How Does Birth Order Affect Youngest Children?

According to Alfred Adler, the birth order of the children in a family will largely affect how they age and the personalities which they will form. First borns enter the family as the only child. They revel in the love and full attention from their parents, that is, until the second baby comes along. Suddenly, first borns are dethroned and lose the undivided attention they are used to receiving. As a result, they tend to develop a strong sense of responsibility and protectiveness over their siblings at an early age, which often leads to them becoming authoritative adults. Moreover, when there are multiple children in the family, parents will set high

Sibling rivalry is not the only issue that was triggered by birth order, child’s personality and his or her intelligence is also involved. Some researchers say that first-borns are smarter because they are pressured to set-up the boundary for the younger siblings. They are more enthusiastic in their education for them to be role models of their other siblings. As for the younger ones, life may be or may not be easy, depending on how they will view it. They may view it positively by keeping in mind that since their older sibling get through it, they also can. Otherwise,

Though, birth order illuminates a majority of our personality traits and decisions such as, career and romantic relationships. Parents get wrapped up in the ‘firstborn haze’ and overlook how much pressure they put on older siblings. By creating a pressure to be the best and ‘in control’ the older sibling takes on the leadership role and often becomes more aligned with doing better in school than younger siblings. Determination and intelligence correspond with higher level of career, and that is just what the older sibling strives for. In fact, “100% of astronauts who’ve gone into space were either eldest children or eldest sons” (State). Relationships work better if partners differ from each other and aren’t in the same birth order. The competition can be detrimental and problematic. Alfred Adler’s birth order theory provides us with useful information to reflect our decisions and explain how you think about things. By becoming aware of it we can become more familiar with ourselves and get out of the all too familiar comfort

Only children, though they have some of the same characteristics as firstborn, will at times be self-centered from the outpouring of undivided attention received by parents. Also, because only children do not grow up in environments with other siblings, they usually never learn to share or overcome family conflict. Most become unforgiving of themselves and others and also develop selfishness and anger from being the only kid in the family to please parents. Very high expectations do usually come from parents, which put extreme pressure and stress on an only child's life. Along with first-borns, only children are seen leading in the outside world and succeeding in

The object of this experiment was to determine whether or not birth order actually affected personalities and to see if oldest/youngest stereotypes were true. Oldest children are said to be bossy and rule followers while youngest tend to be ambitious and outgoing. To find out whether or not these assumptions were true, ten people were asked a series of questions about oldest and youngest children and what it was like growing up.

If researchers hypothesis are supported and birth order affects first born children then, they will score high in Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, low in Openness to Experience, and Extraversion. Middle children score low in Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and high in Neuroticism. While youngest children will score high in Agreeableness, Neuroticism, Extraversion and low Conscientiousness. Current research will support the fact that birth order certainly plays a role as it pertains to personality and findings by Saroglou & Fiasse (2002) as well as Healy & Ellis (2006) supports the fact that parents expectations and treatment shape a child’s temperament.

Something I learned about birth order is that many people have different personality because of birth order. Discussing with my group we agree that the first born child is the most responsible . In my group no one was the first born child but we do have our big brother/sister and we all agree that they are responsible and their personality is more matured. On the other hand , some of us didn't agree about the middle child of how they are rebellious and are the black sheep of the family ;but we do agree that the middle child wants attention and whatever to get that little attention from their parents. Also, they are creative to do things as projects and many more. I do rely to this because I'm the middle child and I dislike it because

In home, they should know what is the significant and important to their parents and siblings before they locate their own specialty in the family and make a spot for themselves. According to Romeo, there are no two people precisely similar, even identical twins are not exactly alike (1994). It means everyone is unique, and it is on the individual's mental advancement to interpret certain events or things. According to Alfred Adler, the birth order of each person provides an impact to his or her personality development. Each position of an individual in the family has diferent characteristics, attitudes and choice of interests. He stated that the eldest are socially dominant, highly intelectual, and extremely conscientious. However, they tend to be less open to new ideas, prone to the idea of perfectionism and often like to please people, as a result of losing of what they thought as undivided attention from both parents on their eraly age and striving hard to gain it back. The middle ones are flexible member of the family. They are often competitive because they feel the need to surpass their other sibling. The youngest according to the birth theory, tend to be dependent and selfish because they are used to theie parents providing everything for them. Lastly, the only child are coined as "spoiled" because they are

It is hypothesized that aspects of a firstborn personality will result in the firstborn being more self-confident, independent, conscientious, and more of a leader whereas the later-born is the opposite: very sociable, a follower, less conscientious and more social. The hypothesis was not supported, in that the results do not show all the aspects of personalities that were expected. Categories such as: self-confidence sociability and leadership are as expected, but conscientiousness is a surprise. The firstborn is instead less conscientious than the later-born. An extraneous variable that could have affected the results include how the individual is raised. One way of overcoming participant variables could be to test both or all siblings as well

I am the eldest of two sisters by blood, this paper is not giving research on non-blood related siblings. My sisters and I have very different personalities (which I understand is common) but it’s always came to my attention especially when I met my boyfriend and his two sisters. My boyfriend and his sisters have the same personalities like my sisters and I with the order we were all born in. This is why I chose to do the topic of birth order and personality, to see if there is a significance or if these two situations were just a coincidence. My topic is related to family resource management because the number of children you have defiantly affects the family and how a family needs to manage. My topic is also related because

Parent’s own birth order can be a problem if there is a replication between the family they were raised and the family they are raising, and it is believed that youngest parents can be of great help to their youngest and oldest children thanks to features they had as youngest children, however,biases can occur irrespective of their own birth

The youngest children tend to be less adjusted than middle-born children, are most likely to experience feelings of inadequacy. Only children tend to desire being the center of attention, have feelings of inferiority, and tend to be selfish in regard to sharing personal belongings. Although these personality traits are widely accepted, a national sample by the Academic Advancement of Youth of John Hopkins University found little relationship between birth order and personality. However, a mild relationship between birth order and perfectionism was evident, (Parker 29).

Over many years, there has been an issue about the order of siblings and the personality traits that they exhibit. So many theories have been fronted but as the facts present the case, there is more of science behind that than otherwise. The time, the place the conditions of the family and other factors may also affect the personality but, many a psychologist have linked the personality traits to the order of birth. Could it be true?

Adler’s initial work on the theory has been built upon by his fellow psychiatrists and psychologists such as Linda Blair who expands the list of characteristics of birth order. Based on her research and years of clinical experience, Blair (2011) observed that as a result of first borns initially receiving more attention, being held and spoken to more by their parents, they developed more mature social and better linguistic skills then their siblings. She also found that first borns are likely to have a strong desire to win the approval of authority figures. On the flip side, they are easily hurt by any criticism from these figures of authority. First borns are usually academically successful, most likely due to the urge to please their parents and teachers, as well as their superior language skills. Blair also believes they are more conservative than their sibling, and that they have a great respect for established laws and/or rules. First borns are most comfortable with the conventional and don’t like to take chances with new ideas or things. Unfortunately, first borns can have a tendency of being highly self-critical and afraid of failure. All this pressure can make them more susceptible to being highly stressed individuals. Blair also reported that people of this particular birth position were more likely to be anxious, insecure, and jealous (p. 11-31).

For many years, birth order was noted as a distinguishable characteristic in determining the personality of child. In the early 1900s, when Alfred Adler first established the concept of birth order, he became the first theorist to give a new dimension to personality development. Not only did he look at the influence parents had on personality development but the influence of siblings and the biological position each of them grew up within their family (Boeree, 2006). Adler identified five fundamental positions in which a child would be categorized into based on their birth order. These are; the first-born child, the second-born child, the middle child, the youngest child and the only child.