The Snowflake Chronicles

ordinal position

1 Jamal 164 B.E. – Saturday, April 28, 2007

First-born children are interesting. We’re expected to take more responsibility when it comes to family and aging parents, then the rest. I think we’re more sensitive than later born siblings. We’re less spoiled because we, especially those of us who grew up in a single parent family, are required to shoulder certain burdens that the younger sibling aren’t.

I can accept birth order being important in some cases. It affects inheritance and responsibilities. Yet how important is it in other areas of life. Actually, I don’t place much stock in scientific studies that don’t take in the entire picture. And I’m not sure that any of the “birth order” studies have taken in every event in the participants lives.

I’m first-born, but I could just as easily have been a second child. My mother had a miscarriage before she conceived me. Does that have an affect on a person? Does that screw up the birth order studies? Did any of the studies consider this variable?

Let’s face it, there are a lot of occurrences in my life that had absolutely nothing to do with my ordinal position in my family. My traits aren’t anything like those listed for a first-born. To start with, I wasn’t pampered and spoiled. The only one’s who spoiled us were my Grandparents, they spoiled us all equally or tried to, and my mother attempted to give all of use equal attention. She succeeded fairly well, she always did something special for each child and that worked out OK.

When my mother was expecting my sister, she told me that I’d have a baby brother or sister (at that time the technology did allow you to know the gender of the child before birth) to play with in a few months. After my mother gave birth and brought my sister home from the hospital, I expected the child to play with me. In fact, my sister was sleeping one day and I wanted her to play with me. What did I do? I went to the crib and yelled “Wake Up!” I woke my sister up, I wasn’t punished for it, in fact my parents (they were still married at the time) thought it was funny.

As to whether or not my sister has a “negative view of her lot” I don’t know. She and I have never discussed the affect of her ordinal position. My sister and I aren’t close, we’ve never been close, but this has nothing to do with our birth order. We’re not close because of other events that had a much greater and more detrimental affect then ordinal position.

My brothers were born third and fourth. As to how ordinal position affected and is affecting them, I don’t know. I’m not close to my brothers for the same reasons I’m not close to my sister, which brings me to another question about ordinal position. Did any of the birth order studies consider whether the family was dysfunctional? If they didn’t they should have. Don’t get me wrong, I watch Dr. Phil, so I know that my dysfunctional family is a lot less dysfunctional than some who appear on that show.

Still a scientific study should take in every known variable and the dysfunctionality of a family is a know variable. Actually, I think family dysfunctionality has a great effect on the perceptions of the family members about themselves and their siblings than birth order.

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