RUTH: Ed, how are you getting on with the reading for our presentation next week?
ED: Well, OK, Ruth – but there’s so much of it.
RUTH: I know, I hadn’t realised birth order was such a popular area of research.
ED: But the stuff on birth order and personality is mostly unreliable. From what I’ve been reading a lot of claims about how your position in the family determines certain personality traits are just stereotypes, with no robust evidence to support them.
RUTH: OK, but that’s an interesting point – we could start by outlining what previous research has shown. There are studies going back over a hundred years.
ED: Yeah – so we could just run through some of the typical traits. Like the consensus seems to be that oldest children are generally less well-adjusted because they never get over the arrival of a younger sibling.
RUTH: Right, but on a positive note, some studies claimed that they were thought to be good a nurturing – certainly in the past when people had large families they would have been expected to look after the younger ones.
ED: There isn’t such a clear picture for middle children – but one trait that a lot of the studies mention is that they are easier to get on with than older or younger siblings.
RUTH: Generally eager to please and helpful – although that’s certainly not accurate as far as my family goes – my middle brother was a nightmare – always causing fights and envious of whatever I had.
ED: As I said – none of this seems to relate to my own experience. I’m the youngest in my family and I don’t recognise myself in any of the studies I’ve read about. I’m supposed to have been a sociable and confident child who made friends easily – but I was actually terribly shy.
RUTH: Really? That’s funny. There have been hundreds of studies on twins but mostly about nurture versus nature…
ED: There was one on personality, which said that a twin is likely to be quite shy in social situations because they always have their twin around to depend on for support.
RUTH: My cousins were like that when they were small – they were only interested in each other and found it hard to engage with other kids. They’re fine now though.
ED: Only children have had a really bad press – a lot of studies have branded them as loners who think the world revolves around them because they’ve never had to fight for their parents’ attention.
RUTH: That does seem a bit harsh. One category I hadn’t considered before was children with much older siblings – a couple of studies mentioned that these children grow up more quickly and are expected to do basic things for themselves – like getting dressed.
ED: I can see how that might be true – although I expect they’re sometimes the exact opposite – playing the baby role and clamouring for special treatment.
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