Birth Order

Birth Order

Josey Jones

PS400 Theories of Personality

Pamela Applewhite

December 10, 2014

Birth order is the rank of siblings by age. Birth order is often believed to have a profound and lasting effect on psychological development.

Alfred Adler developed theories of personality from 1870-1937 that focused on a therapist's need to understand an individual within the context of social environment. According to Adler, character traits and behaviors derive primarily from developmental issues, including birth order.

Alfred Adler claimed that when a child is born deeply impacts their personality. The eldest children are socially dominant, highly intellectual, extremely conscientious, and prone to perfectionism and people pleasing – the result of losing both parents’ undivided attention at an early age, and working throughout their lives to get it back.

Adler best describes the second-born child as someone who has a "pacemaker." Due to their "middle" status, they also may be the most flexible and diplomatic members of the family, middle children are sandwiched between older and younger siblings often develop a competitive nature that makes them natural entrepreneurs later in life. They tend to be the most diplomatic and flexible members of the family, eager for parental praise, and develop musical or academic gifts.

Youngest children, according to birth order theory, tend to be dependent and selfish because they’re used to others providing for them. But despite the negatives, they’re also quite often the life of the party, fun, confident, and comfortable entertaining others.

According to Adler only children, like a last born, are usually spoiled, and have a hard time when they don’t get their own way. School can be a very difficult transition because they’re used to being the center of the familial universe. But all that parental focus pays off. Only children are often mature for their age. They wow people with their vocabularies and their comfort...