Dear MEL Topic Readers,
'Eldest daughter syndrome' to the rebellious youngest sibling: Does
your birth order shape your personality?
In most
developed countries or established societies, the number of family members is
shrinking to as few as three or even two. Declining birthrate, unmarried
couples, housing costs, inflation, working mothers, and higher education costs,
to name a few reasons why parents are contributing to fewer or no children. Do
only children have distinctively different personality traits, like selfishness
or narcissism, from children with siblings? Also, it is often said that the firstborns
are more responsible and caring because they often look after younger siblings.
But are there any significant characteristics, behavioral, or intellectual gaps
between earlier-borns and later-borns? In fact, the only child or the
first-born child tends to have more time to communicate with and learn from
their parents, while later-born children often spend more time with their elder
siblings. In the meantime, later-borns often have a better chance of growing up
in a better financial situation. Another aspect to be taken into consideration
is that young siblings are often compared at the same time, which means they
are of different ages. For example, if you compare a teenager, the most sensitive
age group, with a six or eight-year-old child, the happiest and carefree age, they
certainly exhibit very distinct characteristics. Indeed, there seem to be so
many aspects to compare siblings.
Read the
article and think whether the birth order really matters to the personality or
ability of siblings.
