How your birth order can affect your health — and wealth!
As a younger brother, I can, to a degree, identify with Prince Harry and his battles with his ‘nemesis’, William. From a very early age I was aware of having a formidable older sibling, a rival for my parents’ attention.
But, unlike William, my older brother John hasn’t shouted or pushed me around since we were children. and to be fair to John, I also screamed and shouted a lot, and on one occasion, when I was ten, I threw rocks at him.
Harry is clearly very angry with his brother and hugely resents being ‘the spare’.
Of course, the royals have their own special problems to deal with, but to what extent does your position in the birth order of your family really matter?
and what are the long-term effects on the sibling relationship?
To find out more, this week I spoke to Toby Ingham, a wise and very experienced psychotherapist, who pointed out that sibling rivalry has a lot to do with how parents themselves behave.
‘Parents are different by the time they have a second or third child,’ he told me. ‘They have learnt more about how to look after and manage their children.’
In other words, parents tend to become more relaxed, but less attentive, the more children they have. Our eldest son, alex, certainly got more of our attention in the first year of his life than any of our other children, as evidenced by the fact that the family album contains a lot more photos of him as a newborn.
BuT, as Toby also pointed out, being the oldest child has its challenges: ‘an older sibling may feel that they have been pushed aside too quickly when a new baby arrives. Ideally, parents should recognise this and help their children get to know each other and minimise jealousy. The whole family must adapt.’
again, I remember very clearly when alex was two, he shouted ‘leave baby behind’ when we were bundling up his younger brother, Jack, to go on a family trip. I’m happy to report that now, in their 30s, they get on very well.
I would be surprised if what I’m describing doesn’t resonate with many of you.
But what does science say about the long-term effects that your place in the family pecking order has on your personality — and your health?
You have probably read somewhere that firstborns are more conservative and conscientious, which is why these people — who include Elon Musk, Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos — are more likely to become CEOs and create successful start-ups.
Middle children, like me, are said to be more open-minded and diplomatic. and as for lastborns, they’re meant to be more charismatic, creative and mischievous, which may explain why many, such as actors Mark Wahlberg (the youngest of nine) and Jennifer Lawrence (youngest of three) work in the entertainment industry.
The trouble with claims like these is they are based largely on anecdote. and sadly — ‘sadly’, because I do love the idea that birth order shapes our personalities — recent research suggests that the impact, as far as personality is concerned, is negligible.
a 2015 study of 377,000 high school students by researchers from the university of Illinois in the u.s. found that while firstborns do tend to be ‘more extroverted, agreeable and conscientious’, these differences are so small ‘they have no practical relevance to people’s lives’.
another study, from the university of Leipzig (also published in 2015) looked at the personality traits of over 20,000 adults in Germany, the u.s. and Great Britain, and found that birth order had no measurable impact on their personality.
But the researchers did find that firstborns tend to have slightly higher IQs, perhaps because of all the extra attention they get when they are young.
and that could explain why research by economist sandra Black, from the university of Texas, austin, found that, on average, the oldest child earns 2 per cent more over their lifetime than their siblings.
But it is when we look at the impact of birth order on our physical and mental health that things start to get really interesting. In yet another study, published in 2015, of more than 26,000 swedish girls, researchers found that firstborn girls were 29 per cent more likely to become overweight as adults and 40 per cent more likely to be obese than their more fortunate second-born sisters. While no one really knows why, studies show it seems to be true of men, too.
But when it comes to mental health the tables are turned, with younger children being far more likely to be anxious, depressed and commit suicide.
When researchers from Bristol university looked at data from the avon Longitudinal study of Parents and Children (an ongoing study of more than 14,500 women and their children, which started in the 1990s), they concluded that this is largely because the mothers suffered from more depressive episodes when carrying their second child, and the father was also more likely to be absent. Which is particularly interesting in light of the Harry-William psychodrama that is playing out.
But whether you’re on Team Harry or Team William, I think we can all agree that the situation is desperately sad, and we can only hope they find a way to patch things up. In private.