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SMTNY Classics: Middle Child Syndrome · Stuff Mom Never Told You

0:05
Speaker 1: Hey, this is Andy and Samantha. I'm not going to
0:07
Speaker 1: step I ever told your production of ihat radio. So recently, um,
0:21
Speaker 1: we did an episode and actually we're recording this out
0:24
Speaker 1: of order, so this might be a surprise to you, Samantha,
0:27
Speaker 1: But we did an episode on the Disney film and
0:30
Speaker 1: Canto and my reaction to a song in there, because
0:34
Speaker 1: that movie is very much about family and family dynamics
0:36
Speaker 1: and sibling dynamics, and me and my good friend Marissa
0:41
Speaker 1: really connected over the song over the holidays because it
0:44
Speaker 1: was all about kind of distress of being the person
0:48
Speaker 1: usually the middle child, trying to keep your family together,
0:50
Speaker 1: the older child, and and the pressure of that. And uh,
0:54
Speaker 1: I know, it's just something I think about a lot,
0:57
Speaker 1: and i've because I was kind of the I'm I'm
1:00
Speaker 1: a middle child and I have an older brother and
1:02
Speaker 1: younger brother, and I think there's a lot of reasons
1:07
Speaker 1: why I fit into the kind of the middle child trope.
1:10
Speaker 1: UM one was even though I was the only girl
1:12
Speaker 1: in the family, I was as part of that, I
1:16
Speaker 1: felt more pressure to be more responsible. I can't speak
1:19
Speaker 1: for my brothers, but that's just what I was internalizing.
1:24
Speaker 1: But I did like I got forgotten at school if
1:25
Speaker 1: they didn't have to pick them up like I God, like,
1:29
Speaker 1: she's fine, don't worry about her, which is just It's
1:32
Speaker 1: one of those things where when I got older and
1:34
Speaker 1: I was telling people this, they were like, are you okay? Yes,
1:42
Speaker 1: but I don't know. It's just been on my mind lately.
1:45
Speaker 1: And yes, Smith and we will be talking about it
1:48
Speaker 1: and blisters. You might have already heard it. Yes, yes,
1:53
Speaker 1: it yes, but in the speriod of that, I wanted
1:55
Speaker 1: to bring back this classic episode on middle children. Please enjoy.
2:02
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff Mom Never Told You from House Supports
2:06
Speaker 1: dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen
2:14
Speaker 1: and I'm Caroline, and today we're talking about middle children
2:17
Speaker 1: because this podcast is coming out around Middle Children Day
2:21
Speaker 1: because in the twenty one century, every everything has a day,
2:27
Speaker 1: and middle children, I think, really deserve a day because
2:32
Speaker 1: they're stereotype as just such well middle children. Yeah, and
2:38
Speaker 1: this is coming from an only child and a youngest child. Yeah,
2:41
Speaker 1: And I wouldn't say that I'm biased against middle children.
2:45
Speaker 1: Actually have lots of sympathy for middle children simply because
2:49
Speaker 1: there are so many assumptions that they have all sorts
2:54
Speaker 1: of personality ticks, shall we call it. Yeah, And what's
2:59
Speaker 1: interesting about this assumptions is the negative stuff, and in particular,
3:03
Speaker 1: it hasn't always been that way for a long time,
3:06
Speaker 1: Like the earliest research was saying that the middle children
3:09
Speaker 1: were probably going to be the most successful. And even
3:12
Speaker 1: within the personality traits that researchers tend to ascribe to
3:16
Speaker 1: middle children, there are positive ones, but it seems like
3:19
Speaker 1: in our culture we really only hear about the negative.
3:24
Speaker 1: So for the seventy million middle children in the United States,
3:29
Speaker 1: this podcast is for you. Yeah, we're no longer ignoring you. No,
3:34
Speaker 1: we're not ignoring you. Yeah. Sorry, sorry that this birth
3:37
Speaker 1: order podcast came so so far after the other ones. Yeah,
3:41
Speaker 1: coming from a youngest child, I'm not trying to steal
3:45
Speaker 1: the spotlight, this one's all for you, and I'm i
3:47
Speaker 1: as an only child, I am making an effort to share.
3:51
Speaker 1: So let's look a little bit at the history of
3:54
Speaker 1: birth order research. Because we've talked about birth order before
3:58
Speaker 1: on the podcast. And I don't know about Caroline, but
4:00
Speaker 1: I find it endlessly fascinating. Yeah, I mean I find
4:04
Speaker 1: it interesting that researchers find it so interesting too. Like
4:08
Speaker 1: you said, ascribe so much meaning to where your place
4:11
Speaker 1: falls in the family. And so one of those earliest
4:16
Speaker 1: researchers looking into birth order was France of Galton, who
4:19
Speaker 1: was actually Darwin's half cousin. So that family has a
4:22
Speaker 1: lot going on. But scholarly interest in this whole arena
4:27
Speaker 1: can be traced back to a Mr. Galton in eighteen
4:30
Speaker 1: seventy four when he published English Men of Science Their
4:34
Speaker 1: Nature and Nurture. And we hear the term the phrase
4:38
Speaker 1: nature versus nurture a lot, especially in kind of social
4:41
Speaker 1: stuff social research. Well, this Galton guy is actually the
4:44
Speaker 1: one who coined the phrase. Yeah, and it's kind of
4:47
Speaker 1: funny that in this book Englishman of Science he essentially
4:52
Speaker 1: comes to a conclusion that being a firstborn male and
4:56
Speaker 1: he didn't the male part wasn't in there for reasons
4:58
Speaker 1: we'll get into, just be of firstborn was the best
5:02
Speaker 1: because out of the one eighty men that he chronicled
5:07
Speaker 1: across all sorts of scientific fields, he found that ninety
5:11
Speaker 1: nine of them were firstborn. So I was like, well, clearly,
5:15
Speaker 1: being the firstborn simply, you know, sets you up for
5:18
Speaker 1: being a super brilliant guy in science, and that's awesome,
5:23
Speaker 1: which is funny because Francis was the youngest child. Yeah.
5:28
Speaker 1: But so the whole thing about his birth order research though,
5:32
Speaker 1: and we will talk more about this a little bit later,
5:35
Speaker 1: is that Galton didn't count sisters. So yes, a man
5:41
Speaker 1: might be the firstborn son, but that doesn't mean he's
5:44
Speaker 1: the firstborn. And so that, among so many other aspects
5:48
Speaker 1: of early research, is important to keep in mind. But
5:51
Speaker 1: moving from Galton on to Alfred Adler, he's also a
5:54
Speaker 1: big name in this early research. He's the founder of
5:56
Speaker 1: individual psychology and Tidbit was the second of seven children.
6:02
Speaker 1: He was born in eighteen seventy to give you a
6:04
Speaker 1: little time context. And Adler is the one who really
6:07
Speaker 1: blew the lid off the significance of birth order because
6:11
Speaker 1: he linked it to all sorts of things including psychiatric disorders, intelligence, creativity,
6:17
Speaker 1: and even sexual orientation. Right. And his view, which granted
6:22
Speaker 1: was mostly anecdotal, was that firstborns do benefit from being
6:26
Speaker 1: the sole focus until they are dethroned by the second child.
6:32
Speaker 1: So if you're looking at a hypothetical three child family,
6:36
Speaker 1: he said that the oldest you guys, you oldest children
6:39
Speaker 1: out there not gonna like this. He says the oldest
6:41
Speaker 1: are the most likely to suffer from neuroticism and substance
6:45
Speaker 1: abuse as they attempt to compensate for excessive responsibility and
6:50
Speaker 1: loss of position because they were dethroned. Then he looked
6:54
Speaker 1: at the youngest, Kristen, Hello here muffs. He says that
6:58
Speaker 1: the youngest are over in indulged, which leads to poor
7:01
Speaker 1: social empathy, which listeners, I assure you is not true
7:05
Speaker 1: of miss Conger. I'm just stuffing my face with pizza
7:08
Speaker 1: and ice cream right now. And then he gets to
7:12
Speaker 1: the middle and you know, he was one of his
7:15
Speaker 1: own family's middle children, and he points out that he
7:18
Speaker 1: believes middle children would be the most successful because they
7:22
Speaker 1: wouldn't suffer from either the oldest dethronement or the youngest
7:27
Speaker 1: over indulgence. Yeah, if you just plot siblings out on
7:30
Speaker 1: the spectrum, you have the middle kids who are just
7:33
Speaker 1: right there in the comfortable, cushy position in Adler's view.
7:37
Speaker 1: And that's so fascinating because we start out with middle
7:41
Speaker 1: children being perhaps the most set up for a more
7:45
Speaker 1: balanced life. Yeah, but, like I mentioned a second ago,
7:51
Speaker 1: pretty much everything we know from the research from Adler
7:55
Speaker 1: and Galton is somewhat inaccurate because they left out so
7:59
Speaker 1: much stuff that's that is important to keep in mind
8:02
Speaker 1: in this kind of psychological research. And by important stuff
8:05
Speaker 1: do you mean women, Yeah, like, it's stuff like women. Yeah,
8:09
Speaker 1: I mean because one thing that's important to keep in
8:11
Speaker 1: mind with birth order, especially when we're looking at this
8:15
Speaker 1: earliest research, is that we are not so far away
8:18
Speaker 1: from the days of prima jenitor, when automatically someone's you know,
8:23
Speaker 1: family's wealth and property would be passed along to the
8:27
Speaker 1: firstborn son, and that son could have seven plus older sisters,
8:33
Speaker 1: but he would still get everything, because that's the way
8:37
Speaker 1: things flow down. And so when you add girls, daughters,
8:40
Speaker 1: sisters back into the equation, and that's something that could trend.
8:44
Speaker 1: Shulman talks about in her book that she co wrote,
8:46
Speaker 1: The Secret Power of Middle Children, for instance, that when
8:51
Speaker 1: they went back in and added the sisters of US presidents,
8:56
Speaker 1: which a lot of times we hear, oh, well, most
8:58
Speaker 1: US presidents were the firstborns actually of US presidents or
9:04
Speaker 1: middle borns, because for so long they're older sisters weren't counted. Yeah,
9:09
Speaker 1: that doesn't even the brain parts cannot even comprehend this.
9:14
Speaker 1: But they were like, oh, well, there are these lady
9:16
Speaker 1: people who are also in the house. We're not sure
9:19
Speaker 1: who they are, but they certainly don't count. Well, they
9:21
Speaker 1: kind of didn't count because they once they were simply
9:24
Speaker 1: married off and had no rights of their own under
9:27
Speaker 1: coverture laws for a really long time. Well yeah, And
9:30
Speaker 1: in terms of talking about the support that children receive,
9:34
Speaker 1: even if there are a bunch of older sisters, it's
9:36
Speaker 1: not like they're going to be afforded the same educational
9:39
Speaker 1: opportunities financial support that they're younger brothers will. So in
9:44
Speaker 1: that regard, it is almost like these male siblings, even
9:49
Speaker 1: if they are younger than their sisters, are sort of
9:52
Speaker 1: firstborn if we're talking about the degree of support they get. Um,
9:57
Speaker 1: So a younger brother might be set up or life,
10:00
Speaker 1: whereas his older sisters are just expected to marry into
10:04
Speaker 1: money and find support themselves. Exactly. And in addition to
10:08
Speaker 1: leaving the girls out of the equation, a lot of
10:10
Speaker 1: those older studies didn't take family size into account either,
10:15
Speaker 1: because obviously, being the second of two children versus being
10:20
Speaker 1: the second of seven children is going to play out
10:24
Speaker 1: differently in terms of family dynamics, right, and what's available
10:29
Speaker 1: in terms of resources and attention from parents. Um. One
10:34
Speaker 1: interesting example that was brought up and stuff we read
10:36
Speaker 1: was just talking about family position and how that can
10:40
Speaker 1: shift based on family events like death, birth, et cetera.
10:44
Speaker 1: Why that's important is because social position, rather than just
10:49
Speaker 1: your ordinal birth order, actually tends to predict i Q.
10:53
Speaker 1: Researchers have found the oldest children in a family tend
10:57
Speaker 1: to have higher i q s. But if an old
11:00
Speaker 1: their child dies, the younger one who is now the
11:03
Speaker 1: oldest is then seem to have an IQ that's higher
11:06
Speaker 1: than average for his birth order position. What is up
11:09
Speaker 1: with that? Researchers say that when children are very young,
11:13
Speaker 1: the the you know, quote unquote verbal attention that they
11:16
Speaker 1: get from their parents, their parents being excited about them
11:18
Speaker 1: and excited for their kids to learn language is very key.
11:23
Speaker 1: So when you're when you have that firstborn and you're
11:25
Speaker 1: sterilizing everything and you're trying to say fancy, big words
11:28
Speaker 1: in front of them so that they learned to speak,
11:31
Speaker 1: that maybe part of the middle child curse is that
11:34
Speaker 1: attention sort of drops off, and so it's that whole
11:37
Speaker 1: early attention to language that helps boost the i Q. See.
11:40
Speaker 1: I think that this is an anecdotal aside, but with
11:44
Speaker 1: the language factor, I feel like, as the youngest of
11:48
Speaker 1: five children, I was just just showered in language because
11:52
Speaker 1: I had all these siblings and my parents talking to me.
11:57
Speaker 1: I wonder if just the research maybe is more general.
12:01
Speaker 1: I don't, I don't know. Maybe they just assumed that, like,
12:03
Speaker 1: if you're a middle or a youngest, you're just going
12:05
Speaker 1: to be like forgotten about in a side room somewhere. Well,
12:09
Speaker 1: the thing about these kinds of studies is that there
12:12
Speaker 1: are so many different variables that will play into how
12:17
Speaker 1: you grow up and how your personality develops, right exactly, Um,
12:21
Speaker 1: I mean, listen, people might simply just relate differently to
12:26
Speaker 1: one another in a family based on whether they're the parent,
12:29
Speaker 1: or whether they're one of the siblings, whether they're male
12:32
Speaker 1: or female, and whether as a parent. I mean, you
12:35
Speaker 1: might if you were a middle child yourself, you might
12:37
Speaker 1: identify more with your child who's a middle or older
12:40
Speaker 1: and older only and only that kind of thing. Yeah,
12:43
Speaker 1: my dad was the youngest of or is the youngest
12:47
Speaker 1: of two, and I know for a fact that he
12:51
Speaker 1: especially doated on me as the youngest child. Well yeah,
12:54
Speaker 1: and I think you know that could have a lot
12:56
Speaker 1: to do with you know, parents or families in general,
13:01
Speaker 1: projecting things whether your dad was the youngest and so
13:04
Speaker 1: he wanted to protect you from any negative feelings that
13:06
Speaker 1: he experienced as a youngest, or whether good things happen
13:09
Speaker 1: to him as the youngest, and he wanted to make
13:11
Speaker 1: sure you experience those good things too. So a lot
13:13
Speaker 1: of times parents can sort of create a self fulfilling
13:17
Speaker 1: prophecy situation where maybe they have stereotypes in their own
13:23
Speaker 1: brains about how certain children behave in certain different ways,
13:27
Speaker 1: and they either accidentally end up bringing it out or
13:30
Speaker 1: they try their hardest to counteract it. And I can
13:33
Speaker 1: only imagine now some parents unfortunately being like Tim is
13:38
Speaker 1: such a middle child my goodness. Um. But when you
13:42
Speaker 1: look though at just the history of the research on
13:46
Speaker 1: birth order, there has been an interesting tug of war
13:49
Speaker 1: over time because you have Adler and then you know
13:53
Speaker 1: a lot of people from there up until the eighties saying, oh, yeah,
13:57
Speaker 1: birth order, we can correlate it to all sorts of
13:59
Speaker 1: things and it means everything. And then in the eighties
14:02
Speaker 1: there was this big meta analysis of all these old
14:05
Speaker 1: studies which said, actually, birth order no big deal. But
14:09
Speaker 1: then this researcher named Soloway came around and he controlled
14:15
Speaker 1: for variables like class and the number of siblings, and
14:19
Speaker 1: he came back around and sort of pushed it back
14:21
Speaker 1: out into the realm of oh, birth order super important.
14:26
Speaker 1: So I think still, if you get a bunch of
14:29
Speaker 1: psychologists in a room, it would be hard to draw
14:34
Speaker 1: one clear consensus among all of them about how important
14:39
Speaker 1: birth order is. We'll just tell me when that's going
14:41
Speaker 1: to happen, and I'm just gonna not come into work
14:43
Speaker 1: that day because I don't want to be judged by
14:45
Speaker 1: the room full of relative That does sound stressful, But
14:49
Speaker 1: the thing is there have been so many studies and
14:51
Speaker 1: there's still so many studies looking into these birth order dynamics.
14:55
Speaker 1: And the research particularly on middle children is especially compel
15:00
Speaker 1: because they're kind of head scratchers in a lot of ways.
15:05
Speaker 1: And so let's dig more into the science of the
15:10
Speaker 1: middle child, shall we? And we'll talk more about that
15:13
Speaker 1: when we come right back from a quick break. So
15:22
Speaker 1: all of this research, this back and forth on birth
15:25
Speaker 1: order in general and middle children specifically, like Kristen said,
15:29
Speaker 1: it's had its ups and downs. People have thought it
15:32
Speaker 1: was gospel, people have thought it was nothing but like
15:35
Speaker 1: the same type of bunk that astrology is that people
15:39
Speaker 1: just want to read about themselves and and and whatnot.
15:43
Speaker 1: But we have to mention out of all of this
15:46
Speaker 1: the stereotypes that people hold of middle children. And I
15:50
Speaker 1: feel like before we do this, we should just apologize
15:53
Speaker 1: to the middle children listening, who probably are very familiar
15:57
Speaker 1: with the stereotypes. Often middle children are cast as being confused, underachieving,
16:03
Speaker 1: overshadowed by their older and younger siblings, and overlooked by parents. Right,
16:09
Speaker 1: but um, some positive things have come out of being
16:14
Speaker 1: a middle child, according to researchers. Stereotypically and and very generally,
16:20
Speaker 1: children who were born in the middle have a tendency
16:23
Speaker 1: to roll with things pretty easily. They're more easy going,
16:26
Speaker 1: they're flexible to handle disappointments better. And the big thing
16:30
Speaker 1: you always read is that middle children are negotiators. They're
16:33
Speaker 1: good at seeing both sides of an argument, and they
16:35
Speaker 1: just want peace and quiet in the family. Yeah, and
16:38
Speaker 1: another big thing you also hear about is that they
16:41
Speaker 1: are super social and almost like friendship specialists. Because the
16:47
Speaker 1: thinking goes, they receive less parental attention and have to
16:51
Speaker 1: look elsewhere for connections. And there was a two thousand
16:55
Speaker 1: three study looking at middle children and relationships, and it
16:59
Speaker 1: did in fact support the idea that middle children into
17:03
Speaker 1: value friends over family and are usually less helpful in families,
17:07
Speaker 1: probably because they're like, well, nobody's helping me. Oh, but
17:10
Speaker 1: then now I'm just guilty just then of middle child stereotyping, uh,
17:15
Speaker 1: youngest whatever. Well, so what plays into all of these
17:19
Speaker 1: personality traits, whether they're simply stereotypes or whether they are
17:23
Speaker 1: true for you in your life, has a lot to
17:26
Speaker 1: do with family dynamics, and so psychologist Katherine Salmon, who
17:31
Speaker 1: along with Shuman, was the co author of The Secret
17:34
Speaker 1: Power of Middle Children, talks about that whole sort of
17:38
Speaker 1: being ignored an independent thing which leads to being good
17:41
Speaker 1: at negotiating, talking about how middle kids are often marching
17:45
Speaker 1: to the beat of their own drums, setting themselves apart
17:48
Speaker 1: from their older and younger siblings, and she says that
17:51
Speaker 1: without the parental support that the youngest enjoys, because the
17:55
Speaker 1: youngest in a fight has a tendency to circumvent the
17:58
Speaker 1: oldest and appeal straight to the parents never and they
18:02
Speaker 1: also don't enjoy the authority that the oldest child has
18:06
Speaker 1: they have to get very good at that negotiating, figuring
18:10
Speaker 1: out what the other person wants and needs, and then
18:13
Speaker 1: managing to get them what they want in addition to
18:17
Speaker 1: what they themselves want. Yeah. And another thing that Human
18:21
Speaker 1: and Salomon talk about in the book is I mean,
18:24
Speaker 1: because as you can imagine from the title The Secret
18:28
Speaker 1: Power of Middle Children, they're very pro middle children. They
18:30
Speaker 1: kind of take the lemons and make lemonade. So, for instance,
18:35
Speaker 1: they say that actually receiving less parental attention, as middle
18:40
Speaker 1: children often do, they you can use that to their
18:44
Speaker 1: advantage to have a sense of independence. Because with the firstborn,
18:48
Speaker 1: obviously the parents are like, oh my god, we have
18:50
Speaker 1: to do everything to make sure we don't somehow break
18:52
Speaker 1: this baby and blah blah blah. And then by the
18:55
Speaker 1: time you get to the second child, you've done it already,
18:57
Speaker 1: so like, oh, well, you know, and of eat dirt,
19:00
Speaker 1: you can cook your own dinner, Sam, baby, I know
19:03
Speaker 1: you can't reach the stove, but give it a shot. Um.
19:07
Speaker 1: So perhaps this allows them to just be better at
19:11
Speaker 1: fending for themselves and thinking outside of the box a
19:14
Speaker 1: little bit more. So maybe it's a good thing. Yeah,
19:17
Speaker 1: and of course gender matters too. I mean, obviously it
19:20
Speaker 1: matters if we look back at Galton and Adler's research
19:23
Speaker 1: and how Galton just totally freaking discounted women and so
19:27
Speaker 1: did society. While Galton is also eugenicist, so a perfect man,
19:31
Speaker 1: he was not. That's true, But I think it's interesting
19:35
Speaker 1: to point out that if the middle child is a
19:37
Speaker 1: different gender than the older and younger siblings, the quote
19:41
Speaker 1: unquote middle child syndrome does not typically affect him or her.
19:45
Speaker 1: And so that's why I'm interested to watch my baby
19:48
Speaker 1: cousins grow up, because the oldest sibling and the youngest
19:50
Speaker 1: sibling are both adorable boys, and the middle sibling is
19:54
Speaker 1: an adorable little girl with I just she's just such
19:57
Speaker 1: a firecracker. I love her so much. But I'll be
19:59
Speaker 1: in used to see how they grow up, because so far,
20:02
Speaker 1: it really does seem like they're following a very stereotypical pattern, oh,
20:06
Speaker 1: of her being very much a middle child, of her
20:09
Speaker 1: being very like independent and freewheeling. The oldest is like
20:13
Speaker 1: very good at school, he is very responsible, you know,
20:15
Speaker 1: police sports, he's towing the line. He's, you know, good kid.
20:19
Speaker 1: And then the youngest is just wacky. Yeah, the idea
20:22
Speaker 1: of how gender plays whether you are the firstborn of
20:26
Speaker 1: your gender in a family makes total sense to looking
20:30
Speaker 1: at my sister's family. For instance, she had three boys,
20:35
Speaker 1: and by the time her last pregnancy came around, she
20:38
Speaker 1: and my brother in law really wanted a girl. Not
20:42
Speaker 1: that they don't love their sons two bits, but they
20:45
Speaker 1: really want a girl. And so she's not only the
20:47
Speaker 1: youngest but also the first girl. So in a way,
20:51
Speaker 1: she's getting the double typical overindulgence of the youngest child, right,
20:58
Speaker 1: because if you do have an oldest boy, for instance,
21:01
Speaker 1: and then you or maybe a couple of boys, and
21:03
Speaker 1: then a girl, like like with your sister, you know,
21:06
Speaker 1: her first are like the first you know, her first
21:10
Speaker 1: dance recital, her first like you know, pair of cute
21:14
Speaker 1: pink shoes like these are all firsts that are celebrated
21:17
Speaker 1: the way that they would be for a first child.
21:19
Speaker 1: It's just that it's a different gender and so things
21:22
Speaker 1: are new well. And that speaks to how the dynamic
21:25
Speaker 1: of family size can also play into this, because I
21:28
Speaker 1: would imagine that for smaller families probably doesn't make as
21:32
Speaker 1: much of a difference, but if you have a larger
21:36
Speaker 1: brood than you know, wanting like, if you've had a
21:40
Speaker 1: lot of sons or you've had a lot of daughters,
21:42
Speaker 1: that firstborn, you know, whichever one you're really hoping for,
21:48
Speaker 1: is an even bigger deal and might play or might
21:52
Speaker 1: make that birth order even more significant, right, And I
21:57
Speaker 1: mean talking about siblings specifically, not just parents. Um, there
22:02
Speaker 1: was study using data from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study that
22:07
Speaker 1: measured the five main personality characteristics, which include like neuroticism
22:12
Speaker 1: and an independence and stuff like that, and they actually
22:15
Speaker 1: found that brothers and sisters, regardless of birth order, are
22:19
Speaker 1: moderately similar in personality to one another. So yes, while
22:23
Speaker 1: birth order and parental attention and things like that are important,
22:28
Speaker 1: so is temperament, and so is the way that your
22:31
Speaker 1: siblings are. If you so desperately want to be like
22:34
Speaker 1: another of your siblings, then you will probably try to
22:36
Speaker 1: act that way to or get that same type of attention. Well,
22:40
Speaker 1: and I think it also makes a difference who is
22:43
Speaker 1: next in line above you, whether it is you know,
22:46
Speaker 1: in my case, the next oldest is a sister, and
22:49
Speaker 1: I think that our dynamic would have played out much
22:51
Speaker 1: differently if it had been a brother, because as two
22:54
Speaker 1: sisters or two brothers, a lot of competition can happen
23:00
Speaker 1: um and again, this is when it gets into the
23:03
Speaker 1: realm of so many correlations that you can start to
23:07
Speaker 1: draw as you just switch up all the different possible
23:10
Speaker 1: family dynamics. But moving out of the family and looking
23:14
Speaker 1: at how birth order effects potentially romantic relationships is also
23:21
Speaker 1: fascinating because I would say with this one, it seems
23:24
Speaker 1: like a lot of the studies that we looked at
23:26
Speaker 1: were pretty clear cut in how they related middle children
23:31
Speaker 1: and their dating style, which is not entirely positive, right,
23:38
Speaker 1: I mean, Kristen, you said the word competition. If we
23:41
Speaker 1: look at jealousy. This is a study by the way
23:43
Speaker 1: from the North American Journal of Psychology from back in
23:46
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight, and they found that firstborn's firstborn
23:51
Speaker 1: children in romantic relationships tested out as the least jealous
23:55
Speaker 1: in relationships, whereas middle children were the most elis now,
24:00
Speaker 1: what is it with that? They found that this is
24:03
Speaker 1: because the middle child is stereotypically in the house, always
24:07
Speaker 1: the child who is in the most competition for attention,
24:10
Speaker 1: and they can end up feeling slighted or out of place,
24:13
Speaker 1: and so their jealousy issues the researchers say might not
24:17
Speaker 1: be fully resolved and possibly might carry over into adult relationships.
24:22
Speaker 1: And apparently this is a very al Darian view of
24:27
Speaker 1: how the birth order can affect your personality. So this
24:30
Speaker 1: is kind of the the old school birth order psychology
24:34
Speaker 1: at work here. But there have been other studies on
24:37
Speaker 1: top of this finding that middle children have the highest
24:40
Speaker 1: percentage of what's called insecure attachment. UM. We've talked about
24:44
Speaker 1: before in the podcast about how people tend to have
24:47
Speaker 1: different sorts of relationship attachment styles. So usually the most
24:52
Speaker 1: positive would be considered secure attachment, where you're like, hey,
24:56
Speaker 1: you're maboo and I love you and this is school
24:58
Speaker 1: and I'm secure in your love for me. I bet
25:02
Speaker 1: you read the best Valentine. Yeah, my my boyfriend feels
25:06
Speaker 1: romanced always, I could tell you. But then with insecure attachment,
25:11
Speaker 1: this is I mean, it is what it sounds like.
25:14
Speaker 1: There's usually a lot of anxiety at work within relationships.
25:20
Speaker 1: These are the people who tend to text more often,
25:23
Speaker 1: for instance, tech texts there, they're paramorees more often, UM,
25:27
Speaker 1: tend to be more jealous, etcetera. Right, Well, yeah, because
25:31
Speaker 1: jealousy is tied really closely to that insecure attachment, and
25:34
Speaker 1: so middle children. I don't know, but I wonder though
25:40
Speaker 1: if that plays into another study we found which shows
25:44
Speaker 1: that people of the same birth order tend to pair up.
25:48
Speaker 1: So middle children are likelier to day middle children. My
25:53
Speaker 1: my boyfriend also a youngest child. I don't know. Interesting, Yeah,
25:58
Speaker 1: I would almost feel like two if if we're going
26:02
Speaker 1: just off of stereotypes here people, all right, let's do it,
26:06
Speaker 1: I would think that two middle children would be totally
26:09
Speaker 1: combustible and not a great match. If we're talking about
26:12
Speaker 1: two really jealous people, like they might be stuck at
26:15
Speaker 1: the hip to each other, but only because they don't
26:17
Speaker 1: trust each other. They're just texting each other, but standing
26:20
Speaker 1: like back to back. What are you doing? Who are
26:23
Speaker 1: you looking at? We're speaking ingest and very stereotypically right now,
26:28
Speaker 1: let me let me say that again. But anyway, when
26:31
Speaker 1: we look at attitudes toward love, whether they are more
26:34
Speaker 1: on the pragmatic side or more on the googly mushy side,
26:38
Speaker 1: the oldest child was found to be the most realistic
26:42
Speaker 1: of the group, followed by the middle and then the
26:44
Speaker 1: only and then the youngest. Okay, sure, but you also
26:49
Speaker 1: have to keep in mind that in general, researchers say
26:53
Speaker 1: as you age, you your your outlook on love, your
26:56
Speaker 1: attitude about love becomes more realistic, more pragmatic. The just
27:00
Speaker 1: because you've been there, done that, scene it, you know,
27:02
Speaker 1: heard it, all of that stuff, so that that kind
27:05
Speaker 1: of makes sense. Yeah, you also found some compelling research
27:10
Speaker 1: on love styles and how that relates to birth order.
27:14
Speaker 1: And I've never heard of this before. The Luttuce love style. Yeah.
27:19
Speaker 1: So there are a bunch of different types of love styles.
27:22
Speaker 1: They include arrows, which is erotic love, agape which is
27:26
Speaker 1: more of the love for all mankind, the giving, unselfish
27:30
Speaker 1: type of love, a lot of people associated with like
27:32
Speaker 1: Christian love. Um. But so the middle child was associated
27:37
Speaker 1: with this Lettuce style of love, which is interesting. And
27:42
Speaker 1: here's why. So the middle child has the highest mean
27:45
Speaker 1: for jealousy. Right, we already talked about that. In the
27:47
Speaker 1: Lettuce type of love is a game playing type of lover.
27:52
Speaker 1: So in this style of love, people enjoy love, they
27:56
Speaker 1: like it, but they never allow it to become necessary.
28:01
Speaker 1: Let us, lovers tend to approach love more casually, so
28:06
Speaker 1: they wouldn't likely be jealous. What if I don't know
28:09
Speaker 1: what's going on? With that conflicting research probably evidence that
28:14
Speaker 1: a lot of this should be taken with a grain
28:16
Speaker 1: of salt. It sounds like, right, I really feel like
28:18
Speaker 1: you and I could sit here and discuss how both
28:21
Speaker 1: of those is right. How a middle child could be
28:24
Speaker 1: more jealous of the attention that his or her siblings received,
28:28
Speaker 1: you know, or could be this lettuce style lover because
28:34
Speaker 1: oh well, I wasn't given attention, so I don't want
28:36
Speaker 1: to attach to anyone. Or they could be super casual
28:40
Speaker 1: and laid back about it because they are so social
28:43
Speaker 1: and are so good with interpersonal relationships anyway, because they
28:49
Speaker 1: tend to prefer friends over family. Apparently that they would
28:52
Speaker 1: make super great you know, they'd be great at dating
28:55
Speaker 1: because they could just meet people in form relationships, but
28:57
Speaker 1: are kind of like chill about it. So I don't
29:00
Speaker 1: know what we we need to ask our listeners for sure,
29:03
Speaker 1: to tell us about their their live styles. Yeah. But
29:07
Speaker 1: one thing in all of the studies conducted on birth
29:12
Speaker 1: order and specifically on middle children, that I couldn't find
29:16
Speaker 1: I was driving me bonkers, was the cultural history of
29:21
Speaker 1: this so called middle child syndrome. Because, like we mentioned,
29:25
Speaker 1: when it starts out with adler being a middle child
29:28
Speaker 1: doesn't seem to be a bad thing. They're positive personality
29:32
Speaker 1: traits associated with being middle children. We don't really hear
29:35
Speaker 1: about them that much. When did we culturally recast middle
29:40
Speaker 1: children as these just awkward kids? I don't know. Well,
29:47
Speaker 1: I have one theory for you. It was the one
29:50
Speaker 1: theory that I could find, and I bought it to
29:54
Speaker 1: an extent because when I think of the stereotypical middle
30:00
Speaker 1: child in pop culture as Jan Brady, because there is
30:06
Speaker 1: a famous episode of The Brady Bunch where she says
30:09
Speaker 1: Marcia Marsha Marcia because she's freaking out about the fact
30:12
Speaker 1: that her older and prettier and more popular sister Marcia
30:16
Speaker 1: gets all the attention and Jan just wants to be Jan.
30:20
Speaker 1: She does. She wants to be her own woman and
30:22
Speaker 1: appreciated for who she is, not just Marcia Brady's little sister.
30:27
Speaker 1: And so there was an essay I was reading by
30:30
Speaker 1: this guy, Matthew c Henry called Generation Jan, and he
30:35
Speaker 1: said that he thinks that with Generation X, uh, you know,
30:40
Speaker 1: they're growing up in the nineties seventies. This is when
30:43
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, you have TVs in every home
30:45
Speaker 1: and probably even multiple TVs, and you also have kids
30:49
Speaker 1: plopping down in front of those TVs. And what comes
30:52
Speaker 1: on in the seventies The Brady Bunch, and then what
30:54
Speaker 1: goes into syndication for the rest of time the Brady Bunch.
30:58
Speaker 1: And so one think that the Brady Bunch did, like
31:01
Speaker 1: essentially their bread and butter was just focusing in on
31:05
Speaker 1: sort of family stereotypes, and Jan was the middle child,
31:09
Speaker 1: and so he thinks that planted a seed in our
31:12
Speaker 1: cultural brain that the middle child is Jan Brady putting
31:18
Speaker 1: on a black wig to try to make herself stand
31:21
Speaker 1: out and looking ridiculous and always being like, oh, Jan
31:26
Speaker 1: pitied in a way. I guess I should have watched
31:29
Speaker 1: The Brady Bunch. I am so surprised to learn that
31:32
Speaker 1: you did not watch The Brady Bunch. I watched so
31:34
Speaker 1: much Brady Bunch when I was a kid. I didn't.
31:36
Speaker 1: I guess I was just watching Garfield and and Peanuts. Yeah.
31:41
Speaker 1: I think my parents were just really cool with me
31:45
Speaker 1: watching The Brady Bunch all the time because it was
31:46
Speaker 1: such a clean show. Yeah, whereas my parents were just
31:50
Speaker 1: like I'm sure my parents were the ones who were like,
31:53
Speaker 1: cook your own dinner, baby, so not to say that
31:57
Speaker 1: Garfield was like the beat from Satanic show. Yes, so
32:03
Speaker 1: I'll be curious to hear from listeners whether they have
32:06
Speaker 1: any theories to add to this as to when this
32:10
Speaker 1: middle child syndrome became a thing, because you google a
32:14
Speaker 1: middle child syndrome and there are a million articles and
32:18
Speaker 1: new segments on it, but no one talks about where
32:22
Speaker 1: it came from. Yeah, and I think it's also, you know,
32:25
Speaker 1: important to keep in mind, like I definitely want to
32:27
Speaker 1: hear if you feel like you totally fit the middle
32:30
Speaker 1: child stereotype and your family dynamics were totally along those
32:33
Speaker 1: lines or not, because I think a lot of this
32:37
Speaker 1: A lot of the researchers who said, you know, there's
32:40
Speaker 1: a lot more aspects to a personality than than where
32:44
Speaker 1: you fall in the family. Your temperament, your parents temperament,
32:47
Speaker 1: your gender, socio economic status. Perfect instinks. But yeah, and
32:53
Speaker 1: so it is almost like an astrology argument, like, yes,
32:57
Speaker 1: I tend to fit a lot of the sagittary cious aspects,
33:01
Speaker 1: but it's also I found out in therapy I have
33:04
Speaker 1: a lot of my personality from my parents. So you know,
33:07
Speaker 1: what I think it is is simply the fact that
33:10
Speaker 1: we as humans really are just fascinated with ourselves. We
33:15
Speaker 1: want to know why we work the way they the
33:18
Speaker 1: way we do. So I think it's the same reason
33:20
Speaker 1: why you know, people are interested in, say their astrological sign,
33:25
Speaker 1: or in their birth order, in what their name means,
33:28
Speaker 1: and all of these different things, just so that we
33:30
Speaker 1: can diagnose ourselves with something. We all just want to
33:34
Speaker 1: know if for a normal Yeah, it's just I mean,
33:37
Speaker 1: it's the reason why the web MD symptom checker is
33:40
Speaker 1: so popular. I've I've almost broken my addiction to that now.
33:45
Speaker 1: I just now I just ask other friends questions about
33:47
Speaker 1: their issues, and then I immediately am like, wait, that
33:50
Speaker 1: sounds familiar, I think, But after this podcast, are you
33:53
Speaker 1: worried you're a middle child? No, I'm definitely an only child.
33:58
Speaker 1: That's good, that's good steps from the right direction. Well,
34:03
Speaker 1: now we want to hear from the middle children listening.
34:06
Speaker 1: Like Caroline said, do you feel like you fit the
34:09
Speaker 1: mold of the stereotypical middle child? And can anyone tell
34:13
Speaker 1: us where the whole middle child syndrome came from? Let
34:19
Speaker 1: us know all of your middle children thoughts. Mom Stuff
34:21
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com is our email address.
34:24
Speaker 1: You can also messages on Facebook or tweet us at
34:27
Speaker 1: mom Stuff podcast. And we've got a couple of messages
34:31
Speaker 1: to share with you right now. So I've got to
34:37
Speaker 1: let her hear from Carrie. In response to our series
34:41
Speaker 1: on women explorers, she writes, I wanted to mention my
34:45
Speaker 1: experience as a solo female traveler in South America. I
34:48
Speaker 1: graduated from university with degrees and political science and global studies,
34:52
Speaker 1: and I was turned down for a job that I
34:54
Speaker 1: very much wanted and naively expected to get. Like many
34:57
Speaker 1: recent grads, I decided to travel until the job mar
35:00
Speaker 1: it looked more promising, and I bought a one way
35:02
Speaker 1: ticket to Ecuador. I spent two years saving and did
35:05
Speaker 1: my research about cultural norms and safety, and my immediate
35:08
Speaker 1: family was very supportive, but responses from others were varied,
35:12
Speaker 1: most commonly, alone, aren't you afraid? Why would you do that?
35:17
Speaker 1: Or well, you have to do it now because once
35:19
Speaker 1: you have kids, it'll be a lot harder to travel,
35:21
Speaker 1: And finally, well you have to travel now because once
35:24
Speaker 1: you're married, your husband won't let you go alone. While
35:28
Speaker 1: I'm not discovering anything new, the idea of being a
35:31
Speaker 1: female solo traveler seems to elicit the same kinds of
35:35
Speaker 1: criticisms that female explorers have always faced. I have to
35:38
Speaker 1: suspect that men the same position I'm in would be
35:41
Speaker 1: considered fun adventurers as opposed to reckless and irresponsible for
35:45
Speaker 1: postponing their career and shockingly having children. Since I've moved
35:49
Speaker 1: here after traveling for a while, I co founded an
35:52
Speaker 1: organic chocolate shop in Cafe with a Peruvian family, and
35:55
Speaker 1: the permanently moved here to run the business. Hey, that's
35:59
Speaker 1: so cool. I meet women every day from all over
36:01
Speaker 1: the world who are traveling alone and who have come
36:03
Speaker 1: under criticism from family and friends for going it on
36:06
Speaker 1: their own. While life here is culturally quite different for women. No,
36:10
Speaker 1: I don't spend every day worrying about being raped and kidnapped,
36:13
Speaker 1: and I don't have any regrets about not being married
36:16
Speaker 1: and having children. So thanks for writing in Carrie, and
36:20
Speaker 1: best of luck in Ecuador. Well, I have a letter
36:23
Speaker 1: here from Holly, and she says it's great to see
36:27
Speaker 1: and hear about the women thus far in history who
36:29
Speaker 1: have essentially thrown up their arms and did whatever they wanted.
36:33
Speaker 1: So what if someone says you can't or that people
36:35
Speaker 1: don't do that? Et cetera. Why not that's the only
36:38
Speaker 1: question that needs to be answered. While listening to your episode,
36:41
Speaker 1: I couldn't help but think about Mary Anderson, a much
36:43
Speaker 1: more recent and fairly unknown explorer. She and her husband
36:46
Speaker 1: started the company ari I, which stands for Recreational Equipment, Inc.
36:50
Speaker 1: In which I now proudly work for. But she started
36:54
Speaker 1: as an avid mountaineer who, along with her husband, wanted
36:57
Speaker 1: to get more people out exploring and help them get
36:59
Speaker 1: connected a gear and knowledge to assist them. This also
37:02
Speaker 1: included her stitching tints by hand in their home while
37:05
Speaker 1: their co op was continuing to grow. I've tried to
37:08
Speaker 1: do more research on her in their explorations, but haven't
37:10
Speaker 1: been able to find much. No, she didn't have any
37:13
Speaker 1: major discoveries under her belt, but she's a big staple
37:15
Speaker 1: in my mind of a woman who is now over
37:18
Speaker 1: one years old and still has a great handshake from
37:20
Speaker 1: what I hear, who stands for what she believes in
37:23
Speaker 1: and pushes forward to expand her knowledge with others and
37:26
Speaker 1: nature in mind. So thank you for the awesome story
37:30
Speaker 1: about this woman, Holly, and that's Mary Anderson for those
37:33
Speaker 1: of you who want to google her, And thanks to
37:36
Speaker 1: everybody who's written into us Mom stuff at how stuffworks
37:39
Speaker 1: dot com is our email address, and if you want
37:42
Speaker 1: to hit us up on social media, you can find
37:44
Speaker 1: links to all of those different places, including links to
37:47
Speaker 1: all of our blogs, videos, and podcasts with all of
37:50
Speaker 1: our source citations. So you need to head on over
37:53
Speaker 1: to stuff mom Never Told You dot com for more
38:00
Speaker 1: on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how
38:02
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