Wed, 11/07/2012 ? 1:11am | PEMBI STEPHEN Features
Recent study suggests that birth order often have a profound and lasting effect on psychological development. This assertion has been repeatedly challenged by researchers, yet birth order continues to have a strong presence in pop psychology and popular culture, writes PEMBI STEPHEN-DAVID
Being born first, last, or somewhere in the middle of itself is not of significance. What matters is how that birth order affects how a child is treated by parents and other siblings and how that child feels about it. Other factors, according to Alfred Adler, a pioneer researcher on birth order, also influence the child?s socialisation and the parents? expectations.
Birth spacing, gender, physical attributes, and being a twin also affect personality formation and the interpretation of birth order and behavior. These factors, the study says, influence how parents treat children and how each child is viewed by the other siblings.
Birth spacing changes the dynamics of strict birth order, too. If there is a gap of five or more years between children, each child may be treated as an only child or as a firstborn. If there is a large gap between groups of children in a large family, each group may be treated as a separate birth order family. For example, if child 1, 2, and 3 are three years apart and there is a gap of six years before child 4 is born and child 5 and 6 follow in two year intervals, then child 1, 2, and 3 form a birth order grouping of firstborn, middle, and last, and child 4, 5, and 6 form another grouping of first, middle, and lastborn.
Gender also has a major impact on how a child is treated within the birth order arrangement. The firstborn of either gender, no matter where in the sibling order the child falls, will often be treated as a firstborn. For example if a family has two daughters then has two sons, the first daughter and the first son will be treated as firstborns. The daughter is the true firstborn, but the first son is the first child in the household to be treated with what the family perceives as maleness. Historically, this held true and usually contributed to older sisters not having a claim to inheritance because of their gender.
In addition, if there is only one daughter in a family of three boys, the daughter will often be treated as a first born no matter where in the birth order she is born. The simple fact that she is the only one of her sex allows her to take on the characteristics of a firstborn and be treated as such. This obviously also applies to one son in a household of daughters.
That sense of specialness also applies to children?s physical attributes and conditions. If a child of any birth order has a serious medical problem or a physical or mental disability, that child rises either to firstborn status or lastborn status because parental attention is placed on this special child. Robust health and beauty can also skew birth order expectations. For example, if there are two sons and the younger is bigger and more athletic, the younger may be treated as a firstborn because parental favor and expectations are higher for this child. Likewise, if the younger of two daughters is extremely pretty and her older sister is plain, the younger may either be treated as a favored lastborn or as a high-achieving firstborn.
Birth order research focuses on five ordinal birth positions: firstborn, secondborn, middle, last, and only children.
