Does birth order matter?

Do a search on "birth order" and you'll find endless hits, or just read The New Birth Order Book by Kevin Leman for example - but what's the big deal? Does your position within your family really matter that much? As an only child, I never really gave much thought to it - until my second child was born. She is totally different from her older sister - I'd easily say I could see personality differences almost instantly from birth, but I have to admit - there are some things in both of my girls that already seem to line up with the generalized characteristics attributed to birth order. More and more interest is being generated towards this field of study, but it is a very difficult area due to so many factors. Interestingly, back in June a group of Norwegian scientists released a study which showed that first children tend to have higher IQ's than any siblings born after them. But what does this mean to me? Can so much of our choices and tendencies really be attributed to birth order? Can knowing these trends help me to help my children be the best they can be? Or is it all just something interesting to ponder, but nothing that carries any stock? What do you think? (interesting articles on birth order: CNN.com, TIME magazine, Adlerian overview of characteristics)

Comments

[TaderDoodles]

Birth order characteristics are followed with my mom and her sisters and with me and my siblings...

I can see it happening in the two that I have already and won't be surprised to see the whole thing change when Jo becomes the middle child and the new baby is born.

I do think, though, that there are things parents can do to change this, as I have seen some families that don't follow this trend.