Is birth order important?

There have been a lot of studies over the years regarding birth order. Some conclude that it's a big deal, while others more or less discount its importance. Learn all about it today.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of My
Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles Duby, Choke Bryant, there's Jerry
over there, and this is Stuff You Should Know jerodcast. Jerry.

(00:21):
Were you a what was your birth order? Oh, Jerry's
a middle child, two of two or two of more.
So you're the baby. You don't know this, did you? Sure? No?
I know Jerry for like thirteen years, so have I? Well,
not that long twelve years, So have I no comment?

(00:45):
What am I? I don't know? That's right, I know what.
I'm the baby? You know that. Yeah, I didn't ask
what you were. I know you know what you are?
What am I? This isn't quits not You're not gonna
just yea. Yeah, I wasn't calling you out. I was
calling you out in a humorous way. And I called
you out. Um. It's hard not to look at this

(01:06):
stuff through your own lens though, of your own family.
You know, are you changing the subject? I don't know.
I'm getting on with it because as the youngest of three,
and all of us have three distinct personalities, it's hard
not to kind of like think about birth order and
if that's a thing, and it may be and it
may not be. Yeah, depends on which scientists you're asking.

(01:29):
I tend to think like, there's just no way it
doesn't have any effect. Now there, I think it definitely
has an effect. But as we will see, it is
one part of a huge pie that uh that indicates
what kind of person and personality you might have. Well.
Plus also it's devilishly tricky to to analyze, to study

(01:54):
because of how big that pie is. Yeah, there's so
much going on with your personality that to just pinpoint
one thing, even a big thing like that where you're
born in a family, um, it's just tough to pin down.
So you're the youngest, right, good yess? Yes I am.
I knew you were the youngest. I'm like, I wear

(02:16):
that on my sleeve. I feel like I kind of
do too a lot, I guess in some ways. But
like I was reading this checklist for the youngest, Yeah,
I'm like, yeah, I guess. So let's let's let's do
should we go over that that stuff first? Yeah? Totally
all right. So this is like the sort of macro
view of how a lot of people think of birth

(02:39):
order pop psychology. Yeah, so if you were born into
a family, there's basically four ways that you can be
born in some sort of order. You can be the firstborn,
you can be a middle child, or you can be
the last born. And then if you're real out fire. Okay,

(03:01):
you're right, So there's five oh god, don't even get
me started. Um, okay, a multi um or you can
be an only child too, and all of them have
distinct personalities. Again according to pop psychology, but also according
to every person who's ever been born into a family,
especially and so with the first born um, the whole

(03:24):
the whole theory of basically birth order, where where you're
born into the family unit that you're born into, and
what effect that has on your personality and how it develops.
It all seems to come down to this idea that
you are born into a family where there is a
finite resource called parental attention, and then that is a

(03:45):
pie that gets increasingly divided up into smaller and smaller
pieces the more and more children that are born, because
your parents can't possibly give five kids the same amount
of attention that they could give an only child. It's
just not possible. And so what dynamics are created in
the personality of the kids born into that family depending

(04:06):
on how many others are born and depending on where
they fall in that birth order. That's kind of the
premise of the whole thing. And over time people have said, well,
this is what the first point is like, this is
what the middle is like, this is what the baby's like. Yeah,
and there were I mean a lot of this are
these are generalizations, but they are generalizations. Like you said
that kind of everyone who's ever been in a family

(04:26):
can kind of say, yeah, that's kind of true. Um,
you know when you have an only or your first kid,
they this article references as that first sort of experiment.
You don't know what you're doing yet. Um, you're probably
going all in, depending on how lazy you are, how
motivated you are as a parent with this, you know,

(04:47):
being a super parent. And then if supposedly as you
have more children you get it's not only is your
is your attention divided? I think, but there's the notion
that you also are like, you know what, a probably
don't need to be as crazy with number two and
number three, Um, leave them to their own devices. As

(05:07):
a third kid, I'm not going to get into too
many depressing details of my family growing up, but like
by the time I was ten and eleven and my
parents had other things going on, and I wasn't fair
old kids on the side. Not exactly, Um, I wasn't

(05:28):
fair old by any means, but I was. I did
not have rules imposed on me like my brother and
sister did. I did not have I was allowed to
go to Panama City for spring break and they weren't.
I was allowed to kind of do my own thing,
and I was trustworthy, So that probably had a lot
to do with it. If I would have been a
real problem, they might have clamped down a little more,
or maybe not. And they probably wouldn't have necessarily clamped down,

(05:51):
like we need to give Chuck Way more attention and
guidance than we have been. They would have probably been
like crime and punishment. They would have been, like we're saying,
in Chuck the rehab or whatever her you know what
I mean, Let rehab take care of our reform school
or something like that, because once you get X number
of kids in, you're just so tired, so tired, and
you're older too, Like when you're chasing a little kid

(06:13):
around and like your forties or fifties. That's different than
when you're chasing a little kid around in your mid twenties.
I can't imagine a world of difference, you know. Um,
So there's there's there. There's a lot of resources, not
just you know, parents attention, but also their time, intellectual
attention that they'll give a kid like and say, um,

(06:34):
like hanging out, teaching the kid to read that kind
of stuff. Um, and just attention in general, and also
financial resources the families. Resources in general are a pie
that must be divided among all financial, emotional, all that
stuff instructive. Uh. So, generally speaking, firstborn's, people say, tend
to be very conscientious and structured and reliable. Uh and

(06:58):
high achieve high achiever. Yeah, because their parents are focusing
like a laser on them. They know everything that kids
got going on, maybe a little too much. Um. And
the kid is responding to this by basically becoming a
perfectionist and really wanting to be around their parents. Um

(07:19):
and and um. Their parents friends sure very much mature
because they're all of the people are most of the
people are hanging out with our adults. Okay, so that's
the firstborn typically, right, everybody knows it. Don't try to
deny middles in general are people pleasing? Which is so

(07:39):
my brother. Um, that's weird to me because when I
think of middle children, I think of jam Brady, and
jam Brady was not a people pleaser. She was just
you know, a lump, like a lump with a cloud overhead,
poor Jan. But that's true, Like I would not characterize
Jan Brady as a people pleaser, would you know? Like
she was gonna burn some thing down and eventually if

(08:01):
the Brady bunchet stayed on the air long enough. Was
also a blended family. So what was who was the
It was Bobby and then Peter later, I guess you'd
call it was he was he a people pleaser or
just a Peter Jan more than Jan. But blended families
do confound things. We'll get into that for sure. Um.

(08:22):
But people pleasing, Uh, somewhat rebellious, which is not my
brother at all. Um, large social circle, not really my
brother and a peacemaker, totally my brother. He's the best,
He's the best. Uh. And then the young things, younges,
young uns like us, Um, most free spirited, fun loving, uncomplicated, manipulative.

(08:47):
I've I've been called some of these things varying degrees,
self centered, attention seeking and outgoing check and check. But
on combined you and I and we're sort of like
the proto youngest complicated. Though I'm like, I don't get that.
I'm I'm I'm exquisitely complicated on the surface. You wouldn't
think it, but I'm pretty complicated as we all know

(09:09):
in this room. But that's the only one that I'm
like that I question. Yeah. All the rest of them
are like, yeah, that makes sense. Looks like the Chinese zodiac.
You look at that menu and you're like, um, total
dog yes, and movie guy pants sounds great right now.
Only these no siblings. You are what they call almost

(09:30):
like a super firstborn. All of the traits of the
firstborn on steroids, very much perfectionists, very much more mature
for your age, conscientious, diligent, prone to be leader, can
leap over tall buildings. Uh. And then this is where
it gets interesting, and this sort of starts to finally, everybody,

(09:52):
this is where it starts to get interested. Well, this
is where it gets in a little bit like how
complicated it can get because there's so many factors that
play like Um, what if you're in a blended family,
because that kind of throws it all out of whack. Yeah,
if you're born a firstborn and you your parents your

(10:13):
your parents get divorce and your you go with your
mom who gets remarried to a dude who has yes
to a smashing cool architect for sure. Um, and he
has a kid that's a little older than you. Greg's
the firstborn. You're not the firstborn anymore. The best you
can hope for is to form some sort of confederacy

(10:33):
or alliance with Greg to rule the rest of the siblings.
But you're not the head Hans show anymore. You're not
in charge. That's a big deal. I can't imagine many
more traumatic experiences, especially when that follows closely on the
heels of your parents divorced or the death of like
your other parents. Um, that's got to be one of
the most traumatic things that kid can go through is

(10:53):
to lose the they're identified perch in the family order. Yeah,
and that's you were we were talking about, like the firstborn,
like the baby of the family. If all of a
sudden there's a younger, no good like I remember my
parents for some reason talking about adopting a kid. I
can't remember how old I was. I must have been

(11:14):
about seven, and I remember breaking down and crying and
just being like, you can't do this. You cannot bring
in someone younger and cuter than me, And that happens.
I'm seven, blended family, all of a sudden, you'd be
a younger or God forbid of baby. Just forget about it.

(11:34):
Can't compete with that. You gotta kill that baby. Well,
that's what happened to when Brady Bunch started to lose ratings.
Apparently your family was losing ratings. They brought in cousin Oliver,
a new baby, and I don't think Bobby was very
happy about that either. No, but just think about Janet
all makes a little bit more sense. Like she was like,
I'm the middle child, and then they brought in three

(11:56):
more and she was like, I'm even more middle Yeah,
you're deluded. The middle child is deluded. And if you
have multiple middle children, forget about it. That's right. However,
here's the thing with blended families. They say by about
the age of five that a lot of your personality
is set. So if you're older than five and all
of a sudden, your family is blended. They say, it

(12:16):
may not make that much of a difference. No, No No,
that's where it's trouble. If you're younger than five and
your your personality a little more plastic. If you were
born a baby of the family and suddenly you're a firstborn,
or you're not the or you're a middle kid, you'll
adapt to that a lot better than you would if
you're like older and you're you're more solid in your

(12:36):
birth order. Yeah, I didn't mean not trouble. What I
meant was like, if you're uh like twelve years old
and the family blending happens, it's trouble, But it's it's
not like your personality is like, all of a sudden,
I'm the the youngest or you know what I mean. Like,
you don't all of a sudden swap to a different

(12:58):
birth order personality, I don't think, right. But if you're
younger and it happens, you do right under the age
of five, which goes to show that if this is
the thing, and we'll talk about whether it is or
not soon. Um, it has nothing to do with biology,
has everything to do with with nurture, not nature, because
a kid can adapt depending on When this happens, they

(13:19):
can adapt to a change in birth order if they're
young enough. That means it has nothing to do with biology.
It's all the environment you're raised in, which is the
most bone headedly obvious thing on the planet. And then
before we take a break, they are also gap children.
Um supposedly, if there's at least a five year gap
between births, then it just sort of resets. That was

(13:41):
like me and my oldest sister. She was thirteen years
older than me. She was just like this older, cool person,
but not like an old older sister, not at all
overbearing for me. I guess a little bit or like
a second mom kind of to an extent, because that
does happen to if there's a big gap or a

(14:01):
big family. Like I dated a girl in New Jersey
that had there was like six or seven of them,
and the by the time she came around, she was
kind of fully being raised by her siblings, right, So,
so what happens when there's enough of a gap a
new family birth order forms. So like if you have
an oldest and then there's multiple years, like say ten

(14:23):
years between your oldest and your middle and then two
years between your middle and your baby. The middle and
the baby are going to form a firstborn and a
last born type relationship. Yeah, the last born is always
going to be the last born, yes, regardless of gap.
But then twins, like you were saying, is one last
confounding thing. The twins or triplets multiples as you call them. Um, yeah,

(14:49):
I think so. Uh. They form their own family unit
within the family too, with each other. And apparently no
matter where they're born, twins never act like middle kids.
They always act like the firstborn or the baby, but
to one another. Right, and I think they generally come
together to kill the parents basically, right, they hold hands,

(15:09):
it's like an elevator of blood washes around them. Uh.
And then finally with adoption, Um, they say that depending
on when your child is adopted, the same kind of
scenario scenario happens as in like with gapped and blended families. Whereas,
if the kids young enough here so you will tailor
there um, their their birth order to the family that

(15:32):
they're adopted into. But if they're older, they'll be trouble.
All right, that's a good overview. I think I think
it was a great overview, Chuck, we're in front of it.
We're gonna you do have that overview glow. We're gonna
take a break and we're gonna talk about science right
after this. Alright, Chuck, as promised, we're gonna talk about

(16:14):
science because, like I said, this is so boneheaded and
obvious that every single person who's ever been born into
a family, everybody knows this stuff. But as far as
science is concerned, this is not proven that birth order
effects as they're called, actually exist. That science is saying,
hold your cell, your role, everybody. We can't actually prove

(16:38):
that what everybody knows is actually true. Um. Some some
studies show that, yes, there is such thing as birth
order effects. Other studies show that there is no birth
order effect whatsoever. And then some studies suggest that if
there are birth order effects, they're so small that they
are basically a blip on your personality. That all the

(16:58):
other factors that form your personality, things like the socioeconomic
status of the family you're born into, your racial background,
your um gender, all the other stuff. Um, that is
what really forms your personality, not the order you're born
into your family. That's kind of sciences position right now. Yeah,

(17:19):
But what they all agree on is that it is
therapy cash cow right that that that yes, it's a
it's a good it's a useful framework to approach psychotherapy
from it. That's where I want to talk about it.
At the high hourly rates. See to me, I'm like,
this is sure, this is exactly what forms your personality.
But I get sciences position. I respect it. So if

(17:41):
we go back in time to the early nineteen hundreds,
there was a man named Alfred Adler. He was a
part of He was a contemporary of Freud, and this
is when all these dudes were getting together, uh to
talk about all this stuff in this burgeoning science, and
they all thought they were so cool and important and
um he was one of the only ones among his

(18:05):
peers though at the time, that was talking about birth
order that early. And he went on to form what
we know is uh Adlerian psychology or individual psychology, and
it's basically a therapy based on um, how you perceive
your own level of power in your family, at your workplace,

(18:26):
in the world at large in general, like your perceived power,
place of position or status. Right, yeah, And if he
believed in birth order having a significant influence on your personality,
then that in turn would influence how powerful you may
or may not feel. Yeah, because the addler if if
how you perceived your own power, not necessarily how powerful

(18:46):
you were, but your own perception of power was the
driving force of like what how you interact with the
world your personality. Um birth order would make total sense
because birth order, as everybody knows, is nothing but positions
of superiority or inferiority. And it's it's as simple as that.
Because when you're born and you're a little kid, and

(19:08):
you're born into a family with an older sibling, they
are a couple of steps ahead of you because they've
already been through a bunch of stuff, so they're inherently
superior to you. They can also beat you up on
a very basic level. They can twist your arm behind
your back until it feels like it's going to break,
and how many times you say uncle, uncle, uncle, they
won't stop until they're satisfied or protect you. Like my

(19:29):
big brother did from his friends that were jerks to me.
He wouldn't stand for it. No couples. We went at
it too, you know, we were brothers, but he never
picked on me. You know why, because you chuck and
he's Scott right. Uh. In the eighties is when I
mean there were always studies starting since Adler and freud Stein,

(19:50):
but in the nineteen eighties is when it really blew up,
thanks to um, the Big and cocaine, the Big Five
personality trade the view of things, um, and that's when
things in the eighties, that's when everybody was just like
eating the stuff up. Yeah, because so the Big Five
Personality inventory is We've talked about it before, but basically

(20:13):
it is a a self reported measure that is actually valid.
It actually works, like you can say this person is
highly neurotic, or this person is extroverted, or um, well
three others that I can't bring to mind right now.
But these things are also kind of broken into subcategories,
like these are big umbrella terms have more specific subcategories.

(20:34):
But it's actually like valid, Like somebody who fills this
survey out, it's going to be an accurate assessment of
their personality. So if you have somebody's personality, that's huge, right.
You can say, all right, um, if this person is neurotic,
they're highly neurotic. Let's see what birth order they are, Oh,
they're a middle child. Let's compare them to other middle
children who filled out this personality survey scored high on neurosis,

(20:57):
and all of a sudden, we can show if you're
a middle child, you're far likelier to be highly neurotic
under the Big Five personality inventory than the first born
is right, boom bam, you just proved that birth order
effects exist? Or did you? Yeah, they're like we can

(21:18):
put people further into a box and label them um
or did you? Because that is sort of the paradox
that arrived that we arrive at, which is you pointed
to it a little bit earlier. There are so many,
so many influences that go into what makes you you that. Uh,
it's hard to look at birth order as a mere

(21:40):
small part of that. Yeah, so so like you can't
account you can account for some of these and studying it.
You know, there's a lot of studies over the years
and they do their best, but you can't account for
all of them. Well okay, so so we'll go back
to that example. So you've you've just gone to your
peers and said, look, I have just proven that idle
children are highly neurotic compared to other children in birth orders. Right,

(22:05):
then you're shaking your own fists around your your shoulders
in triumph. And they said, well, wait a minute, wait
a minute, um, did you control for socioeconomic background? And
you go, uh no, I didn't. Well wait did you
control for race? No? Did you control for gender? No?
And so all of a sudden you realize there's all
these different, um independent variables. What what what in this

(22:28):
case would be confounding variables that might actually be the
thing influencing it. It might be the fact that they
are um uh feet women born into families of a
low socioeconomic state that is driving neurosis, that that's actually
the thing that is driving it, rather than birth order
has nothing to do with being a middle child. That's

(22:49):
just a fluke of coincidence. And like you said, there's
so many confounding variables and so many things that make
our personalities who we are that some people who are
like birth order effects do not exist. Basically say that
any birth order study that shows that they do exist
has some confounding variable that that's the actual hidden thing

(23:09):
that's driving it that you can't possibly control for everything
to make a perfect, perfectly designed experiment too for birth order. Yeah,
like when you start to think about, like if you
were just to sit there and sort of jot down
things as non scientists, just regular schmos like us, uh,
and just jot down a list of what other factors
might be at play. We could probably come up with

(23:31):
a list of a hundred things between us. Let's start now.
But that would like if I was studying the stuff
and I started to make that list, I would just
walk away and go into another line of study. I
would be like, dude, I just you know where your
parents married, where they divorced, When did they get divorced?
Did you like hot dogs? You live with mom or dad?
How far apart did they live? What could do? Were
you suburban? Where you urban? Where did you live? In

(23:53):
an excerpt, did you go up in the woods? Did
you start work at twelve? Uh? For you like old timing,
I started work at twelve. I guess I did too.
I did a paper route. Yeah, how's a bus boy? Um?
Oh wait? Was that where the guy put his foot
into the what a criminal? I told you? That's a title? Max.

(24:15):
Now that restaurant drove but not too long ago. J
J's barbecue title Max. Now they're putting their foot on titles,
just stomping on them. They got your money, your money,
your real money. They're never gonna sponsor us. Now. Um,
another few things that can confound these studies, um are

(24:37):
things and and Ed helped us put this research together,
things like demographic shifts. So he gave a great example
of like the baby boom, if there's a big population
bulge that also coincides with a lot of other stuff. Um.
And the example he's was prevalence of cigarette smoking. Uh,
there may be a false correlation there between being a

(24:58):
firstborn and smoking, whereas if you were second born twelve
years later. I guess that would fall outside that range
though of gap child. Um, But that's even more confounding.
The points still valid. Sure that, like there's just way
more firstborns who smoked than second borns, But that's because
smoking was more prevalent when there were a bunch of

(25:20):
kids born who were all of the same cohort and
all firstborns. Right, That's just one of the ways this
thing can be confounded. Yeah, this one really speaks to me.
Which is labeled as growth. When a birth order effect
does appear, it is strongest when they subject is with
their siblings, when you're a family reunion, it is so

(25:42):
funny how that happens. I see myself do it. Like
good example, I turned for a couple of weeks ago
my family and my sister and her husband happened to
be in town. Didn't come for that, but we were
texting and I was like, hey, let's all you know,
this is great, let's all go out to dinner. She's like, oh,
I didn't want to. I just figured you wouldn't want

(26:02):
to spend your birthday with your friend. You'd want to
spend your birthday with your friends and not your family.
And I saw Michelle when she got in town and
she said the same thing in person. I was like, dude,
I'm forty eight. It's like I'm not twenty two year
old chuck burnout like I used to be. And she
just sort of laughed. But that's a perfect example of how, like,
no matter what happens in my life, I will always

(26:23):
be the baby, and she will probably feel like she
has to look out for me, which is a nice feeling. Um.
I see Emily fall into patterns with her family. Uh, well,
she is a She's an interesting case because she wasn't
only and then has a half brother and a half sister.

(26:44):
Her dad. Yeah, her dad went and had a son
with another woman, and then her mom got married to
her father in law, Steve, who already had a daughter. Um,
so it's a sort of a weird mix. But I
just mean in general, not even with siblings, you know,
just in how their family dynamic is She's a different
person when we go over there. Yeah, I think it happens.

(27:06):
I think everybody is around their family. It's so strange. Um.
So this is when it sort of started me down
the path of like what is personality? Is it a
is a personality trait? Is it this just? Is it
repeated behaviors? Is it a set of behaviors? Like? Is

(27:28):
that personality? Are you asking me? Yeah? I mean I
don't even know, Like what is personality? We should do
a show on that, Oh, we totally should. But from
what I understand, just kind of briefly put it, personality
is the kind of predictable way that you'll react to
the world. Right. Is it easy for somebody to press
your buttons? Um? Are you laid back? Are you? Like?

(27:49):
Could somebody? However, if somebody were presented with that, and
this is going terribly if somebody were presented with a uh,
like an event in life. Okay, you could say Josh
and probably respond to like that, that's a personality, right,
But is that something inherent or is it birth order?

(28:10):
Is it just a collection of learned behavior. I think
it's a collection of learned and reinforced behaviors too. If
you're told you're the baby of the family all the time,
you're gonna act like the baby of the family. You're
gonna act self centers, You're gonna act manipulative. It's reinforced.
If you're told, um, you uh, you can do anything.
You can you can go out and do anything. You
can literally walk through walls because someone told you to.

(28:32):
They reinforced that behavior. But I think that's a personality
is and this is just me talking. I also believe
in birth order effects, by the way, but I think
that that is it's it's learned and reinforced, which means
it can be unlearned. You can learn to be different. Yeah.
At that same birthday dinner, I picked up the check

(28:53):
for everyone and there was a bit of a not
an argument, let me struggle. My mom and I were,
you know, kind of off to the side with the
people who worked there doing the credit card battle, and
she she wasn't super happy and I should have just
let her pay. But it's part of that thing, like
I'm the baby of the family and I kind of
just finally told a seck. Listen, mom, it's like it's

(29:15):
my turn to pay. You know, I'm not the baby anymore.
Like quit writing me a check for a hundred dollars
on my birthday? Do you do you catch this? I
mean I generally just put it in my kid's bank account.
Oh that's a good thing. You know, we don't catch
because also don't want to take away the joy that
she gets from writing me that. That's not cool. It's

(29:35):
like I don't need that from her, but like that's
what brings her joy. Giving you money. It's complicated. So
let me teach you a little a little trick. Okay,
if you don't want to get into that tussle, if
you just wanted to be done, sorry, it's too late.
When you order, When you hand the menu back to
the server, just have beholding your credit card with your
thumb and give him a look. It's universal. They all know,

(29:58):
and they'll take it and be like, and you got
to first. Nobody else does that. They always wait and
they pretend to go to the bathroom, like after everybody's done.
It so obvious. You gotta start before the food even comes,
before the drinks even come. You know what I did
when we got to the restaurant. The very first thing
I did was go up to the manager while everyone
was being seated, said, listen, dude, my mom's going to

(30:20):
try and pay, or one of these other chumps in
my family is going to try and pay. It's like,
I don't want any of them paying. It's like twelve people.
I picked the place. I picked a nicer place. It's
like I don't want to do that. And I was like, so,
just here's my credit card. Please make sure that the
server there's no battle. They didn't follow your orders. No,
because my mom she tried to jump me later on

(30:44):
the side and didn't realize I had already jumped her.
So it should have been done, I know. But then
we went over there. He was like, listen, man, your
mom is over here now, like she's the mom. We
generally side with the parents on this stuff. What place
was this? It was just a restaurant. I demand to know.
I'm mad. My move should have just trumped all moves

(31:04):
because it was no, I agree, and that's what I
basically said. And I was like, listen, man, I was like,
there are factors at play here that I don't want
to talk about. It's like just please, And my mom
got a little mad and then that's I blame this manager.
I think you should expose them. Well, I'm glad it
all worked out in the end. Man, should we take
a break? I thought we were right now, all right,

(31:28):
we'll be back right after this. All right, we're back, Chuck.

(31:51):
And like we said, we showed science is kind of
like we're not quite sure about the birth order effect.
That hasn't kept like a whole cottage field of psychology
and continuing since the eighties basically NonStop. Like if you
go look at birth birth order effects, there's it's very rare.
You're going to run into anything that says like this
is all b s. Most of it's like, yeah, this

(32:14):
is true. Everybody knows it. Um. There have been some
like prominent people in favor of like like let's say, yes,
there is such thing as birth effects. And there was
one guy in particular, um who made a big splash
in with a book called Born to Rebel. Yeah, Frank Soloway,
Frank J. Soloway, if you want to be fancy about it.

(32:36):
And he got a MacArthur Genius grant to kind of
study this and write about it, and he did. He
wrote a book called Born to Rebel. It was about
birth order, and the whole premise of the book was
he looked at scientific revolutions throughout the ages. It's pretty interesting,
identified which scientists were on which side of it, either

(32:57):
in support of this revolutionary thinking or opposed to it,
meaning that they were in favor of keeping the status quo,
and then determined what birth order they had. And he
found after this study, which is really that's a that's
it was a big study he did. It was a
pretty a lot of legwork, in a lot of research. Um,

(33:17):
he determined that first borns are much more likely to
support the status quo, whereas second borns are later borns
he calls them are um much more likely to support
revolutionary thinking. Yeah. And just one example, as far as
uh he used Darwinism. He said later borns between eighteen
fifty nine and eighteen seventy five were four point six

(33:40):
times more likely than first borns two uh support Darwinism,
yeah thinking, Yeah, yeah, so yeah, and that was one
of many examples that I think there were um a
hundred and twenty one historical events with sixty individuals either
supporting or opposing him. So it was a big, big
work for sure. Yeah. And one of his uh, I

(34:02):
mean he he puts some reasoning behind it too, He's
he was like, uh, if you're later born, you might
have a hard time competing with your older who might
have a tighter bond with the parents, maybe, And so
that sort of symbolically forces you as to be almost
an outsider within your own family, so you may be
more prone to join up with an outsider opinion right

(34:24):
to go look outside of the family union and all
of the values and the ideas that it holds to
to make your own mark in order to get attention
or support or whatever from your parents. Whereas if you're firstborn,
you just got the the easiest thing to do is
to just fall in line with your parents and hence
support the status quo. It makes sense, but um, born

(34:45):
to a Belle was was torn apart by some scientists.
Sure it is like this is just pure pop psychology tripe. Um.
I think that's an unfair characterization of it like, the
guy worked for basically twenty something years on this stuff,
and in it was a very robust study. One of
the pitfalls that he seemed to have run into, though,
was he was analyzing historical figures um, which is really

(35:11):
sticky stuff like like this. You can't analyze people even
from afar, even if they're contemporary, let alone they've been
dead for a couple of hundred years, So to base
it on that is kind of is kind of difficult
and tricky. But I just want to say he worked
really hard on. Another part plucked from his research I

(35:31):
thought was pretty interesting was the idea that part of
this um less rebellious nature of a firstborn might be
due to the long standing but now sort of antiquated
practice of uh primogeniture, which is, the firstborn gets the inheritance,
so they're more likely, just through thousands of years of this,

(35:53):
more inclined to like not ruffle the feathers of the parents, right,
And then the later borns who are like, I've got
basically zero chance of inheriting the family titles in a state,
I'll just go do my own thing. I don't have
to fall in line. That makes sense as well, uh
And the other interesting thing with that is another factor
was the removal of a child from a family. He's

(36:13):
found that a later born who was removed from the
family and reared by a relative will end up behaving
like a typical firstborn. And again I'm assuming if that's
under the age of like five, but I wonder so
I'm wondering if that just is supported by other research,
or if all of the parenting magazine articles that mentioned
that whole you know, the personality is tailored is really

(36:36):
just citing that work. Because that's one of the big
problems with pop psychology in general, is it's self reinforcing.
One person says one thing and it gets picked up
by a bunch of people and they're all pointing to
the same thing. But since so many of them are pointing,
there's so many of them out there doing the pointing,
it seems like it's a very robust and like um,
widespread body of work, when really it was just one

(36:59):
study that said one thing that everybody's sighting. Well. Yeah,
like in his case, he likes to site this Norwegian study.
Uh it found a difference of two point three i
Q points between first and second born children. UH sample
size of two one subjects, it is big, but then
you know, ed sort of brings up a good point
like okay, maybe, but like is the two point three

(37:21):
first of all i Q test or problematic for like
a lot of reasons possibly bunk, But even if they're not,
is a two point three IQ point difference even meaningful
enough to be like, well look two points So no,
it's it's not meaningful in that, like you know, that

(37:42):
doesn't that's gonna lead to any like closed doors or
open doors or anything. That's just such a narrow difference.
But if that's like an average, and it's it is
found across you know, first borns and later boards like
like in a very large population like that, it is,
it doesn't make you wonder like what what would that
come from? It does raise more questions, you know what

(38:03):
I mean. So, yeah, it's an insignificant difference as far
as like actual intelligence goes, but it does suggest that
there's something weird going on there that does have to
do with birth order. Well, I guess that brings this
to this really interesting thing that I had never heard
of before. Had you heard of this fraternal birth order
effect um, which is basically the idea, and a lot

(38:27):
of studies have backed this up. Meta analysis of tons
of studies have backed this up. The idea is that
if you have multiple boys in your family, each successive
boy that's born, and this is if it's just boys,
has a higher chance of being gay. Right. I didn't

(38:51):
think And when I first saw that was like, that
can't be real, right, And then I did a lot
more poking around. I was like, Wow, it is real.
The statistics sort of bear it out. Yeah. If there's
if there's a big um disagreement about whether actual just
regular birth order effects exist, this one is much more
supported by the data. This the fraternal birth order effect,

(39:11):
and so much so that there is a sexologist, which
if that were my field of study, I'd be like,
call me sexologist Josh please. Um, I can't find his name?
Is Ray something he said and I'm not sure what
he was basing this on, but he said that, Um,
there is a increase of thirty three percent in likelihood

(39:32):
that you will be gay with each additional older brother
you have. Now, so that means if you are born
into a family and you're the youngest of four brothers,
did this math, what does that mean? Because I know
these people like family zero percent chance, I guess that
that you are going to be um hetero, That that

(39:53):
that you're a hundred percent chance going to be gay? Right, Well,
how many it could be a hundred and six? It
just going right, Yeah, I think that can't be right.
Eventually you become so gay you pop out the other
side and you're straight because you have like ten brothers. Well,
I did see that meta analysis of multiple multiple studies
indicated that between fifteen and of gay males oh their

(40:19):
sexual orientation to this effect supposedly, okay, so so, and
we should say there are some studies that have not
found this. There was a big one that had There
was like a survey of British young men that that
surveyed like eleven thousand of them or whatever and did
not find this. But so many studies have found it
that science is like this, this actually might be a thing,

(40:40):
and we're not quite sure what it is. And at
first they explained it that the the more boys there are,
the less social pressure there are for you to be
like hetero and um and responsible for carrying on the
family line, like after two three brothers, who are gonna

(41:01):
you know, carry on the family line, go go crazy,
go do what you want, and that that was the
idea behind why it became likelier that you would be
gay if you had more older brothers. There's a couple
of things with that kind of suggests that like um
being gay or not as a choice, or being straight
or not as a choice rather than something biological whatever,

(41:23):
that has kind of gone out the window. With another
really surprising finding that has to do with handedness that
really undermines that whole idea. Yeah, so this is so
just mind blowing and interesting. So the increase and probability
of a boy becoming gay is only only if that
boy is right handed handed. Yep, so if you're left handed.

(41:46):
Among left handed men, there was no statistical difference and
the incidents of homosexuality even if you've got a thousand brothers.
And the weird thing about that is that they've found
if you are taking birth order out of the equation,
if you are left handed, there's a slightly higher incidence
of um being gay, just period, Yes, for for being

(42:08):
left handed, and that's with um men and women apparently.
UM So the idea that that not only does it
not make you more likely to be gay, and as
far as fraternal birth order is concerned, it actually negates
the effects of fraternal birth order. It shows that that
that social pressure from brothers doesn't have anything to do

(42:29):
with it, because a right handed or a left handed
kid is not going to be under any more or
less social pressure from older brothers to be straight. Um,
that makes zero sense whatsoever. And that would also suggests
it's handedness that it has something to do with genetics too.
If you're ambidexterous or you bisexual, I guess, so, where's
that study that makes sense? So I did a little

(42:51):
more digging in this, but I don't understand it at all.
But more recently, as in just a couple of years ago,
they think they found an actual um physiological biological explanation
for that. If did you understand that? I don't know
if they found it or if somebody made it up.
And everybody's like I read a bunch of papers that

(43:13):
said that, you know, they think this, maybe it okay,
but I didn't get it. So what they what they
think is that when a UM mom, when a mom
carries a boy, her body has a reaction to the
male male proteins, the stuff that makes him a male

(43:34):
creates an allergic reaction of sorts in the mom, and
the mom produces anybody's The first time the mom's body
is totally caught off guard, has basically no effects whatsoever
on the boy's development as a boy. As more and
more boys are born, and just state in that same
poor mom um, the antibodies get better and better at

(43:56):
recognizing these proteins and can actually get to the point
where they affect the expression of these proteins. And so
what makes the boy straight from the basis of these
proteins is actually affected, and they developed differently starting in
the womb because the mom has developed anybody's too, basically
male nous, which is the most mind boggling, amazing idea

(44:20):
I've ever heard. That Glummery was so much better than
the scientific paper summaries that I read today. Thank you,
good John, Thank you you should do that. Thank I
do for a living. I just did. Well, that's a
good point. I thought this was interesting too. I mean,
we've kind of gone over most of these birth order
theories I think in general, but this one I don't
think we super touched on, and I think it's really interesting.

(44:42):
The confluence theory so This is sort of like resource
delution of parents that we were talking about, like only
so much emotional uh support or financial support to go around,
But this takes it down to the sibling level, and
it's sort of basically like if you were firstborn, uh,

(45:03):
you are then have a degraded emotional environment and intellectual
environment once you get a younger. So it's like playing
tennis against better or worse competition. If you're the better
tennis player, you're not gonna play as good against a
lesser tennis player. And they're saying that that kind of
happens with firstborns because they have to spend time with
this dumb kid, this dumb baby. But the dumb baby

(45:27):
gets a leg up exactly. That's when you play tennis
against someone better than you. Eventually, that's called the tutor effect.
They surpassed that firstborn, the student becomes the mass. That's right, exactly,
and your skin turns to alabaster. Really interesting, is that? Sting?
Well the police Okay, oh sure, I thought you were

(45:49):
like a dream of the blue turtle Sting. No, I'm
more of a nothing like the sun. Yes, synchronicity, that's
good too. I'm still mad at them for that reunion
to or oh yeah, they really phoned it in. You said, hey,
I saw for some so I just thought of the
Police and Stewart Copeland and which made me think of

(46:10):
Less Claypool. Re members in that band with Less Claypool
and Trey Anastasio. Yeah, it's called kill Me. No, it's
three talented individuals. But then they made me think of
Less Claypool, who was in a documentary I just saw
on The Residents have seen it? No, the Residents were
the mystery band right with that that, we're the big

(46:31):
still are a mystery band, still going really Yeah, they're good, Um,
but it's good. It's like it's it's an intellectual kind
of like examination of of their history and everything. But
it's really interesting. But Less Claypool's in it. Do you
think when Less Claypool, Uh, fish guy what's his name?
Trey and and Stewart Copeland and Stewart copelan you think
when they got together to form that band, all they

(46:54):
did was just sort of work out who's solos next.
Probably it's like, I want to do the based solo first,
and then we can go right into the guitar solo
and then the drum solo and then the song's over.
Hopefully the birth order of the three worked out so
that it all. They were like, yes, this all makes
sense to me. Man, there's nothing better than old videos
of Stewart Copeland pitching fits. Oh did he? I always

(47:16):
heard it was Sting that was the jerk to Stewart Copeland.
Was Stewart Copeland the jerk? Well, Stewart Copeland was a
hothead and Steyn was could poke his buttons. Oh yeah,
it's pretty fun. There's some Stewart. Don't feel bad for
Stuart Cope. Man, he might be. I think he might
be the best drummer I ever lived, everybody says Neil part.
I don't know, man, Stewart Copeland was pretty good. Oh yeah,

(47:36):
and like crazy, uh like um doing his own thing,
and he's from making what yeah, making Georgia, making Georgia. Wow,
I didn't know that. This concludes this episode of stuff
you should know. If you want the more about birth order,
go talk to your family. We don't care. Since I
said that's time for listener mail. Did you watch the

(47:59):
Motley Crew movie yet on Netflix? No? No, I didn't
know his out Yeah it's out good. Uh, no, but
based on that book, it's not good, but it's great,
you know what I mean? Oh yeah, it's based on
the book, but it's so I mean, it feels like
one of those v H one Are you literally making
a note? It's sort of like one of those VH
one movie music movies, like the Jackson's One. It's right,

(48:21):
it's it's it's good. Okay, I'll check it out, all right?
Who plays Vince Neil? Um? They're all, you know, the
only one of the not the only thing. There's a
lot of distracting parts. But the guy who plays Vince
neil in his hair looks a lot like Garth, looks
not like Dana Carvey is card So it's kind of

(48:42):
hard to fully go there. The guy who played Tommy
Lee is pretty good, was it Christian Navarra? No? Did
he want to? He's he can't played Tommy Lee. He could,
he's like six five. That kid can play anybody. Well, no,
I agree. All right, it's time for listener, mail, I said,
chuck the bars more Mars guy. Okay, all right, here
we go. Is that from that? No? Mc marsh's Matiney group.

(49:05):
Who is that? He's a guitar player. Oh the old creep. Yeah, yeah, sure,
I know how you're talking about. I guess I never
knew his name by creep. He was a creep, he
was creepy. Sure, that's what I mean. All right, here
we go. This is from Sam and I'm just gonna
call this heartfelt. It's always nice to hear this. Hey, guys,
probably could have sent this a million times, but tonight

(49:27):
I really felt the need to. You were with me
was when I transitioned from high school to college. You
were there the night my dad died two years ago,
and now you're here as I'm in the process of
dealing with my girlfriend dumping me up to three years.
You're always there, guys. Sure you hear this all the time,
but I want to tell you that some tough days,
on tough days, you really helped keep me saying plain

(49:47):
and simple. Hopeim me saying not that we keep him
playing and simple. I read that wrong. It's like eat
shoots and leaves. That's right. I have depression and anxiety.
In the podcast is a huge help on nights like
this when nothing seems to help or was comforting. I
can tell if things get really bad, if even the

(50:07):
podcast doesn't help you. Guys have also been like role
models for me. So uh um, this is all just
to say thank you so much. Guys. Who knows how
much darker some spots in my life we've been without
you could say much more, but I think I got
the message across. That is from Sam and he says, PS,

(50:28):
I am a he him and I spank this email
on the bottom. Oh good, that's how we got here.
That's right. Nice work. Um. If you want to get
in touch with us like Sam did, thank you very much. Sam.
By the way, that was very sweet of you to
tell us all that. I hope you're pulling through. Yeah,
hanging there man. Um. You can get in touch with
us by going to Stuff you Should Know dot com
and clicking on our social links, and you can also

(50:51):
send us an email like Sam did. Don't forget to
spank it on the bottom to stuff podcast at i
heart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a
production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts
for my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
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