Personal follow-up to Born to Rebel

[jennythereader]

I reviewed the book in this post.

As promised, here are some of the highlights of the theory and how they seem to apply to me:

• Firstborns identify with parents and authority.  As a child I definitely identified with both of my parents, and as a teen and adult I was(am) treated as a peer by both parents, especially my father.


• Relative to their younger siblings, firstborns are more assertive, socially dominant, ambitious, jealous of their status, and defensive.  This one doesn't feel as if it applies as much to me (although my brothers might disagree), but does relate to one of the later points.


• A person with a "conforming" personality may espouse liberal attitudes that have been learned from parents or other authority figures.  I seem to have taken my parents middle-of-the-road liberal views and gone a few steps further.  My parents (both firstborns) seem to have taken their parents slightly liberal views, and gone a few steps past that.


• Firstborns are more "antagonistic" than laterborns.  Again, not sure it applies to me, but it relates to a later point.


• Firstborns of both sexes emerge as the "alpha males" of their sibling system.  I don't know if I could be called alpha, but my personality is in many ways more typical of males than of females.


• Within families, the first two siblings manifested the greatest disparities, followed by the second and third.  Differences were significantly smaller for nonadjacent siblings.  True for my family.  Personality wise, I would say that I am most like Bobby (#3) and least like KC (#2).


• If one sibling identified strongly with one parent, the adjacent sibling identified with the other parent.  This was particularly pronounced for the first sibling pair.  Very true in my family.  I identified with Dad (sometimes to the disadvantage of my relationship with Mom), and KC identified with Mom (sometimes to the disadvantage of his relationship with Dad).

Everything above that is bold is more or less a direct quote from the book.  There are also points that I'm having trouble finding again, but seem significant:

• A shy firstborn will in many ways act more like a laterborn. 
  


• An extroverted laterborn will in some ways act more like a firstborn.
  


• A laterborn who is the first of their gender will have some firstborn characteristics.


• Laterborns who are extremely close in age to their next older sibling will show firstborn characteristics.

These points all go some way to explain why my brother KC is the functional firstborn in our family.  I was painfully shy as a child, while KC has always been extremely outgoing.  He and I are barely a year apart in age (13.5 months to be precise), and he is the oldest boy in the family.

A very interesting, thought provoking book.