Order of birth...

Middle. Yes.

second of four, and i think it's one of the most important things in shaping personality.

all of my best friends are the eldest of their families, i've just realised.

I oldest.

School friends: quick recce - 25% also oldest.

Wife: Youngest

Colleagues: dunno.

first borns and last borns are supposed to do best in relationships together.

but i met a therapist once who told me birth order theory was bullshit when looking at anything outside your own family.

I'm the last of three girls and yep this is definitely a big deal for me, I think (although it doesn't seem to have affected what friends I've made). I also wonder what effect being the youngest daughter of a woman who was also the youngest of four girls might have had.

Keep meaning to read Frank Sulloways's Born To Rebel cos a tutor mentioned his birth order theories in a lecture once and all sorts of lights switched on.

Frank Sulloway's, that is.

I'm the oldest of four. None of us are that close other than the last two (boy and girl). The second of us is the black sheep during family get togethers I'd say though.

I'm the oldest of three, but never had that big-sister responsibility thing going on. I wasn't ever maternal which might have been why. Always blamed evrything on my brothers though ;)

I hate hearing, "oh yes, I could TELL you were an only child." OH YES, now you know everything about me, all my social defects which you felt drawn to snark about w/o specifying are a result of that one fact, shared between me and whatever % of the population...

...BUT while apologising for being a flake on the cutting-off-friends thread I did wonder if it was an only-child mindset: other people as (hopefully) mostly benevolent but very distant, always right/no recourse to outside arbitration, find you a chore if you remind them of your existence so hide in yr bedroom with quiet nerdy hobbies and leave them in their mysterious unshareable adult world, maybe in a couple of months they'll come and find you and take you to the zoo or something...
(plus subsequent confusion/betrayal at finding that passing friend-crush acquaintances have met new zoo companions and had birthday cake with them EVERY DAY in the meantime)

But by and large I don't see much of a pattern among my schoolfriends, and I tend not to know much about the families of post-school friends.

Huh, I spent years hiding in my bedroom and being a loner and I had siblings!

But I was the only girl, and I was the only one with my own room.

I'm the youngest of three brothers, but it's by quite a distance, so in some ways I'm more like an only child. Em's the eldest of three, and has two brothers. She's ALWAYS going on about birth order affecting personality. I've never really considered it. My best friend growing up was also the youngest of three, but my next best friend was the eldest of three. These days I don't even know if my friends have siblings.

Yeah, Trayce, I'm happy not to think it has that big an effect, it's just that after years of indignation at anyone who'd suggest it had any at all something made me stop and think "wait, maybe it really does" for a bit.

But then I wouldn't mind if people said "oh, do you think that's affected your personality?", I might even agree, but it's always this big "LOL I could tell! I am so good at reading people! and after five minutes of smalltalk I pronounce you a spoilt brat who never learnt to play nicely with the other children!" thing. Which again is all accurate enough until you see some of the larger-familied interpersonal disaster areas who've said it to me...

(Also, in case I sounded "you guys don't understand our pain ;_;" or anything, my loner scenario isn't a bad childhood at all, just maybe a less useful model for later life than, say, other people always crash in and play rough so you've just gotta play that way too, but hey, sometimes it's even fun, and you're on more of a level, and you might be allowed to borrow their toys or talk to their friends. Well, if you're lucky. I guess everyone will say they weren't.)

I hate hearing, "oh yes, I could TELL you were an only child." OH YES, now you know everything about me, all my social defects which you felt drawn to snark about w/o specifying are a result of that one fact, shared between me and whatever % of the population...

WTF. I just had a shiver because I thought I had written this but realized it couldn't cause I hadn't posted on this thread. So I agree. A teacher once told me:"Oooh, you're an only child, that explains a lot." I wanted to reply:"Ah yes, it explains the grief and hardship my parents had to go through, trying to have a second child? Ah yes, that explains so much ey?" I witnessed so much sadness. My parents tried for years to have a second child.

That said, I now witness how I treat my two kids and how it differs. I reacted differently when I delivered Elisabeth (much more relaxed, instead of the panic attack I had after they snatched Ophelia away cause they had to clean her up...). It's inevitable that you treat your kids differently and subsequently you will *create* different personalities (but of course they have already some "seed"). As I always like to say: it's a relationship, you bring something into it, each and every one.

My father even reacts differently towards Elisabeth: being a second child, he had to wear off his brother's clothes. As a result he gives Elisabeth clothes even though I really think it's a waste of money (now as she's a baby and doesn't realize). But I respect his wish and understand it completely.

My husband is an only child. I think this propelled him to want two kids: He found so much pressure to achieve something as he was considered to be and is very intelligent. (Roffle, my parents never had this, maybe because I'm a MORAN. teehee)

I think being an only child in my case is different in teh sense that I grew up in a shop: Although I didn't have a brother/sister, I did have a lot of social interraction. I also grew up in a city so I was around kids a lot. But then I loved being on my own and watch too much music videos. Hmmm.

I have a younger brother and always had tons of cousins and neighborhood kids around to skateboard and play baseball with, and still I think I exhibit a number of the antisocial characteristics that trigger that "ohhhh you're an ONLY CHIIILD" response. I can only speculate as to what kind of aspergers robo-goomba I'd have turned into if I had been, say, an only child home schooled in a much bigger and more anonymous city where you don't get to know your neighbors (n so on).

Order of birth, I can't say a whole lot. Most of my friends are a pretty mixed bag, I dunno. Don't know a thing about the theory, I'd like to.

I once noticed that a disproportionate number of my closest friends were the youngest in their family, like me. I'm not sure if that's still the case.

Not much of a pattern to my friends, but all of my boyfriends have been eldest or only (like me.)

Im the youngest of my father's three children, the youngest of my mothers two children and my mother and father's only child. Ive definitely been the family baby for most of my life esp considering my closest sibling is 6 years older and the other two 14 and 17 years older. I still get away with a lot but the curse of being the youngest is that you're eventually left alone to deal with whatever midlife crisis your parents might be going through on top of empty nest syndrome.

and when i say get away with a lot i mean im not really expected to be responsible for anything which is good and easy but also makes me kind of paranoid about being respected.

I'm the midle of my mom's three children and the eldest of my dad's two.