Are you the oldest, middle, or youngest of your family? You may not think this is important but in reality, it is. Birth order can definitely affect a person 's personality and intelligence. “The Achiever, the Peacemaker and the Life of the Party: How Birth Order Affects Personality”, an article by Dr. Gail Gross says that a shift in parenting is one of the reasons why some children have different personalities than their siblings. There is also evidence to show that parents changing their discipline with different children and investing different amounts of time can result in different performances in school, from, “Why First-Born Kids Do Better in School” by V. Joseph Holtz.
One of the reasons why birth order affects personality
…show more content…
A study done by V. Joseph Holtz and Juan Pantano shows that different parents discipline their kids differently. Pantano and Holtz found in their study that, “first-borns were more likely to face daily homework monitoring than younger siblings.” This is basically saying that firstborns will be closely monitored so that younger siblings will take notice. Once the younger siblings realize that mom and dad are watching their older siblings closely, they may work harder so their parents will not monitor them. This is showing that the way parents monitor the eldest child can have an effect on all the children. Another part of Juan’s study showed that “the more younger siblings a child has, the greater the likelihood that parents will closely supervise the oldest child after that child performs lower than expected on a report card.” Parents will basically want to set the tone for their younger children in terms of discipline. They want to show their kids that if they do bad on a report card, there will be consequences. Parents do this by using the oldest child as an example and showing what might happen. Pantano and Joseph call this method, “trickle down discipline”. My final piece of evidence to show that the amount of time invested in children can affect intelligence is from an article by TODAY. A. Powloski is the author of the article, “First-borns get intellectual advantage over younger siblings, study finds” where she takes data from a study done by a group of scientists about the effects of birth order on intelligence. The study found that “Parents spend less time reading to their later-born children and teaching them basic concepts, like the alphabet.” This is basically saying that parents have all the time they need to teach their firstborn children basic things. When the second child comes along, the parents have to divide