If you are the youngest child in your family, you probably grew up repeatedly hearing--and being infuriated by--what I have named the Birth Order Bias. At its most basic level, the Bias is the belief that last-born children are inferior to firstborn children. There are many premises that make up this belief. One of them is that youngest children "get away with murder." The theory is that Mom and Dad are strict disciplinarians when baby #1 arrives, and then ease up with each additional child. When Firstborn Fred acts up, Mom and Dad also act. He gets the full wrath of the whupping, and is expected to shape up fast. But the parents get more tired with each child's arrival. By the time Last-born Leah makes an appearance, the parents don't care much at all for discipline. In fact, they let her get away with things they would have never let Firstborn Fred do when he was her age. And poor Fred is off in the corner, jealously sulking away at the injustice of it all. Throughout his life, whenever the topic of birth order comes up (or whenever he brings it up), Firstborn Fred is quick to point out that youngest siblings like his sister "get away with murder." While whining about his youth, he commands sympathy and validation from others. And he usually gets it.
Well, I say this theory is nothing short of bullshit. The extent to which a child is disciplined has nothing to do with his or her placement in the family. Parents are often just as strict with later-born children as they are with the first one. In fact, they might even be more so, as they've had the opportunity to learn from their mistakes. For example, I have a friend whose older sister was not required to have a job in high school. After she graduated, her parents decided their remaining children should gain some work experience while they were still at home. My friend's parents then mandated that my friend have a job as a high-schooler--something her older sister was not required to do.
Family roles also play a large part in who receives the most amount of discipline. I have an older sister with an explosive temper. She developed it early on, and my parents eventually gave up trying to correct it. All my life I walked on eggshells around her for fear of setting her off. The most insignificant things would make her lose it. If she thought someone was blowing their nose too loudly, she would scream at them to stop. The family eventually accepted this as a normal trait, and my parents didn't blink an eye when she went on her rage attacks.
I developed a very different role. I became the easygoing, gentle kid. The kid who never did anything wrong. During my eighteen years at home, I never even slammed a door. I certainly never screamed at people, like my sister did. You would think my demeanor would make me less likely to get in trouble. Ironically, the exact opposite happened.
Because my parents were used to my passivity, whenever I did lose my temper they would immediately jump on me. One time my family was at a restaurant. I was sitting next to my explosive sister. At one point during the meal, she reached her hand onto my plate, stuck her finger in my mashed potatoes and put the sample in her mouth. (This is an older sibling.) "What are you doing?!" I yelled. My father looked over at us. "Hey! Hey! Calm down!" he said to me. This is the same man who would shrug his shoulders at my sister's tirades at home.
But if I were to make a generalization about which birth order is most likely to "get away with murder," I would say the reverse of the Birth Order Bias is true. Eldest siblings get away with some of the worst behavior in the family. I have heard older siblings call younger ones names that make me visibly cringe. I have seen bullying and belittling from older to younger sibling that parents would never accept from the kid next door. I have seethed with a burning rage when I've witnessed older siblings humiliate younger ones while the parents laughed it off. I have even seen older siblings hit younger ones while the parents stood by and did nothing. Witnessing all this abuse has made me seriously question the sanity of any person who claims that eldest children are held to a higher standard. I want to say to them, "WHO gets away with murder?" Because I think it's the ones doing the finger-pointing.
Seeing a child abuse their sibling is one thing. Watching the parents not doing anything about it is another. Parents have a responsibility here. They need to confront anything threatening a child's sense of feeling safe and loved. I don't understand why so many parents don't think they have a responsibility. Parents who don't discipline an abusive child are not doing their job.
And then people start to make excuses. "Parents are just confused," they say. "They think that what they're seeing is sibling rivalry. They don't want to pick sides, so they stay out of it." There's a time to be confused about sibling behavior. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about clear-cut incidents that Pollyanna herself would label "bullying." I think the only excuse is the one firstborns have claimed for themselves: laziness. Parents don't correct their child because of laziness, plain and simple. It really makes me angry when I see parents not doing anything about it.
What's possibly worse is the feeling that I can't do anything about it. What should I do? Should I correct the sibling? Should I talk to the parents about it? Would that do any good? A big reason why it makes me so mad is because I know what it's like to be in the victim's shoes. Seeing sibling abuse takes me back to my own childhood experiences. And I feel much the same as I did then: enraged and defenseless.
No, it is not true that younger siblings are more likely to misbehave because of when they were born. The Birth Order Bias is just a conspiracy to force people to overlook the real truth: Due to their size and strength, older siblings are likely to wield their power over their smaller victims. They're the ones who get away with murder. Through their words and actions, they get away with murdering us.
