I am very passionate about birth order. I am convinced that if I wasn't an oldest daughter, my personality would be completely different. My headstrong personality, work ethic, and high achieving behavior is always tied back to eldest children patterns. I also think the fact that I am the only daughter with two younger brothers is important to who I am. I think I got a taste of motherhood from a young age, and learned that certain things were my responsibility because I was the oldest. My parents were harder on me than they are on my brothers, and I was expected to be a perfect student and involved in a lot of clubs and extracurriculars. The standards for my brothers are not the same. However, I need to get to the point. Sometimes I wonder if birth order is real, or more something that I rely on too much in my mind. I read in article in the Scientific American and it made a lot of sense. This is the article. A quote that Frank Spinath, a psychologist at Saarland University in Germany said resonated with me. “It is quite possible that the position in the sibling sequence shapes the personality—but not in every family in the same way, In other words, there may be an influence but not a systematic one." I think this is important to bring up when discussing birth order. So yes, I do think that I very much suffer from Oldest Daughter Syndrome. But is that the case for everyone? No. Birth order does affect psychological development, but the way in which it impacts people is different for everyone.
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