Birth order and academic achievement.

Abstract

Regardless of orientation, most personality theorists are in agreement that early familial relationships and experiences exert a crucial influence on both childhood and adult behavior patterns. The theoretical framework of the present study is primarily that of Harris (3, 4, 5). He proposes that the divergent tendencies of first and later born children have systematic intellectual repercussions, with first borns, specifically, developing a proclivity for abstract verbal functioning, due to intense interaction with their parents. This proposition was given some confirmation in Harris' work with learning problems (3) and by his review of empirical studies (4). The latter included reports on adult first borns who scored higher on the Miller Analogies Test, and on first born children who scored higher than later born children of equivalent ages on the verbal portion of IQ tests. This evidence has led the present authors to propose that the first borns' proclivity for abstract verbal functioning will, in turn, increase their probability of relatively high academic achievemen t. Such a conceptualization is consonant with the view of birth order effects as presented by Adler (1, pp. 321-323) and further elaborated by Dreikurs (2). In general, the Adlerian contention is that differential parent-child-sibling interactions are in part determined by the ordinal position of a given child, and that specific personality organizations are reflections of goals toward which the individual had striven within the family constellation during the early years of his life. Several studies found differences in parents' interactions with their offspring of different ordinal positions. Lasko (6) reports less consistent and less spontaneous expression of warmth by mothers toward their first child than toward later children and more friction between the mother and the first born. He also reports less anxiety, protectiveness, and interference by parents in the case of later children, and more permissiveness.

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