1Ed, how are you getting on with the reading for our presentation next week?
2Well, OK, Ruth - but there's so much of it.
3I know,
4I hadn't realised birth order was such a popular area of research.
5But the stuff on birth order and personality is mostly unreliable.
6From what I've been reading,
7a lot of the claims about how your position in the family determines certain personality traits are just stereotypes,
8with no robust evidence to support them.
9OK, but that's an interesting point -
10we could start by outlining what previous research has shown.
11There are studies going back over a hundred years.
12Yeah - so we could just run through some of the typical traits.
13Like the consensus seems to be that oldest children are generally less well-adjusted
14because they never get over the arrival of a younger sibling.
15Right, but on a positive note,
16some studies claimed that they were thought to be good at nurturing -
17certainly in the past when people had large families,
18they would have been expected to look after the younger ones.
19There isn't such a clear picture for middle children -
20but one trait that a lot of the studies mention
21is that they are easier to get on with than older or younger siblings.
22Mm. Generally eager to please and helpful -
23although that's certainly not accurate as far as my family goes -
24my middle brother was a nightmare -
25always causing fights and envious of whatever I had.
26As I said - none of this seems to relate to my own experience.
27I'm the youngest in my family
28and I don't recognise myself in any of the studies I've read about.
29I'm supposed to have been a sociable and confident child who made friends easily
30but I was actually terribly shy.
31Really? That's funny.
32There have been hundreds of studies on twins but mostly about nurture versus nature...
33There was one on personality, which said that a twin is likely to be quite shy in social situations
34because they always have their twin around to depend on for support.
35My cousins were like that when they were small -
36they were only interested in each other and found it hard to engage with other kids.
37They're fine now though.
38Only children have had a really bad press -
39a lot of studies have branded them as loners who think the world revolves around them
40because they've never had to fight for their parents' attention.
41That does seem a bit harsh.
42One category I hadn't considered before was children with much older siblings -
43a couple of studies mentioned that these children grow up more quickly
44and are expected to do basic things for themselves - like getting dressed.
45I can see how that might be true -
46although I expect they're sometimes the exact opposite -
47playing the baby role and clamouring for special treatment.
48What was the problem with most of these studies, do you think?
49I think it was because
50in a lot of cases data was collected from only one sibling per family,
51who rated him or herself and his or her siblings at the same time.
52Some of the old research into the relationship between birth order and academic achievement has been proved to be accurate though.
53Performances in intelligence tests decline slightly from the eldest child to his or her younger siblings.
54This has been proved in lots of recent studies.
55Yes. Although what many of them didn't take into consideration was family size.
56The more siblings there are, the likelier the family is to have a low socioeconomic status -
57which can also account for differences between siblings in academic performance.
58The oldest boy might be given more opportunities than his younger sisters, for example.
59Exactly.
60But the main reason for the marginally higher academic performance of oldest children is quite surprising, I think.
61It's not only that they benefit intellectually from extra attention at a young age -
62which is what I would have expected.
63It's that they benefit from being teachers for their younger siblings, by verbalising processes.
64Right, and this gives them status and confidence,
65which again contributes, in a small way, to better performance.
66So would you say sibling rivalry has been a useful thing for you?
67I think so, my younger brother was incredibly annoying.
68And we fought a lot
69but I think this has made me a stronger person.
70I know how to defend myself.
71We had some terrible arguments and I would have died rather than apologise to him.
72But we had to put up with each other and most of the time we coexisted amicably enough.
73Yes, my situation was pretty similar.
74But I don't think having two older brothers made me any less selfish.
75I was never prepared to let my brothers use any of my stuff...
76That's perfectly normal...