yr birth order

eldest

I hope this doesn't turn into a character-analysis Freud bullshit session.....

Eldest. However, shorter than little sister. Therein lies the conundrum and a good deal of madness.

Louis, it probably will, but whatevs.

younger of two

2 of 2

youngest of five, they tell me.

2nd of 8.

Elder of two full brothers, but I have a much older half-sister. Not sure which way to vote.

I'm the oldest of two. Yay big sisters!

Only not counting the 1/2 sister I've never met.

Elmo's mom was just knockin' em out.

The first, the last, the only'bling.

milo: staunch catholicism + "rhythm method" explains most of it

fwiw, my 5 younger brothers are technically half brothers, and my dad and his girlfriend had a girl together not long ago.

middle of three; one older sister, one younger.

oh wait i have a half-brother who's about 10 years older, but i've only seen him twice ever and we don't really ever mention him so it doesn't count

eldest, i'm the crash test baby.

Eldest here, too.

younger of 2

No older we-don't-talk-about-its in my family!

Eldest. However, shorter than little sister. Therein lies the conundrum and a good deal of madness.

I know, right? I'm shorter than both my little sisters.

as far as dimestore psychoanalysis, birth order is my favorite axis for such.

I am three years older than my sister and she is not taller than me. She is, however, smarter and more ambitious.

Eldests all seem to be 'oh I am diffident, family see me as the weirdo' or 'PHEAR MY BREADWINNER STATUS'.

I think there's a lot of promise in being the youngest. and envy in being the eldest, obvs.

oldest of 1

younger of 2 brothers

I was an elder, then the second eldest, but I'm back considering myself the elder again.

I've always been the second youngest, if that helps?

I've always been the oldest, except on selected weekends between the years 1981-1989.

Second of four, and the only girl. Always had my own bedroom. Always wanted to be a boy. Can't really get the hang of being friends with other women.

family: 1/2
biologically: 2 of X

Youngest of 4.

Oldest of three.

Eldest of two until I was 8, then eldest of 3 until I was 18, then eldest of 4 until I was 20, then eldest of 5. Always the babysitter, rarely the babysat.

weird?

the eldest inherits the internet

Hang on, I wasn't always the second youngest! I was an only child for the first 18 months!

Big brother is watching.

If this poll obtains a representative sample, then the number of 'oldest' and 'youngest' replies should be roughly the same, assuming there is nothing about ILx that predominately attracts people of a particular birth order (a quite reasonable assumption).

i'm second of four brothers- i'm also willing to bet that ilx has a higher proportion of people that have older siblings than you'd expect, because it's full of smartmouths.

i always had the feeling ilx was mostly composed of elder siblings...

Maybe the younger siblings aren't old enough to post to ILX?

I missed this poll but I am eldest.

I missed this poll, but I am the younger.

Weird result! I'm middle.

I missed this poll but I am number 2 of 5. I am the best one though.

wait LJ has a mystery bro

he died.

Jesse Aron Jaggerz

bump!

as far as dimestore psychoanalysis, birth order is my favorite axis for such.

― horseshoe, 29 May 2007 19:15 (eighteen years ago) bookmarkflaglink

same

Eldest (of two) here

Dmac a classic middle child ofc.

I am an eldest child but idk if I behave like one or not, in some ways yes in others not so mlb

Not so much!

Eldest child/daughter, eldest of all grandchildren/cousins, eldest of all great-grandchildren/cousins once removed.

Make of that what you will.

im the second child but the family dynamic is complex and of late in particular ive found it increasingly difficult and destabilising to accept a role or find a role that i can even function in within an increasingly widening and muddled set of inner and outer families

its been a large stress factor in my head over the past few years and I'm not getting through it very well tbh

family roles, what they imprint upon us, where they launch us, where they leave us and where we find ourselves when back amongst family and the expectations of family are largest influence on my personality and my behaviour in the world, i think, and i may take forever to find a balance with it

the echoes of my familial role in my work and other relationships are also deep and strong and cutting those ties matter more to me than ever, i think

in other words, yes, dmac is a classic middle child

The original poll results are remarkable — no wonder this place was so mean back in the day ;)

I'm a middle child, and I am also pretty classic, tyvm

I'm the eldest of 3, I'm not sure what that means for who I am. I did once say to my brother that I managed to disappoint my dad in all the ways that left my brother free to not be a disappointment. Sucked tbh.

xp now I feel bad reading darraghmac's sincere and thoughtful post. If I understand birth order dynamics correctly, then I am indeed a fairly classic middle child: I often perform a mediating role / maybe too easily see people's differing perspectives. But I am also intensely concerned with justice and fairness. There is some degree of (quietly) wanting/needing attention, though I'm not sure how to articulate that.

In terms of my family, I think I have a better adult relationship with my parents than my two siblings, partially because I had a much more argumentative & combative one as an adolescent, some of which was rooted in my middleness (though also my gender, as I belatedly realized through talking to my younger sister about her childhood).

I'm not sure how much of this comes across on ilx.

My parents were quite young (21 and 22) when they had me, and I have always felt like the experimental model. We moved to this sort-of-commune when I was four, they had me call them by their given names instead of mum & dad (and I still feel weird & embarrassed about calling them mum & dad now) and I was generally left to be borderline-feral around the commune and the surrounding countryside.

Whereas my younger sister was born just a year before they split up and had much more conventional rearing, and only really knew the sort-of-commune from weekend vists, and by the 90s it was more like a housing association anyway, she will call them mum and dad, she went to ballet and drama classes, etc.

So I'm not sure how much of this is generalisable and how much is just my strange childhood, but my relationship with my parents and my sister's relationship with them seem to be very different. I haven't really spoken to her about this but we'll be spending time together at Christmas and it's one of the things I'm keen to talk about.

Eldest of three — grew up with a sister who's just a year and a half younger, then younger brother showed up when I was 12. I think the biggest difference being the eldest was that when I went off to college, I basically slipped away from a family that was still full-on nuclear — my sister still had two years of high school left, and my brother was just starting grade school. So it sort of felt like they didn't even miss me — when I came home for Thanksgiving break my freshman year, my bedroom had already been given to my brother, so it was guest rooms for me from then on. That suited me just fine and gave me a physical and emotional distance from the rest of them that I think persists to this day. I was the first to break away, and I broke away the most. I don't know if that's a common elder-child dynamic, but it was mine. (Which makes it both sort of ironic but also maybe predictable that my parents made their we're-getting-old move to be near me — I'm more able to deal with them in a somewhat neutral way than my siblings are.)

I was the first to break away, and I broke away the most.

This is true for me too, I left the UK in 2002 and didn't permanently move back until 2016, meanwhile my sister has never lived abroad.

Blended trainwreck family: two sisters, two stepsisters (all older); one much-younger half brother.

So I have youngest-sibling dynamics vis-a-vis my sisters, but an oldest-sibling dynamic with my brother.

@rob really no need!

ito starting to see the dynamics at play in others, my youngest brother and i have had a lot of involved discussions lately on thus stuff and it gave me a lot of useful insight into his perspective i hadnt given space to before. id always handwaved away the youngest as everyone's second favourite and a carefree role, nothing asked and everything done for.

in fact hes someone that feels a lot of pressure to ensure that fights end ok, while viewing everyone involved (parent and brother) as some strange variant of distant elder or newer god while also thinking we are all idiots for even staying involved at all.

our father (who art and hath always been busy on another continent or no continent, and can remain that distant when he is incontinent) left home for good when this fella was ten and five mins phone call a month 29 years later cannot end quickly enough for either puzzled party.

other brotherwise, one elder, less said the better at present, one between, never says anything. im distancing myself from both but have no actual idea how to (id take some tips tbh)

hm actually would everyone be ok if this were 77'd?

n fact hes someone that feels a lot of pressure to ensure that fights end ok, while viewing everyone involved (parent and brother) as some strange variant of distant elder or newer god

I think this is kind of my younger brother's position. He grew up with ALL of us as big people who had authority over him — he famously once remarked at the age of 4 or so, "I live in a house full of giants." So even tho he's in his 40s now, it's taken him a while to recontextualize all of us and parse the differences between his siblings and his parents. (And to realize that his siblings grew up with the same parents he did.)

Oldest of two, married to an only child. Sometimes I feel like a de facto only child, though, because my younger brother hasn't spoken to our mom in over 20 years.

xp

nobody grows up with the same parents, and I'll die on that hill

Agree. Each parent definitely has a distinct relationship with each of their children, no matter how hard they try to maintain a consistent 'parental persona' toward them all, if only because each child is different than their siblings. The closest parents can come is in regard to identical twins, who are their own uncanny phenomenon.

family dynamics alter radically from having the first child to subsequent, regardless

and that's not taking into account parents having different incomes, time, energy, stresses etc throughout different periods

i dont know any parent that approaches rearing a first kid like rearing a fourth, i know families where the kids were pretty much raised in different social classes tbh

Youngest of three, but by a lot: my brother is eighteen years older and my sister is sixteen years older. My parents had been together for 21 years already and were well into the "I just want some goddamnn peace and quiet" part of the lives when for some inexplicable reason they decided to have a "save-the-marriage" baby - which was me.

I didn't save the marriage - my folks never divorced, but separated when my mom decided that she'd preferred being a hoarder on her own and didn't want another person around the house. Consequently, my family were just people I grew up around and I had to pretty much raise myself from age 12 onward. These days, I'll talk to my sister a couple times a year. My brother stopped talking to any of us over 30 years ago. Enough time has passed that I legit forget that I even have one.

I am eldest and also middle-ish:

Brother 54yo
Me 45yo
Sister 38yo
Brother 35yo

My oldest bro left home pretty young so I was the eldest when my younger sibs were born. Sibling relationships also complicated by the fact we have different fathers. Youngest 2 sibs are my stepdads bio kids with my mum, I have a different dad who was never in my life, my oldest bro also has a different dad who my mum was off and on with for years (including after I was born) and was a physically abusive drunk.

I cut my oldest brother out of my life 25 years ago, and my youngest brother got cut out a couple years ago, but I’m pretty close with my sister, but that relationship only developed after her first kid was born.

I was expected to babysit at my parents’ convenience, on top of working my part time job ( 23hrs per week) during high school. As an adult I’m completely opposed to feeling obligated to do anything I don’t wanna do, and I’m almost impossible to guilt-trip into anything. I also don’t enjoy being around small children at all.

Unsurprisingly, I’m childfree by choice.

I definitely see birth order dynamics with my mom and her sisters. My parents had a solid relationship— my mom was the eldest and my dad was the youngest and they had the same dynamic as a couple… my mom was in charge and took care of everything and my dad was nice and fun and good at asking for help and appreciative of being taken care of. … she did his laundry for 50+ years… she had a major medical emergency about 3 years ago and was in the hospital for 2 months…my dad did not know how to use the washing machine…

As an adult I’m completely opposed to feeling obligated to do anything I don’t wanna do

same

and I’m almost impossible to guilt-trip into anything.

fuck

. I did once say to my brother that I managed to disappoint my dad in all the ways that left my brother free to not be a disappointment. Sucked tbh.

This was my ex’s experience as well … he got more “tough love” from his parents than his 3 younger siblings… however, my mom had the opposite experience. She was the “perfect” child that her two younger sisters didn’t measure up to. However, she may be an unreliable narrator. But I do remember that as they got older, her parents trusted her and took advice from her more than her two sisters