind all this is does being born first, last, or a middle child effect your personality? It is often speculated that if you are born the first child you may have specific traits or tendencies across the board, as well as middle and last children having their own specific ones.
The photo above shows some of the characteristics that children are thought to have according to their birth order. The photo and says that first born children are often responsible, perfectionists, and take leadership roles more so than middle or last born children. This website describes the firstborn child as “authoritative, strict, direct, and confrontational.”. The middle child is a bit different than the first born child. The website linked above says they have “intermediate levels of radicalism”. The photo says that they are often rebellious, secretive, and mediators. The youngest child, according to the photo, is thought to be social, frantically irresponsible, and spoiled. The website from before says, “However, the most common description found of the youngest sibling is in the form of one word: rebellious. The theory is that the youngest cannot do what the other siblings can, and as a result, lashes out”. The photo says the middle born is the rebellious, so we see a little disagreement here. Only kids are thought to be similar to first born children , according to the photo, and often comfortable being the center of attention which makes sense since they are the only child that has to be given attention from the parents. The website that I have reference for every other order says, “An only child generally follows the pattern of seeking relationships with adults, liking attention, and having difficulties sharing”.
After reading these characteristics and thinking about people in my own life, I see how many of them could be true. My step-sister was the only child before my mom married her dad, and I remember playing with her when we were younger and her having a very hard sharing. She, still to this day, is very comfortable being the center of attention as well. My little brother is the youngest, or last born, and he sometimes frantically irresponsible, and is very social. I am the oldest child and I am definitely more of a perfectionist than my brother or step-sister. I often take it upon myself to be responsible in certain situations as well.
Although many of these may be true in my situation and many other people’s situations, there are so many possible third variables that it is hard to say for sure that birth order truly effects the personality of the child. This paper talks about a lot about the confounding variables that can effect this study. It says, “Many of these studies had possible problems with confounding variables. The most commontype was inadequate control of family atmosphere variables such as demographic changes, incomplete sibships, age and sex of subjects, socioeconomic status (SES), and sibship size and neglecting to consider the effects of these potentially important confounding variables upon their results”. This is exactly why we cannot come to a solid conclusion. There certainly seem to be many correlations between personality and birth order, but we cannot confidently say that birth order is a direct causation of personality traits.
I took a psychology class in high school and we learned about the effect that birth order can have on a person. One of the things my teacher taught us was that the reason older children are driven to be perfectionists is that because it is an effort to win back the affection of their parents.
This article hit me very hard as the baby of the family… let me say its about 60% accurate to me, but what’s scientifically outstanding to me is that these types of traits are able to be psychologically and scientifically ovservable and gauged! It reminds me of the idea of selectively scanning for traits in babies in the future of medicine and scientific applications for “building” children based on genetic probability!
I really found this blog post interesting because I have three sisters. Two older and one younger. I could argue that some of these traits are similar to traits that they possess. I definitely think birth order can affect personality. Check out this video about birth order.
Considering I am the oldest child of 5 siblings, I can definitely say that everything in this article makes perfect sense. The picture you posted above claimed that the oldest are “perfectionists, leaders, responsible, bossy, and highly motivated”. I can honestly say that all of these traits fit me to a T.
Its nice having authority over all of my younger siblings, but being the oldest also has its downfalls considering every single thing I do in my life is a first for not only me but my parents as well-there is never a right or way to do something so I feel a lot of pressure to constantly succeed.
Heres a really interesting statistic sheet called “The Birth Order Effect” that really puts into perspective everything you mentioned in your article, and also gives examples of famous people in each birth order ranking.
I always found this interesting. I learned about birth order in my sociology class in high school and I am the youngest child and came to realize that I don’t follow any of the characteristics listed above! It’s ironic because I am more responsible than my older brother and sister and my parents always said I was the most mature. However, for four years I was basically an only child because my sister is nine years older than me and my brother is four years older. By the time I was in high school I felt like an only child because my sister moved out and my brother was away at college. That could definitely be a confounding variable as to why I have more of the characteristics of an only child than of the youngest. Anyway, I really enjoyed reading this post!
I found this extremely interesting to read because I have actually tackled this question myself. I interviewed a psychologist last year about this for a paper in my psychology class. I know correlation doesn’t necessarily mean causation, but she told me about several studies she had read which prove the behaviors of the first, middle, and last child to be true. I am the youngest child of four, and I see trends in my siblings and myself quite similar to the ones you were talking about. I think it would be interesting to research this subject in further detail than what I already have.
This is really interesting! I remember reading about birth order in psychology in high school. Now at Penn State I’m taking a course called HDFS that will get into birth order theories. I’m excited to learn about it. This article was really well written and I liked reading it!