Hellobee

I definitely think this rings true. I’m a middle child and DH is an oldest. I think about it in raising my LO and future LOs.

I am the younger of two. My brother exhibits all the older sibling characteristics but I find myself more like a middle child.

Now that #2 is soon coming, I wonder a lot about birth order, especially how it will affect DD.

I am the youngest, although I am best described by the Only characteristics, with the Perfectionist of the Oldest thrown in!

My husband and I are both the oldest and I will be honest, it is part of the reason why we are one and done. My husband is the oldest of 4 and he had quite a lot of responsibilities from a young age to keep the other kids in order and he didn’t want that for our son.

I am the youngest in my family (and on my father’s entire side of 12 cousins!) but I exhibit almost exclusively ‘oldest’ chile traits.
This makes me wonder if child spacing is taken into consideration at all with these personality descriptions. My brother is 5 years older, and I wonder if that larger gap contributed to my personality more closely matching the ‘oldest’ rather than the ‘youngest’ even if I was the baby.

I am an oldest with typical oldest child traits. The rest of the kids in my family fall right in line with the descriptions you’ve provided.

With our girls, I think I was less structured with our first and could afford to be because I had less demands on my time. Despite that, I see the same birth order patterns forming.

I want to know what the book says about adoption, if you have time to explain!

I’m one of 6 kids— I don’t see the birth order characteristics at all with my siblings except to say I’m definitely a middle child. But one of the other middles has all of the Only characteristics, and the oldest in my family doesn’t have many of the Oldest characteristics.

Very interesting. I would say that my brother (only boy in the middle) more fits the description of “youngest”. But my sister (youngest, second girl) more fits the description of middle child.

I’ve read Dr. Leman’s book several years ago and it was really interesting. I have wandered what it will be like with Finn & Elliot. Will they both have more older child or middle child tendencies? Will one be more “First born” style, while the other is middle or baby? So interesting to watch and see!

@Anagram: I don’t think it is always spot on, but the book does go into more detail, like if you’re a younger sibling but the first of a different gender, the spacing between kids, etc. can change what functional “birth order” you tend toward. For example, DH is 9 years older than his closest sibling, so Leman would say that she is a functional first born and DH is a functional only child, even though they actually aren’t.

ETA: I was curious and googled and found an article on Parents that says this about twins in case anyone else is wanting to know:

“Families Within Families: In cases such as with twins, you have a family within a family — a unit that operates independently of birth order. “A twin will never act like a middle-born; he will always act like a firstborn or a baby,” Leman says. Since twins are perceived as a single unit — likely even referred to as “the twins” — they separate themselves from the traditional family and revel in their special position.”

My son very clearly fits the description of the only child here. I’m wondering how it’ll change once LO gets here…will he become more like the oldest? He’ll be almost 7 when he gets his first younger sibling, so I do wonder if that makes a difference. I also wonder about it with LO, since DS will be so much older.

@Mrs. Blue: I think you answered my question with your post, lol. I’m interested to see how it plays out. I wonder how twins are going to be, too. I know some twins who do play the big sibling/younger sibling role, but they’re male/female, and the guy always felt protective of his sister, acting like the older child (even though he was technically younger!)

@Dandelion: Yeah, I think he would definitely be considered a functional only child.

This is so interesting!! My older brother is a mix of oldest and only, but I am a mix of oldest and youngest (I’m the youngest). It could be because he went to a private school for high school and we basically never saw each other.. so he became like an only child, and I became both the oldest and youngest.

Wagon Sr. and his brother are only 15 months apart, but it’s interesting to see that WS exhibits traits from a middle child and his younger brother is a classic youngest.

I can’t really pinpoint Wagon Jr. as one of these… if I had to choose one, it would be an only! LMW, however, seems to be a classic youngest.

My brother and I fall right in line with this, and so do my DD and DS. I think there are some nuances depending on boys and girls too, such as older sister/younger brother dynamic, or older sister/younger sister dynamic, etc. It has always been super interesting to me!

Yes, I see this very much in my own life. I am an only and most of my close friends are oldest children (who apparently are similar to onlies) and other onlies. I even dated mostly oldest children (I married one, too!) The only child description is spot on for me.

This is very interesting. I’m the youngest w/all the traits of the oldest (by the definitions above, I fit the oldest traits to a T, and none of the youngest traits – but DH would SWEAR that I am a typical younger child)!

This is probably due to the family dynamic when I was growing up, w/an older sibling who was sick that I often had to take care of.

@looch: My mom is the oldest of 5, and she always got in trouble “on behalf” of them because it was on her to keep them in check, etc. It was a huge burden on her and I know it made her want to escape and be independent from her family as soon as possible. The book also describes two kinds of first borns: 1) the compliant nurturers and caregivers, and 2) hard-driving and assertive.

@lindseykaye: The definitions above were just a brief snapshot of the more “typical” birth order cases, but he does delve deeper into the more unique family situations, like large child spacings, and takes those things into account in the rest of the book. I just didn’t have the space to include it all in one post since it’s a hefty topic.

@Mrs. Jacks: The age at which the child is adopted is a key factor in which traits the child is most likely to exhibit. The younger the child is at adoption, the more time he will spend under the adoptive parents’ care and adopt his position in the existing family tree. For instance, if a firstborn 1-year-old is adopted by a family with a 4-year-old child, the adopted child will likely fall into the role of the baby, despite the fact that he is biologically a firstborn child. However, if a firstborn child is 7 years old when he is adopted into a family with a 10-year-old child, the adopted child will still act like a firstborn even though he has an older brother. Leman says, “You don’t give up being a firstborn. You take the birth order with you.”

@Mrs. Blue: He also says this about twins… “Twin are always special. Twins are usually very aware of who is the ‘first born.’ One of them will let you know that he is older, even if it’s by as little as one minute! No matter where twins may land in a family birth order, they wind up as something of a first-born/second-born combination and are usually competitor and companion. The first born often becomes the assertive leader and the second born follows along. This happens often, but not always. Some twinships turn into real rivalries, particularly if the children are the same sex.”

Also interesting to me is, my best friend is the oldest of triplets. She exhibits classic first born traits, and the youngest of the triplets is very much the “baby”! They even call her the “baby”. The minute thing that Leman mentioned is soo true… I grew up with them and they would always tell each other, “well I’m older than you by 1 minute!” when they fought – it was funny!

@Dandelion: Yea, Leman says that “once the grain of wood (the personality) is set after age five or six, every birth order is set as well”… so he would most likely still skew towards being an “only”. Several of my friends have a large age gap with their younger siblings, and they all exhibit both only child and older sibling traits. You can tell they grew up as an only, but they also have this nurturing side to them that came from having to help out and take care of a younger sibling.

@lindseykaye: Also wanted to add that he does say that when there’s a larger age gap like that, a lot of times the two children tend to act more like “two onlies”. Since only children have similar characteristics to oldest children, it would make sense why you would say that you’re more like the oldest rather than the youngest!

@Mrs Checkers: Knowing your family dynamics, it makes complete sense to me why you ended up like an oldest!

@Mrs. High Heels: That makes a lot of sense! I have a lot of the ‘onlies’ traits as well as ‘oldest’ and re-reading the list, maybe more.

@Mrs. High Heels: That’s interesting…I’m 9 years older than my younger brother, but I AM the typical middle child, and he’s definitely the youngest according to the descriptions above. But maybe it’s easier to go from youngest to middle than only to oldest after a certain time.

@Mrs. High Heels: My sister and I are twins but fit the birth order concept perfectly for oldest/youngest. I’ve read Leman’s book and actually wrote a paper on birth order as presented in Alcott’s Little Women.

I was curious about Leman’s book and the Scientific American article cited in the first paragraph of this post. From what I can tell:

– Leman is a faith-based psychologist who is not utilizing rigorous, generalizable research methods. Nor is he conducting a rigorous meta-analysis of existing research.

– The Scientific American article — which DOES cite research utilizing scientifically acceptable methods (i.e., research that meets academic standards of being generalizable, reliable, and representative) — indicates that most birth order claims have been debunked. Further, most early research on the topic did not a family’s socioeconomic status and/or total # of births into account.

– The two pieces of research cited in Scientific American claiming that birth order may be significant make truly limited claims: 1) that individuals are likely to partner with another individual who “matches” their own birth order placement; and 2), that there is a “small but negative correlation between birth order and IQ.”

I suggest that people read the Scientific American article — it is a nice summation of actual research!

I love the birth order effect.

I love guessing what birth order people are, it’s really fun and you really get a good feel of the person you are talking to when you know their birth order (I also like to know their chinese sign too).

I’m the youngest of two (with an older brother) but I have a lot of oldest traits because I am the first girl and I found a lot of my freinds are similar in that respect that they might be the second child but first girl that they sometimes get oldest traits.

I think this is really interesting, but doesn’t look like it fits my sister and I. She is older than me (by 2.5 yrs), but I am the one who fits the oldest and she fits more with the youngest traits!

I’m the oldest of two (with only 2 years between us), but relate with more of the only child traits than the oldest child traits… I have quite a meshing of both really.

G definitely has mostly only child traits, minus the reader (he actually hates reading since a traumatic year as a first grader. blegh).

I wonder what P will be like since there is such a gap between & her G and then how our next will fall in with a 3ish year gap…. Hmmmmm….

@Mrs. Blue: are you planning to tell the boys who is “older”? I always thought it would prevent many “I’m older” fights of they didn’t know for awhile

My sister and I are opposites – she’s totally the youngest child style and I’m the eldest, even though I’m the youngest

I love birth order studies, I read about them whenever I can so Im def going to check out that book you mentioned.

I am actually an anomaly in that Im an only child that acts like a youngest child vs an oldest one. My mother is the youngest and my father was the 3rd of 4 children but was the youngest for over 7 years before his youngest sister was born so in many ways he was the youngest for a long time. Though Drake is my oldest and I do think he will eventually adapt some of those traits as he is pushed into them just like he is pushed into more independence since Juliet was born I treat all my kids kind of like youngest as thats what Im most familiar with. Fascinating stuff birth order

So interesting! There are three kids in my family and we fit those descriptions perfectly, I’m definitely classic middle child. It totally doesn’t fit my husband and his older brother though, if anything they’re opposite! So weird!

@Mrs. High Heels: our daughter would have been a second child either way and was ours from the moment of birh, so she’s a second child through and through.

i am the younger of 2 sisters. i think the birth order characteristics hold true for us. i am super, super manipulative and love to blame others, particularly my husband. bwahahaha.

I’m definitely the oldest child. My younger siblings fit their birth order descriptions too.

I was nearly 8 when my brother was born. I definitely have a combination of only and oldest traits (leaning more toward only) and he has a combination of youngest and only traits (leaning more toward youngest). It’s really interesting!

This is interesting and got me thinking how the order would be for those who aren’t raised in a single family. My niece, has a little half sister- but I don’t see her carrying the oldest qualities. She stays at 3-4 different places for any given week. Right now she posesses the youngest qualities and I can see that being understandable. She’s constantly competiting for attention and gets jealous easily. She’s a really good girl at heart. At age 10, she already knows what she is experiencing and finds ways to make herself feel secured.

@Mrs. Jacks: I was reading an old post of yours that I’ve never read before – http://www.hellobee.com/2012/02/16/chosing-the-adoption-option/ – and look what you wrote in the comments section of that post!

“Just make sure that if you adopt a non-infant that he/she is younger than your twins. Adopting out of birth order can be a VERY bad idea! (Especially with a kid that comes with some serious emotional baggage!)”