How Your Birth Order Impacts Your Personality

Have you ever wondered why your sister always has her head in the clouds, painting pictures and taking walks in nature instead of participating in the neighborhood group activities after school? Did your siblings ever complain that you’re too bossy? You share in the same gene pool with every sibling, but you are as diverse as any human beings can be in terms of personality talents and interests.

One’s birth order in relation to the family structure does make an imprint upon a person’s personality. This article will share the traits that are unique to each birth order and you can see how well it correlates with yourself and your siblings. How well do these traits reflect those in your family?

First Borns

The first born tends toward perfectionism, being raised by parents who invest anxiously, as new parents, in doing everything right for their child. First borns take this on for themselves. As children, they also are very skilled in interacting with adults generally.

In new situations, however, first borns are usually cautious, having concerns that they don’t have that meticulous control over everything. First borns are generally very high achievers, professionally, in academia or even in appearances. It is, in their mind, their responsibility to excel in everything.

Middle Children

Middle children are born into a family that already has an established personality. There are already one or more older siblings around that take charge. With any middle children, the parents have typically relaxed a great deal at this point after having experienced “firsts” with the first born child.

The parents are less tentative and nervous and have more children to care for now. Middle children, as a result, don’t usually develop a sense that they must be perfect in all their endeavors. Rather, middle children often feel a need to earn their place in a family.

The middle child will usually find creative ways to earn attention, whether by rebellion, or by highly developed socialization skills and strong friendships. Throughout life, middle children will often feel unsettled by having to follow orders and seek ways to avoid that subservience. Yet middle children tend to be creative and adaptive.

The Last Born

These children are born to parents who have learned to relax considerably in the care and attention given to every detail of care and training. The youngest however, do have the unique combination of relaxed parenting style, combined with the abundant attention of being the youngest, and often perceived as the “cutest.”

They cherish this attention and even creatively find ways to get attention when it is diverted to others, such as falling on purpose to get the sympathy of others. They are free spirits throughout their lives, preferring life to flow naturally, expecting a good outcome from this ‘flow,’ they are not at all meticulous about such concerns as remembering birthdays, anniversaries, etc but simply enjoying life as it comes.

The Only Child

The only child experiences life in much the same way as a first born, a pattern that is reinforced throughout their lives. The result of this may manifest in perfectionism and the need to achieve notoriety in some area of their life. They will feel that their reason for being is lost if they don’t reflect this revered ideal in the perceptions of others in their world.

Their pursuit of this ideal creates such focus on detail that they generally admit that their enjoyment of life is far less than it could be if they learned to relax more. These characteristics that often interfere with personal happiness can also reap great rewards professionally. The challenge for the only child is to balance this out in their lives.

The Birth Order Book: Why You Are the Way You Are

Why does this happen?

The factors that influence these traits has much less to do with DNA and everything to do with perceptions, of the parents toward the child, of the child toward the parents, of the siblings toward one another, and how all of these play out in family interactions. Do these descriptions fit your family’s own patterns? How about for yourself? Does this fit for you?