Youngest children have a reputation for being rebellious, rule breakers, sociable, charming, a bit spoiled and maybe even attention seekers. Is all of that true? And why is that the case? In today's episode, let's tackle the last sibling in our birth order series by deep diving in the psychology of birth order theory, alongside: The biggest stereotypes about youngest children Why youngest children are treated and raised differently What makes youngest children so successful in business? Can we predict who youngest children will marry? What struggles youngest children encounter in their families + much more! Listen now, youngest and all other siblings alike to learn more. PREORDER MY BOOK: https://www.psychologyofyour20s.com/general-clean Follow Jemma on Instagram: @jemmasbeg Follow the podcast on Instagram: @thatpsychologypodcast For business: [email protected] The Psychology of your 20s is not a substitute for professional mental health help. If you are struggling, distressed or require personalised advice, please reach out to your doctor or a licensed psychologist.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Chapter 1: What is the psychology behind being the youngest child?
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Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the show. Welcome back to the podcast. New listeners, old listeners, wherever you are in the world. It is so great to have you here back for another episode as we, of course, break down the psychology of our 20s. Today, we are tackling the lucky last in our birth order series. You heard that right.
Chapter 2: How does birth order theory explain personality differences?
After all of the waiting and the many, many requests, we are finally discussing the psychology of the youngest child and what their position in the family means for everything from their personality to their relationship and professional choices to to their relationships with their middle and eldest siblings, not just in childhood, but in adulthood as well.
The youngest child is, quite obviously, the baby of the family, and that position shapes their experiences a lot. And I'm so interested in the research around this. from birth order theory to some other theories, as well as some of the stories that you all have shared with me. And, you know, we just have a really comprehensive, fascinating, packed personality episode for today.
I don't do this very often, but I think I'm just going to skip the rest of this intro and let the episode speak for itself. you know let's keep it short and sweet there is so much to cover without further ado let's discuss the psychology of the youngest child So let's do a quick recap of what we know about birth order theory. So the arguments for it and the arguments against it as well.
We know that as humans, we are a product of many, many things, some tangible, some intangible. Everything from genetics to country of birth to parenting style, food. All of these things, though, kind of fall into two categories, nature and nurture. What we are born with, what we are raised in.
Now, the position we are born into a family is part of our environment and therefore it kind of falls into the nurture category. It influences our personality because of how it impacts how we were raised and therefore how we end up experiencing the world into adulthood.
So the saying really goes, and I always use this saying to describe birth order theory, just because you are raised in the same house doesn't mean that you had the same childhood as your siblings and your position in the family contributes to this difference in childhoods.
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Chapter 3: Why are youngest children considered risk-takers?
Because, you know, for all intents and purposes, two people who go through the same upbringing and are raised in the same house by the same parents, they should turn out pretty similar. And yes, we have to account for nature and our personality and how we're just born and who we are when we kind of come out of the womb. But there is a significant difference in how our parents treat us.
So the man who developed birth order theory, he was kind of the first one to say, to notice this. His name was Alfred Adler. You may also know him from the creation of the inferiority complex. Also, he was like a founding father of individual psychology, which if you study psychology, you've probably done like, I don't know, a unit in this.
Basically, he says that in individual psychology, what we're really looking for is a sense of mastery and a sense of
completeness that doesn't really matter it's not what we're talking about today but he was really working hard during you know the early and mid 1900s but birth order theory as it stands today is probably what he is most well known for and it basically says that being the oldest youngest middle or only child will affect what characteristics and traits you develop and
Now, let's be really, really clear because I see a lot of like birth order theory TikToks going around and Instagram videos. It is not a medical prescription. Like I cannot diagnose you as an eldest daughter. I cannot diagnose you as a youngest son. Like that's a descriptor.
It doesn't, you know, if you go to a psychologist, they're not going to like include that on your chart notes as like something that needs an intervention because it's just kind of who you are.
it's definitely like a theory it's a theory and a theory like any theory like has gaps it has exceptions it has flaws um what I kind of see birth order theory is doing is filling the same role as personality tests like they provide like there is research behind them and they provide a structural guide for better understanding of where we sit in relation to others but they are not a full answer to the questions we have about ourselves like
they're really interesting to explore and they're really interesting for reflection but of course anything like that that says you are only the way you are because of this one thing and this one test or this one theory can tell you like it's not accurate we exist in a much larger ecosystem of factors and contexts and situations with that being said let's say what this theory has to say about the unique traits and character of the youngest child
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Chapter 4: Are youngest children more likely to be spoiled?
According to this theory, the eldest child is often very responsible, very type A. They kind of take care of everyone else, especially if you're an eldest daughter. You know, that kind of makes sense. They mature the fastest. They're the eldest. They take care of a lot of the younger children. They're set up as a role model. Then we have a middle child.
The middle child is seen as the mediator or the peacemaker. They're actually sometimes referred to as the easy or invisible child because of how they are
sandwiched between the eldest and the youngest also middle children like sometimes they don't even get to be the only middle child like they have to share that position with someone else and then we have the youngest child the little baby of the family By the time your parents have gotten to their final child, especially if you're in a big family of three plus kids, like let's be so real.
They are tired. They are tired. All of the discipline that they had for their eldest or older children, all the rules that they promised to implement, all their energy has kind of dissipated because parenting is really, really hard. It reminds me of this interview I saw the other day with Billie Eilish's mom, really random.
And she talked about how being a parent, especially being a mother, requires you to use every single creative skill, every single life skill you have ever developed. Like anything you would put on a resume and more goes into being a parent. And it's right. Like she's totally right. It's a full time, full soul, full body effort. And imagine giving 100% to your job for 18 years straight.
Like by the time you get to that final kid, those final years, like you are cutting a few corners, especially when they're teenagers as well. So there's a 2008 study that looked into this conducted by researchers at Duke University and
and if you want to check out this research paper it's titled the games parents and adolescents play and what they found was that eldest and older siblings are actually raised in a more strict environment like they're penalized more sometimes they're used as an example but it also does seem that our parents get softer with age as a result youngest children they kind of sense they know that they can get away with much more than their
Elders or older brothers, siblings, sisters. So they're on average more likely to engage in risky behaviors. Research from the University of Birmingham and the University of Reading. I don't know if it's reading or reading. I'm going to say reading. They also found that youngest children in the families, they are also more likely to be self-employed.
They are nearly 50% more likely to take the risk of going into business for themselves. So they're risk takers, they're entrepreneurial. And this findings were like, this was a large study. It had almost 17,000 children who they surveyed them in first in 1970. And then again, at 38 years old, and some of them are younger, some of them are middle, some of them were only children.
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Chapter 5: Do youngest children struggle with being infantilized?
And the youngest child, they were the ones who are most likely to take risks. I think that's a really cool trait about younger siblings. And I will say the people who I know in my life who have taken the leap of faith to start their own business, to take the road less traveled, like the majority of them are younger siblings. And I think about like my office space.
So I work in an office space that I kind of rent out with a couple of friends in Sydney. And most of them like are running their own businesses, they're running their own side hustles and like they're doing that full time or they're self-contracted, like they do contract jobs. And every single one of them that's in that office is a youngest child.
So speaking of entrepreneurial spirit, like that's the evidence I kind of see in my own life, which is obviously speculation, but I think it's interesting. I will say, please by no means take any of these observations as rules. Like, if you are a youngest child and you're not entrepreneurial, it doesn't mean that there's something wrong with you.
Or if you're listening to this and you're not a youngest child, like, and you want to start a business, like, by no means does this mean that you can't. Like, it's... It's, I think, ridiculous to look at these rules and think that they will apply to everyone. But I think it's just an interesting pattern to recognize in society amongst people who are just making organic choices.
This really links to the first big stereotype about youngest children, though. that they're rebellious, that they're more carefree. You know, the youngest child is sometimes seen as the problem child. Like they're the ones who need to like get bailed out of jail or whatever, because they seem to have had a more relaxed childhood environment.
And what also comes with this relaxed environment is being spoiled. So the second big stereotype for today is that youngest children are spoiled, they get more gifts, they get more financial support, they get more praise.
There is much less research on this compared to the previous stereotype, mainly because it's slightly hard to measure because of what we call the social desirability bias in psychological research. So if we ask parents, okay, which one of your kids gets more gifts? Which kid do you spend more money on, etc?
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Chapter 6: Are youngest children truly attention seekers?
They obviously don't want to sound like they're playing favorites, so they're not going to be entirely honest. And if you ask the youngest child, they're probably not going to have noticed, right? There may be a situation where when you're asking them, like they're probably over the age of 18 in order to participate in this research, like,
They're probably the only child left at home if that's the case. So they don't have the comparison that the eldest and middle children would have. And that's the final person we might ask, eldest and middle children. They probably are also going to be biased. You know how competitive siblings can get.
They might be looking at the youngest child, the youngest baby of the family and going like, hey, I never got that. I never got to buy new shoes whenever I wanted. I never got to just get away with things like that. So it's a kind of a tricky one to think about. If you find a way to measure this, please let me know. I think it would be a very interesting study. But
Basically, what we can really rely on is kind of speculation and it's speculation that I want you to do for yourself. So I'm going to give you a hypothetical and you just tell me if this applies to you. So thinking about your family, Christmases, holidays, celebrations, which child got more presents, got more attention, got more time, maybe got more financial help, whatever it is like money.
It is usually the youngest. And you know what? Quite frankly, I understand. Like, they're the cutest. Everyone likes the little one. Everyone feels more protective of the youngest because they are, by their age, less capable, less mature. So naturally, it might seem that they're being spoiled in comparison to older siblings at the time.
But when the eldest child was also at the younger stage, like at some point, the eldest child is going to be an only child.
they were probably also spoiled to the same degree in fact I think it's actually the middle child who tends to miss out the most also like it's not all sunshine and rainbows for the youngest like this pattern of behavior of being spoiled of maybe being people being less strict with them can also lead to a
This is something that youngest children report that they experience even when they leave their childhood and their teenage years, even when they become adults. They are still treated like an infant. They are still treated as less capable by their families because they Even when they're 20, 25, 30, 50, their age may change, but the position in the family as the youngest doesn't change.
And this can be a big source of tension for some people as they get older and they try and advocate for themselves. They try and be independent. They try and, you know, take charge in the family. Sometimes they are met with resistance.
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