Why Middle Children are more Successful in Life

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One of the main reasons middle children are more successful in life is because they are traditionally raised in a way by their parents that sets them up better for adulthood. Middle children normally, are not as reliant on their parents because they have always shared the attention and been in the middle of everyone else’s commitments in the family. This unintentional lack of attention leads to positive qualities that guide them to success. Jocelyn Voo is a graduate from the University of Berkeley and New York University, specializing in health and psychology. In an article she wrote about birth order and personality, she claimed, the reason all your siblings are so different is not because they came out of their mother's womb at different time, but it is the fact that his/her parents treated him/her a certain way. If you are first born, naturally, you get all the attention and are like an experiment for the new parents, and this is what shapes his/her attitude or behavior. The fact that middle born children are born into a family with already another child, immediately changes how their parents treat them from the first born. They never will know what it is like to have complete attention all the time from both their parents. This teaches middle children to share and be independent starting from birth. Then when the youngest child comes around even less attention is directed towards them. The middle child is in that position where nothing they do is as exciting as the first and last born. This is because they first born does it all first, from walking to going off to college. While the last born is the final child to grow up so the small details become a bigger deal again. Since it is the last time the parents will ever experien... ... middle of paper ... ...dle-borns have an advantage based on traits they develop, is supported by influential and successful people that applied those characteristics to become to achieve what they wanted in life. Works Cited Gladwell, Malcolm. Outliers. New York: Little, Brown, and Company, 2008. Print. Salmon, Catherine, and Katrin Schumann. The Secret Power of Middle Children. N.p.: Hudson Street, 2011. N. pag. Print. Schumann, Katrin. “Middle children are MORE successful: That’s the surprising finding of new research. So is it true about your family?” Mail Online. Associated Newspapers, 29 Dec. 2011. Web. 6 Mar. 2014. “Sibling Rivalry.” Teen Health and Wellness. Rosen Publishing Group, Inc., 2014. Web. 10 Mar. 2014 Voo, Jocelyn. “Birth Order and Personality.” Parents. Meredith, Aug. 2006. Web. 6 Mar. 2014

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