If you take note of the kind of relationship you have with various friends and then find out their birth order, you may find that your best friends all have the same birth order. While you may have much in common with people in your same birth order, over the long haul you will probably feel most comfortable with friends from a complementary birth order, especially one that matches that of a favorite sibling.
Manny, an only child, found that he was usually most uncomfortable with friends, male or female, who were oldests. He couldn’t tolerate being with people who wanted to be in charge or who thought they knew best. However, he was also leery of youngests who expected him to be in charge or take care of them. He enjoyed “playing” with the youngests, and liked it when they looked up to him, but would disappear as soon as they indicated he should do something to make life better for them. “Do it yourself” was his attitude. As with many only children, he was his own best friend.
c. Your Parents
Your parents, of course, are the most powerful influence in your life. They shape your world, as theirs was shaped by their parents. Their influence is diluted only by the fact that they are so much older than you, which is why your siblings and your sex and birth order become so important.
But your parents and the way they were treated as children, their own birth order, and the way they treat each other still have a tremendous impact on your personality development.
1. The effect of birth order — theirs and yours
Your parents’ birth orders may partly explain why they treated you as they did. Birth order affects the kind of parent a person tends to be. People in the different birth order positions have different skills and shortcomings as parents.
Larry had always felt neglected by his parents and frustrated by the daily chaos in his home. Then he learned that his parents were both the babies in their families. When he realized what that usually means in terms of parenting skills — since a youngest rarely has any experience taking care of others — he was more understanding about their difficulty in nurturing or disciplining him, and more appreciative of the spontaneous fun he had with each of them. He also understood why they each always expected the other to take responsibility and neither of them would. Finding out that their apparent neglect had little to do with him as a person or his parents’ love for him helped Larry develop a much more rewarding relationship with them in their old age.
Birth order also explains why parents may treat each of their children differently. Their own birth order can affect what they think of — and therefore how they raise — each of their children. They may react to you the way they reacted to their own siblings in the same birth order position. They may be trying to avoid the past or to duplicate it.
Bernie was an oldest brother of a brother. He had spent most of his life taking care of and rescuing his brother who was an alcoholic. When Bernie had three children of his own (girl, boy, girl), his son replaced his brother as a focus of concern. The experience with his brother made Bernie anxious over the simplest problems his son encountered and prompted Bernie to play his familiar role of rescuing the younger male. The son reacted to dad’s rescuing behavior by taking less and less responsibility for himself. Eventually, he too became an alcoholic and died of an alcohol overdose at the age of 36. Bernie did not “make” his son into an alcoholic — another son in a similar situation might have reacted differently, but Bernie’s sibling experience had set him up for a repeat performance.
The way you relate to your parents can also be affected by a complementary or non-complementary birth order. If your birth order is complementary to one or both of your parents (you are in the same position as a sibling of theirs), you may have a more comfortable fit between you. For example, if you are the youngest brother of brothers and your father is the oldest brother of brothers, you may have a close, or at least easy, relationship with your father because you will have some of the same traits as his familiar younger brother. However, if you are the oldest sister of sisters, your oldest-brother-of-brothers father may find it more difficult to relate to you (and you to him), as both your sex and your birth position will be in conflict with him.
If your parent had a difficult time with his or her siblings, your complementary position could be a disadvantage for you. If you are the oldest sister of sisters and your mother was a youngest sister of sisters, she may not relate well to your serious side or your need for high achievement. If she perceives you as being domineering like her older sister was, she may empathize with your younger sister and take her side in any disputes.
Parents who have the same birth order as a child of theirs often understand that child better than the others, but may have more conflicts as they clash head-on in assuming that particular role in the family.
Ed was an oldest who worked hard at impressing his father with his accomplishments. Dad was an oldest, too, and was proud of his son, but found it difficult to spend much time with him. They often argued about the best way to do something. Dad was often disappointed in Ed’s younger brother Mickey, but spent more time playing ball with him than he had with Ed. Ed’s mother, a youngest, was less impressed with Ed’s accomplishments and wished he had a better social life, but she felt more comfortable with him than with Mickey.
Knowing how birth order affects personalities and relationships is helpful in understanding why your parents and their siblings and their own parents relate to each other in certain ways. For example, if you are the youngest sister of sisters, you may have a wonderful relationship with your oldest-sister-of-sisters grandmother and be bewildered at the enmity between her and your father who is an oldest brother of sisters. It could be that their non-complementary positions make it difficult for them to understand each other.
If your birth order is neither the same as nor complementary to either of your parent’s, you may feel somewhat isolated in your family. You could be a birth order “misfit” in their experience, which might make it difficult for your parents to know how to relate to you. For example, if you are the youngest brother of brothers and both your parents are the oldest siblings of sisters, neither has had a younger brother and neither knows what it’s like to be a youngest.
2. Learning to relate to the opposite sex
The way you relate as an adult to the opposite sex is influenced in part by your relationship with your opposite-sex parent. And that relationship is affected to some degree by your parent’s birth order.
The oldest brother of brothers, for example, may have more conflict with a mother who is the oldest sister of sisters than he would with a mother who was the youngest sister of brothers. The conflict in his relationship with his mother may make it even more difficult for him to relate well to other women in his life.
Your opposite-sex parent’s birth order has the most influence on you when your siblings are the same sex as you. In this situation, your parent is the chief clue you have about relating to the opposite sex. The quality of your relationship is likely to be repeated in your other relationships with the opposite sex. For example, if you have no brothers and your father is the youngest of four brothers, you may grow up seeing men as slightly childish, playful, and maybe irresponsible, with little understanding of women. This perception is likely to affect your approach to other males in your life. If, however, you have an older brother who is a high achiever and very responsible, this will color your picture of what men are like.
While your same-sex parent acts as a role model for how you behave as a male or a female, your opposite-sex parent has a greater influence on your self-image. Thus, a mother who is the youngest sister of a brother may be more admiring and supportive of her son and his maleness than an oldest-sister-of-sisters mother who has little understanding of men and little respect for “juniors.”
d. Your Children
As the above section indicates, your birth order can affect the kind of parent