How Birth Order Changes Your Life
The Personality Traits of Firstborn, Middle, and Last-born Children
Birth order affects your job, marriage, and earning power. Find out if you fit into the birth order personality - or if you're an exception to the birth order rule.
Are you the oldest, youngest, or caught somewhere in the middle? Your birth order can affect your personality traits, professional achievements, and personal relationships.
Birth Order: Characteristics of Firstborn Children
- Smarter? Firstborn children may be smarter than later-born and middle children. Their IQ points are on average 3 points higher than their younger siblings; in fact, IQs tend to drop as more children are born. This may be because parents spend more time with firstborns, and firstborn children mentor their younger siblings and thus learn more. However, Aaron Wichman of Ohio State University found that it’s not birth order that affects intelligence, it’s family size (“Older Children Not Smarter Than Younger Sibs, Study Finds” in ScienceDaily April 12, 2006). Big families can’t offer the same advantages to all the kids that small families can – it’s genetics and the family environment that affects IQ more than birth order.
- Better educated. Firstborn children are more likely to go to college or university than last or middle children. If parents can afford to send one child to school, it’s more likely to be the firstborn. Families invest more in firstborn children.
- Earn more money. Firstborn children may earn more money and be more likely to hold a high-paying, white collar job. They’re more likely to be surgeons, chairs in boardrooms, and hold MBAs.
- Favorites. Firstborn children are more likely enjoy resources (food, parental time, emotional nourishment, attention) than last born children. It becomes a cycle: the more firstborns are nurtured, the stronger they become – prompting parents to invest even more time, money, and attention.
Birth Order: Characteristics of Middle Children
- More mysterious. Middle born children are more difficult to define because their identity growing up changed (from last-born to middle child). This affects their personality and environment in unpredictable ways.
- Peacekeepers. Middle borns may be more likely to keep peace in the family, to restore connections and relationships.
- Less decisive. Middle children may take longer to choose a career than firstborn or later-borns. They may deliberately make opposite choices than firstborns; if the firstborn is a doctor, the middle child may choose to be a firefighter or cop.
- Less connected. Middle children may not be as attached to the family as firstborns or later-borns.
Birth Order: Characteristics of Last-born Children
- More adventurous. Last-born or youngest children are more likely to be “loose cannons”, according to an article in Time magazine (“The Power of Birth Order”, Oct 29, 2007). They’re more likely to be an artist, entrepreneur or adventurer – and more likely to participate in physically risky sports.
- Funnier. Later-born children are more likely to be comedians or satirists. They’ll be outrageous or funny as a power strategy in the family.
- More agreeable. Last-born children tend to get along in the world better – a trait known as “agreeableness” in the Big Five Personality Traits. Compared to firstborn children, they’re less likely to provoke people.
Though these birth order characteristics are not set in stone – they’re affected by family size, the environment, circumstances, etc. – birth order does affect your life.
“Birth order, even on a rudimentary level, gives you a jump start on understanding each other,” says Cliff Isaacson, an Iowa-based psychotherapist and author of five books on birth order, including The Birth Order Effect for Couples. “Each place in the birth order has a unique thinking pattern, how he or she processes information.”
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