Having siblings and not making the most of those bonds is like having 1 000 acres of fertile farmland and never planting anything. Life is short, finite. Siblings may be among the richest harvests of the time we have here.
relationships outside the home,’ writes Kluger. And, by the time the youngest comes along, parents will have relaxed the rules a bit. But last-borns still have to develop unique skills to overcome their own set of challenges. ‘They have to develop what are called low power skills: the ability to charm, and disarm, to intuit what’s going on in someone else’s head (the better to duck the punch before it lands). They are also flat-out funnier, which is another thing that comes in handy, because a person who is making you laugh is a very hard person to slug.’
‘The one thing you can bet your paycheque on is the firstborn and second-born in any family are going to be different,’ says Kevin Leman, PhD, a psychologist who’s studied birth order since 1967, and author of In his TED Talk, Jeffrey Kluger explains it like this: ‘Humans are born no different from animals – after we are born, we do whatever we can to attract the attention of our parents, determining what our strongest selling points are, and marketing them ferociously – someone’s the funny one, someone’s the pretty one, someone’s the athlete, someone’s the smart one. Scientists call this de-identification. If my older brother is a high school football player, I could become a football player too and get, at most, 50% of the applause for doing that. Or, I could become student council president or specialise in the arts, and get a 100% of the attention in that area.’
As prevalent as birth order stereotypes are, not everyone feels they fit into their designated ‘slot’. According to the White-Campbell Psychological Birth Order Inventory (or PBOI), a test that determines whether people conform to their birth-order traits, only 23% of women and 15% of men truly match up to their ABO (actual birth order), as opposed to their PBO (psychological birth order), that is, their selfperceived position in the family.
There are several factors which may influence your perceived role in the family, including illness or uniqueness of one child, large age gaps between siblings, gender, temperament and physicality. ‘A child with a disability who needs extra care can disrupt the sibling dynamic,’ says Linda Campbell, a professor of counselling and human development at the University of Georgia. The same holds true for a child with a special talent – a prodigy will automatically get more attention, regardless of age ranking in the family. Large age gaps also play a significant role in the PBO of a child, and experts agree that an age gap of five or more almost acts as a ‘reset button’. ‘If you’re a second child whose sibling is 10 years older, then in most practical ways you grew up as a firstborn or only child,’ says Frank J Sulloway, PhD, the author of
The sex of the child can also be a disrupting factor when it comes to birth order. ‘When the first two children are different genders, they often both behave like firstborns,’ says Leman. The dynamics can also be disrupted if there is a specific value placed on one gender over the other – as in the lone girl in a family of boys, or vice versa.
Temperament and physicality can also play a role in PBO. If the firstborn is timid or physically much smaller than the second-born, they may switch places. ‘If the oldest doesn’t act the part, it creates a job vacancy,’ says Catherine Salmon, PhD, and co-author of ‘Donald Trump is a middle with a firstborn brother who didn’t fit the role. Donald usurped it.’
An overt display of favouritism may also change up family dynamics. According to a study by family sociologist Katherine Conger of the University of California, 70% of the fathers and 65% of the mothers exhibited a clear preference for one child – even though they knew they were being observed – and in most cases, they favoured the older child. She also found that, as much as the parents liked to imagine that they were adept at hiding their feelings, the children knew very well who the favourite was. In fact, they tend to use this blatant favouritism to their mutual advantage. ‘They’ll say to one another, “Why don’t you ask Mom if we can go to the mall because she never says no to you,”’ says Conger. According to Jeffrey Kluger, favouritism is inevitable. ‘It is my belief that 95% of the parents in the world have a favourite child, and the other 5% are lying,’ he writes. According to his research, fathers tend to favour the lastborn daughter, and mothers the firstborn son. This, he says, is ‘reproductive narcissism at work. Your opposite gender kids can never represent you exactly, but if somehow they can resemble you temperamentally, you love them all the more’. There seems to be one thing in particular that birth order
influence: your choice of partner. Forget opposites attract: when we seek out spouses, firstborns gravitate towards firstborns, middle-borns towards middle-borns, last-borns towards last-borns, and only children seek out only children.
Research also found that when it comes to learning about the opposite sex, the best guide you can have is an older sibling of the opposite gender. ‘If you are a girl with an older brother or a boy with an older sister, you should thank them for whatever romantic success you’ve had,’ jokes William Ickes, professor of psychology at the University of Texas.