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Many parents are convinced that the order in which children are born in the family affects their abilities and fate. Is it so? Results of a large-scale study.
The older ones are more responsible, the younger ones are accommodating … Disputes about the influence of the order in which children appear in the family on their formation and growth have been going on for decades. Books for parents on this topic are in constant demand. But the scientific data is not always unambiguous. The new study is impressive in its scale – it analyzed data on 377 American high school students. This is the largest sample in the history of such studies. What are the results?
Although the researchers found statistically significant differences, they were so small that they hardly deserve to be taken into account. For example, firstborns scored higher on IQ tests, but only by one point. In addition, it turned out that they are more prone to extraversion, more accommodating and conscientious, less anxious – but these differences are negligible.
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- senior, middle, junior
“The study adjusted for factors that could skew the results, such as the economic status of the family, the number of children, and the ratio of the age of the children in the family at the time of the study. For example, wealthy families usually have fewer children and, accordingly, a higher proportion of first-borns who have access to significant resources that can help develop intelligence and personality, ”says one of the authors of the study, Professor of Psychology at the University of Houston (USA) Rodica Damian ( Rodica Damian). She believes that the problem with previous studies was that they compared children within the same family. “They didn’t even test each child individually, they just asked one of the children, usually the eldest, something along the lines of ‘Are you more conscientious than your siblings?’ Of course, the results depended on who was asked,” explains Rodica Demyan.
Elizabeth Schenbeck
“Senior, middle, junior … How the order of birth of a child affects the formation of his personality”
The order of our birth, a small or big difference between us and older (younger) brothers (sisters), according to the author, are factors that largely determine our personality, our choice of partner and life path in general.
“Another problem with those studies was that firstborns are, of course, older than the rest. Some say: “My first child is more responsible than the youngest.” But perhaps only because he is older,” adds another study author, University of Illinois psychology professor Brent Roberts. “Summarizing our results, we can say that parents should not pay special attention to the order of the birth of children, since it does not in itself have a significant effect on personality traits or intelligence,” Rodica Damyan sums up.
Подробнее см. R. Damian, В. Roberts «The associations of birth order with personality and intelligence in a representative sample of U.S. high school students», Journal of Research in Personality, June 2015.