Parents usually get the blame or credit for the way their children turn out. However, brothers and sisters in the family have a profound effect as well. Children — except for only children or oldest children for the first few years of life — develop in great measure by relating to their siblings and struggling to establish a separate identity within the family. By age five or six, this identity and the accompanying personality traits are more or less set. These early experiences in the family far outweigh the later influences of school, church, clubs, and friendships.
Birth order and sex are commonly used to identify a child. Parents will often introduce their children to outsiders by saying “This is my oldest,” “This is my youngest son,” “This is my only daughter.” The child soon accepts these factors as part of his or her identity. What seems a superficial matter is important at a deep level of consciousness. In addition to whatever the parents believe about oldests, middles, and youngests, and about males and females, society’s attitudes about these factors will also become part of the child’s consciousness.
Almost all children learn to identify with their position and construct a story or form their own private beliefs about what it means to be a “first,” a “middle,” or a “last” child, or a “boy” or a “girl.” Their stories, repeated to themselves daily in their heads, may have an essentially positive or negative tone, and as each day’s events happen, only those elements that fit with the story will be noticed and remembered. It is not only the reality that makes the difference but the child’s perception of reality that affects this identity.
Jeremy and his wife came into therapy partly because Jeremy didn’t feel appreciated and loved by her. His negative feelings had increased substantially since their first child was born and the baby commanded so much of his wife’s attention. Jeremy was asked if he had ever felt like that before. It came out that he had often felt his parents cared more for his younger brother, Wylie, than for him. He had never said anything about it to his parents, but had often been quiet and sulky at home, just as he was with his wife. Asked for a specific example of how his parents had favored Wylie, Jeremy told a story about being sent off to boarding school at a young age. He hated the school, was homesick, scared, and unhappy. A year later, Wylie came to the same school and had the same feelings about it. However, Wylie immediately called his parents to say he wanted to come home. His parents came to the school to see him and encourage him. This happened several times during the year, and each time, Jeremy felt hurt that his parents were so concerned about Wylie. He interpreted this as their loving Wylie more.
Not long after Jeremy told this story, his parents came to visit from England. Jeremy was asked to bring them to a therapy session. In the session, the therapist asked them about their experience with their two sons. They both spoke about how much more responsible and competent Jeremy was than his younger brother Wylie. They said Wylie had always been a problem for them, but that Jeremy could be counted on. Asked for an example, they spontaneously told about sending both boys to boarding school. They never had a problem with Jeremy, who handled it just fine, they said, but Wylie complained constantly and kept dragging them down to the school to deal with his problems. They tried to be understanding, but inside they wished Wylie could handle it like Jeremy. To this day, Wylie came to them with his complaints and pleas for help.
Tears filled Jeremy’s eyes as he listened to this version of the story. He had never seen it from this perspective. When he told his father that he had been just as upset by his first year at school as Wylie, his father said he’d never known that. It began to emerge that Jeremy thought people who loved him (including his wife) should just know what he felt and needed. He had never asked for what he wanted directly, but just sulked quietly instead. As a result, his perception of situations became the reality for him and that “reality” shaped his responses.
Children often learn to use their birth order position to advantage to get what they want. In reaction to each other, they reinforce each other’s characteristics. A youngest child like Wylie may decide to excel in using relative weakness to get attention from the parents; an oldest child like Jeremy may be pushed to even greater efforts to excel at some accomplishment in order to get affirmation from the parents.
At one level, Jeremy understood that his parents valued his quieter, less demanding style, but that created a bind for him because it prevented him from getting the attention he wanted. He achieved some recognition by being more adult, but some of his emotional needs were not met.
Because all members of a family define themselves in relation to other family members, a change in any one family member always has an impact on every other family member.
This process is especially true for siblings. Any one child’s behavior and way of expressing self in the world has to be seen in the context of the other children. They don’t make each other the way they are; but they all define themselves in the context of their relationship with each other.
Arthur frequently had physical fights with his older brother, which he usually lost. He craved his older brother’s attention, respect, and acceptance. But the older brother preferred to be with the third, youngest boy who was a more compliant companion. Arthur’s father seemed to dote on the oldest son, and his mother spent her time with his sisters. He felt like an outsider. Early in adolescence, after years of trying to be like his older brother and failing miserably, Arthur began to avoid the family. He became a loner, saying he didn’t need them or anybody.
After getting married, Arthur became intensely attached to his wife. He was sensitive to her every emotional move toward or away from him. Their relationship worked pretty well until they had children. With each child he became more jealous and more demanding of his wife’s attention. His wife complained that he was just too demanding and wanted to control her. They were on the verge of separating when they tried therapy. Once his experience in his family was explored, both Arthur and his wife were relieved to see how this was a major factor in his life and the way he experienced his marriage. He was trying to make up for his loneliness in the family through his marriage.
Arthur began to sort through his family issues, inviting his brothers, sisters, and parents into his therapy at different times. His major task, however, was to begin to define himself in ways that did not depend on his perception of how others responded to him. He needed to focus more on what made sense to him about how to be, rather than on how he thought he had to be in order to be connected with others. As he did this, he found he got into fewer upsetting situations. His life calmed down and became more satisfying, and he established a better relationship with all his family members. “I have my family back,” he said.
f. Ongoing Effects of Birth Order
Sigmund Freud was the first of the psychotherapists to note that “a child’s position in the sequence of brothers and sisters is of very great significance for the course of his later life.”
Your birth order and sex determine in large part how other people in your family react to you and treat you. That, in turn, influences what you think about yourself and how you react to and treat others inside and outside the family.
Your family is your classroom for learning how to behave in the world. In the family, you learn how males and females act; how youngest or oldest children act; how different sexes and ages relate to each other. Whether or not it was an enjoyable lesson a happy home for you, you usually learn your role so well (and so unconsciously) that you live it out the rest of your life without even knowing you’ve been in “school.”
Pioneer psychologist Alfred Adler said, “It should not surprise us to learn that people do not change their attitude toward life after their infancy, though its expressions in later life are quite different from those of their earliest days.”
The family experience
