I am a strong believer that everything you do comes with an underlying reason with why you do it. You may not know it, but growing up around your family (and maybe siblings?) helps contribute to the majority of the overall outcome of your quirks and traits. It makes sense to say that the order of your birth and how you were raised coincides with your personality and challenges the effort you put into certain things. It's definitely not something you think about while you are young, because you can't even realize it is happening since your mind isn't able to process the incoming information. It's not until we grow up and mature that we see how our behavior is related to whether or not we were the only, oldest, middle, or youngest child.

According to yourtotalhealth.com, most related to the oldest sibling, the only child differs in the sense that they are far more available to take responsiblilty and are more sensitive. The oldest sibling has the most prominent traits of control and leadership. They tend to lack sensitivity and are often pushy or intimidating. This could be because the first born usually have more responsibilities as the oldest to set an example and direct the other siblings. The oldest child may also subconsicously think that since they are "first born," they are entitled to extra rewards and more love from the parents. They are often spolied and treated as though they can do no wrong, causing them to live without consequences. Or on the other hand, they could be used as the "rough draft" child, where the parents let themselves make mistakes and try to learn from them so they can better raise their future children. This would ultimately make the child grow up to feeling like their only purpose was to be used as a trial period and have poor self-confidence. The middle child, however, is more rational and likes pleasing other people. They aren't very confrontational and prefer peace over conflict. They are a little less driven but this could be due to a decrease in attention from the older child's demanding ways. You may have heard of 'the middle child syndrome,' where the sibling is caught in the middle and feels unwanted, like they have to fight for their parent's attention. On the contrary, the middle child may be able to outsmart this concept by using reverse psychology on the parents. They often use this common 'problem' to outsmart the parents into loving them and getting what they want. The youngest child is known for being the most extroverted and outgoing, they crave the acceptance of others and love to entertain. Sometimes they can be more concentrated on having fun, instead of being serious when the situation calls for it. This may be because the youngest child has either always been blamed for everything, or never taken any responsibility for anything. One of the good things that the youngest child has (typically more than one) is an example of how their sibling's have dealt with their parents, so they are able to try and avoid conflict with behavorial problems. But often, the youngest are the ones to rebel instead of conform.

 

 

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Peer Edit

 

Mikaella: I like your paper and I agree with your argument. I find the topic of psychology and child development very interesting. I think you should either include personal experiences, or examples of friends or something to better support your argument. You could include some more examples of how a child who was raised by a single parent would be brought up as opposed to a child who grew up in a big family. For example, I am an only child raised by just my mother, whereas one of my best friends lives with both of her parents and 3 other siblings ranging from age 9 to age 22, so we were obviously brought up in different ways. It might be interesting to include what a typical day might be for a someone in a small family, and then one for a person in a larger family to show the difference in their lifestyles and how they are affected by their upbringning.

 

Sam- I have never really gave this topic a thought before, I am the oldest of 5 kids (long story) and I have seen first hand that I am the bar setting person in the house to my younger siblings. I would like to see how in life each of the children from the different levels of the family, like was Jeffrey Dahmer the middle child, who was never shown love and in the future started to kill and eat people. Or was Bill Gates the oldest who stepped up and set the bar and later created windows and became one of the richest motherfucker in the world.