Oldest, Youngest Or Middle Child? How Sibling Birth Order Affects ...

Skip to main contentSkip to navigationClose dialogue1/1Next imagePrevious imageToggle captionSkip to navigation

View image in fullscreen

The Observer personality quizFamily This article is more than 9 years oldOldest, youngest or middle child? How sibling birth order affects your personalityThis article is more than 9 years old

Discover if there is any correlation between the birth order of you and your siblings and how sociable or neurotic you and they are

Ben AmbridgeSun 26 Jun 2016 06.00 BSTLast modified on Sun 26 Jan 2025 13.54 GMTShare

Here’s the simplest personality test you’ll ever take. It consists of a single question:

Of your siblings, are you the oldest child, second oldest, third oldest… or perhaps the youngest?

For more than 100 years, psychologists have debated the relationship between birth order and personality. You’ve probably heard of “middle-child syndrome”. It’s the idea that the middle child misses out on both the privileges given to the oldest child and the allowances made for the baby of the family, and this may explain why they become withdrawn or resentful.

Firstborns are often thought to care more about pleasing their parents, and to be conscientious and dominant, with laterborns being more easy-going, sociable and creative.

However, 2015 saw the publication of two very large studies looking at almost 400,000 people overall, which showed that these claims are largely myths. Although firstborns did emerge as fractionally more conscientious and less sociable than laterborns, they bucked the expected trend by coming out as more agreeable and less neurotic. More importantly, the size of this effect was tiny, with birth order explaining well under 1% of variability between different people with regard to personality.

The lesson is clear: whatever your strengths and weaknesses in terms of personality and intelligence, your position relative to your siblings is almost certainly not to blame.

A fully referenced version of this article is available at benambridge.com. Order Psy-Q by Ben Ambridge (Profile Books, £8.99) for £6.99 at bookshop.theguardian.com

• This is the archive of The Observer up until 21/04/2025. The Observer is now owned and operated by Tortoise Media.

Explore more on these topics

• Family
• The Observer personality quiz
• Psychology
• Siblings
• features

ShareReuse this content

More on this story

More on this story

• 

  First-born children have better thinking skills, study says

• 

  Hate is just as much part of a sibling relationship as love

• 

  Sibling rivalry has made our lives hell – I couldn’t wait till my son left home

• 

  Relationships with brothers and sisters are too precious to waste

Comments (…)

Sign in or create your Guardian account to join the discussion

Most viewed

Most viewed

• Fashion
• Food
• Recipes
• Love & sex
• Health & fitness
• Home & garden
• Women
• Men
• Family
• Travel
• Money