child for not living up to their demands.
Even if the effects are mixed, oldest children have the benefit of the exclusive attention of their parents for several years. Then, just when they have become accustomed to their privileged position with their parents, they are displaced by a new baby. When this displacement comes between the age of 18 months and 4 or 5 years, it is an extreme shock to the oldest child. After 5 years, the oldest has a place in the world outside the family and a well-established identity, so is less threatened by the newcomer.
For the first child who is under 5 years old, the birth of a second child changes everything. Parents suddenly become less available and apparently less interested in the oldest child. Their attention and energy focus on the new little thing in the crib. The behavior of the oldest starts being judged more harshly, and the parents’ love seems to become more conditional.
The oldest who does fairly well with this transition has usually found a way to connect better with dad at this point. This is, of course, dependent on dad being physically and emotionally available. If, in the process of “losing” mom to the newborn, the oldest can get more time and attention from dad, then the arrival of a new sibling is not a total loss. If this happens when the oldest is becoming aware of and more oriented to the world outside the home (usually dad’s domain in our society), the shift can fit nicely with the child’s own developmental needs and interests.
Oldests are often confused following the birth of a sibling. They don’t understand what is happening to their world. They feel abandoned at first, then jealous. What they thought was theirs is no longer theirs in the same way. No matter how well the parents have prepared them for the baby, they usually don’t see any need for more children in the family, especially helpless, feeble ones who can’t even play with them. They wonder why their parents weren’t satisfied with them. Why do their parents need another one?
The usual reaction when the baby has been home for a few days is “Send that kid back where he came from.” And oldests don’t get over these feelings easily, even if the feelings go underground after a while. In their book Siblings Without Rivalry, authors Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish suggest imagining that a husband comes home one day and tells his wife that he’s going to be bringing home a new young wife to join their family — someone she can play with and is sure to love. When the younger woman arrives, he spends all his free time helping her get adjusted to her new home and playing with her. He gives her some of his first wife’s clothes and jewelry, and asks the first wife to look after her while he’s at work. How would this feel to you if you were the wife?
That husband may continually reassure his first wife that he still loves her, and he certainly wouldn’t ask her to leave, but most wives in western cultures would still have trouble accepting this situation. Yet parents expect their oldest child to be mature and understanding about it when they bring home a second child. The first child doesn’t want to give up any of the parents’ love and attention any more than the first wife does, and will do what is necessary to compete with the intruder.
At first the oldest may try to regain attention by reverting to baby-like behavior and demanding a bottle or asking to sleep in a crib. If that doesn’t work, the oldest may have temper tantrums or become hostile and aggressive, particularly toward the baby. Stories of the violent actions of oldest children against their next youngest sibling are legion — the stick poked in the eye, the push off the change table, the dropped baby. This, of course, makes the parents angry at the oldest and even more solicitous of the youngest.
...once I discovered my little sister sleeping peacefully in [my favorite] cradle. At this presumption on the part of one to whom as yet no tie of love bound me, I grew angry. I rushed upon the cradle and overturned it, and the baby might have been killed had my mother not caught her as she fell.
Helen Keller, Story of My Life
However, in most families this behavior doesn’t work either, so the oldest tries another way to get the parents’ attention. This leads to one of the common patterns of oldest children: they try very hard to be good (or perfect) so that their parents will continue to love them rather than their “replacement.” They become helpful with the baby in order to earn love. They may become like deputy parents. They give up trying to get what they want for themselves and do what the parents want. Their parents naturally appreciate the new cooperativeness of the oldest and reinforce it by telling the oldest that he or she is bigger and smarter than the newborn and therefore superior. Even though the newborn now gets most of the parents’ attention, the oldest gets their approval for being whatever they mean by “good” — quiet, tidy, responsible, helpful, nurturing, grown-up.
The parents expect the oldest to set a good example for younger siblings — to be a big girl or boy now — and to help take care of the baby. As a result, oldest children learn early that the way to get rewards is to do what their parents want — to be helpful and “grown-up.” They may begin to identify with the parents as a way of distinguishing themselves from the baby nuisance. This can include taking care of the parents. Oldest child George W. Bush, Jr.’s younger sister died when he was seven, and he was overheard saying to friends that he couldn’t come out to play because he had to play with his (grieving) mother.
The pattern may be accentuated as the oldest takes care of successive children in a continuing attempt to win the parents’ approval. This can result in an oldest child who resents the burden and feels as an adult that his or her life was sacrificed for the younger children. In any case, the oldest rarely has a chance to be a child very long before becoming a “parent,” unless the younger siblings are born many years after the oldest.
When the second child is a different sex, the negative reactions of the first child are not usually as dramatic; there is less direct sense of threat to the status of the oldest and less need to compete. If all the younger siblings are of the opposite sex, the characteristics just described will be moderated considerably. For example, an older brother of sisters is often warmer and more caring than an older brother of brothers.
When the second child is the same sex, however, the threat to the first seems much greater. If the younger ones are all of the same sex, especially if there are two or more, the oldest-child characteristics are usually intensified.
If there are more than five years between the oldest and the next child, the oldest — who has been an only child all that time — is more secure, more sure of his or her place in the world, and more likely to feel reasonably benign toward the newcomer. He or she may even enjoy the younger child.
I can taste even now the fresh delight of learning the boy’s open face, his early laughter, prevailing geniality and the immediate presence of a watchful mind, ready to learn every trick we [Reynolds and his parents] could teach and to thank us steadily with stunts of his own.
Reynolds Price, writing about his brother seven years younger in Clear Pictures: First Love, First Guides
Sometimes an oldest child is able to take advantage of the parents’ inexperience and become the power in the family, behaving imperiously and stubbornly with the parents and the younger children. This is most likely to happen where the parents are both youngests and uncomfortable with the experience of being in charge.
Occasionally, the oldest child will end up being a leader of the siblings against the parents. However, most oldests side with the parents against the unruly younger children, though they may go through a period of rebellion when they are teenagers.
The oldest in the family is often disciplined more than younger children. One reason for this is the parents’ anxiety and higher expectations. Another is that when other children come along, the added burdens make parents more impatient with the oldest and more likely to expect more from that child. Parents often unjustly blame the oldest
