The Birth Order Book (2 page)

If you’re a firstborn or an only child, you’ll learn why you’re so driven to do everything (and do it well), and what you can do about it before you drive yourself crazy or exhaust yourself. You’ll also learn why books are some of your best friends.

If you’re a middleborn, you’ll find out why you always find yourself in the role of mediator, why you’re on a different path than your firstborn sibling, and how you can keep yourself from being squeezed in the middle. We also might shed some light on that rebellious streak you know is hidden deep in your heart.

If you’re a lastborn like me, you’ll learn why you need some firstborns in your life (like my wife, Sande, and my assistant, Debbie, who help keep everything straight for this fun-loving baby of the family). And you’ll also find out why sometimes you need to walk just a bit more softly around the older ones in the family, cut them a little more slack, and ease up on the pressure they’re feeling to be the perfect role model. Hmm, I wonder what would have happened if Abel had taken that quieter, backseat approach and not irritated big brother Cain by out-doing his efforts. Ever think that maybe, in Cain’s mind, Abel did have it coming?

Want to get inside the thoughts and feelings of the ones you love? Figure out why you do what you do? This fun, entertaining, informative book will show you how. I can’t count the times I’ve heard readers say, “Dr. Leman, this book has changed my life. And it has changed how I see life too.”

Want to get inside the thoughts and feelings of the ones you love? Figure out why you do what you do?

So what are you waiting for?

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Birth Order
Does It Really Make Sense?

I
can’t count the times I’ve been asked that very question as I’ve counseled individuals and families and crisscrossed the talk-show circuit over the past thirty-five years. My first response usually runs along the lines of “Does a bear go potty in the woods?”

Yes, birth order makes sense. After all, how else can three or four or even eight little cubs be so different, yet come from the very same den? Birth order is simple, but it’s not simplistic. There are standard birth order rules, and there are also exceptions to the standard birth order rules (both of which we’ll also talk about in this book). However, the exceptions are explainable when you understand how birth order works. Even the exceptions develop because of when you were born into your family. I call it your “branch on the family tree,” and that branch has had a great deal to do with why you are the way you are today.

Why should you care about birth order? Birth order can give you some important clues about your personality; your relationship with friends, co-workers, and loved ones; the kind of job you have; and how you handle problem solving.

Birth order is really the science of understanding your place in the family line. Were you born first? Second? Third?

Or even farther down that line? Wherever you landed, it has affected your life in countless ways.

Which Traits Fit You Best?

Which of the following sets of personality traits fits you the best? You don’t have to meet all the criteria in a certain list of traits. Just pick the list that has the most items that seem to describe you and your way of operating in life.

A. perfectionist, reliable, conscientious, a list maker, well organized, hard driving, a natural leader, critical, serious, scholarly, logical, doesn’t like surprises, a techie

B. mediator, compromising, diplomatic, avoids conflict, independent, loyal to peers, has many friends, a maverick, secretive, used to not having attention

C. manipulative, charming, blames others, attention seeker, tenacious, people person, natural salesperson, precocious, engaging, affectionate, loves surprises

D. little adult by age seven, very thorough, deliberate, high achiever, self-motivated, fearful, cautious, voracious reader, black-and-white thinker, talks in extremes, can’t bear to fail, has very high expectations for self, more comfortable with people who are older or younger

If you noted that this test seemed rather easy because A, B, and C listed traits of the oldest right on down to the youngest in the family, you’re right.

If you picked A, it’s a very good bet you’re a firstborn in your family.

If you chose B, chances are you are a middleborn child (secondborn of three children, or possibly thirdborn of four).

If C seemed to relate best to who you are, it’s likely you are the baby in the family and are not at all happy that this book has no pictures. (Just kidding—I like to have a little extra fun with lastborns because I’m one myself. More on that later.)

But what about D? It describes the only child, and I threw it in because in recent years I have been getting more and more questions from only children because families in general are having fewer children. These only children (also known as “lonely onlies”) know they are firstborns but want to know how they are different from people who have siblings. Well, one way they are different is that the only child is a super or extreme version of a firstborn. They have many of the same characteristics of firstborns, but in many ways they’re in a class by themselves. More on that in chapter 7.

Not all characteristics fit every person in that birth order.

Notice that regarding each major birth order, I always qualify the characteristics by saying “good bet” or “chances are.” Not all characteristics fit every person in that birth order. In fact, a firstborn may have baby characteristics, a lastborn can sometimes act like a firstborn in certain areas, and middle children may seem to be firstborns. I’ve seen onlies who you would swear were youngest children. There are reasons for these inconsistencies, which I’ll explain as we go along.

Who’s Who?

Birth order continues to be revealing when you look at who is in what occupation. For example, statistics show that firstborns often fill positions of high authority or achievement.
Who’s Who in America
or
American Men and Women in Science
both contain a high percentage of firstborns. You will also find them well represented among Rhodes scholars and university professors.

Although we’ll get more fully into this in the following chapters, I define a firstborn as:

1. The first child born in a family. (However, a firstborn child may not always play a firstborn role, due to the variables we’ll discuss.)

2. The first child of that gender born in the family (the first son or the first daughter, even if there are other children before him or her).

3. A child whose next closest same-sex sibling is five or more years older than him or her.

As for presidents and pastors, you guessed it: a great number of them are firstborns. The way I define a firstborn, 28 out of 44 US presidents (64 percent) have been firstborns or functional (play the role of) firstborns. In fact, 8 of the 11 who ran for president in the 2008 election were firstborn sons or a firstborn daughter in their families.

Firstborns and Only Children

Reliable and conscientious, they tend to be list makers and black-and-white thinkers. They have a keen sense of right and wrong and believe there is a right way to do things. They are natural leaders and achievement oriented.

Only children take those characteristics a step further. Books are their best friends. They act mature beyond their years—they are little adults by age 7 or 8. They work independently. And they can’t understand why kids in other families fight.

A number of our presidents were born later in their families. In some cases they were born last, but in all cases they were the firstborn
males
in the family. That tells me they had excellent chances of developing firstborn traits and
functioning
as firstborns, which undoubtedly helped them be effective in their role of president and leader. (For a complete list, see “US Presidents and Their Birth Order,” page 329.)

Of course, some US presidents have been middle children, and a few have been lastborns, including Ronald Reagan, the actor who made good in Washington. The big three of birth order—firstborn, middle child, and baby—was vividly represented during the 1992 presidential campaign when incumbent George Bush, Bill Clinton, and Ross Perot squared off in a televised debate. Clinton, the firstborn, was suave, confident, and loaded with answers, and projected strong leadership abilities. Bush, the middle child, used a mediatory negotiating style, even while in debate. Perot, the lastborn, was an outrageous baby and then some—hard-hitting, outspoken, asking lots of embarrassing questions of his opponents, and often having the audience in stitches.

In the 2008 US presidential election, the final four contenders for the biggest job in the world were an only child (Barack Obama—see page 331 for why he’s considered an only child), a firstborn daughter (Hillary Clinton), and two firstborn sons (Mike Huckabee and John McCain). There truly is something unique about firstborns, the leaders of the pack.

Middleborns

They’re the hardest to pin down of all the birth orders, but they’ll be the opposite of the child above them in the family. If the firstborn is very conventional, the second will be unconventional. Middle children walk to the beat of a different drummer. They are competitive, loyal, and big on friendships.

Being the middle child means living in a sort of anonymous haziness. But that’s not all bad. If a middle child is anonymous, he can get away with occasional laziness and indifference. He’s not pushed as hard or expected to accomplish quite as much as the one who came before him. The drawback is that without being pushed, he may never fulfill his potential. The middle child of the family is often the negotiator who tries to keep the peace.

And politicians aren’t the only ones. Once when I was speaking to a group of fifty pastors, I commented in passing, “Pastors, you know, are predominantly firstborns.” When they looked skeptical, I decided to poll the entire group to see if I was right. Forty-three out of the fifty were firstborn sons or only children.

Research bears out that firstborns are more highly motivated to achieve than laterborns. A much greater proportion of firstborns wind up in professions such as science, medicine, or law. You also find them in greater numbers among accountants, bookkeepers, executive secretaries, engineers, and computer specialists. And, oh yes, of the first twenty-three American astronauts sent into outer space, twenty-one were firstborns and the other two were only children. All seven astronauts in the original Mercury program were firstborns.
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Even Christa McAuliffe, the teacher who died in the ill-fated
Challenger
space shuttle crash in 1986, was a firstborn who had four siblings.

In addition, a recent study announced on CNN that “Firstborns’ IQs tend to be higher than those of their younger siblings.”
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Why? No one was quite sure, but speculations were that the firstborns benefited from receiving more of their parents’ undivided attention for a while before siblings came along; the older child is given more responsibility and thus becomes more responsible, which builds brain-power; and the older child carries the parents’ dreams, so he seeks to do more and go farther than his siblings.

Lastborns

These social, outgoing creatures have never met a stranger. They are uncomplicated, spontaneous, humorous, and high on people skills. To them, life’s a party. They’re most likely to get away with murder and least likely to be punished. They often retain their pet name.

But there’s also a flip side to being the youngest. Although they’re the little star in the family constellation, it’s no fun being the smallest, because it means they spend a lot of their time wearing hand-me-downs that are ragged, incredibly out of style, or too big. Being the youngest also means that they get picked on from time to time and maybe get called an unflattering nickname.

The point is, more often than not you’ll find firstborns in professions that take precision, strong powers of concentration, and dogged mental discipline.
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When I served as assistant dean of students at the University of Arizona while also earning a doctorate, I always enjoyed testing the birth order theories I was learning. Once I asked a faculty member of the College of Architecture if he had ever noticed where the college’s faculty members came from as far as birth order was concerned. He gave me a blank stare and muttered, “Kevin, I really have to run.”

Half a year later he stopped me on campus and said, “Do you remember that crazy question you asked me about the birth order of our architectural faculty? Well, I finally decided to take an informal poll. It turns out almost every one of our faculty is either a firstborn or the only child in the family.” My friend was quite impressed.

I was gratified to know that a basic birth order principle had proven out again. People who like structure and order tend to enter professions that are exacting. Architecture is one of those professions.

Research bears out that firstborns are more highly motivated to achieve than laterborns.

How Birth Order Plays Out in Hollywood

At the other end of the birth order scale, you’ll find a lot of laterborns who are comedians. Babies of the family who are known and loved by millions of movie and TV fans include Eddie Murphy, Martin Short, Ellen DeGeneres, Whoopi Goldberg, Jay Leno, Stephen Colbert, Steve Carell, Jon Stewart, Billy Crystal, Danny DeVito, Drew Carey, Jim Carrey, Steve Martin, and Chevy Chase. Other babies of the family who kept us in stitches include the late comics John Candy and Charlie Chaplin.