From: Amanda Gamble
Email:
Course: CD 169: Motivating Children and Adolescents in Educational Settings
College: San Jose State University
Instructor: Eugene Matusov
ClassWeb: http://www.ematusov.com/cd169
ChildrenObservations: No
Date: 22 May 1997
Time: 20:29:06
Remote Name: ww-tc43.proxy.aol.com
I am very interested in the development of the individual in term of their development in the areas of personality,activity level, educational achievement and creativity. The studies I focused on were mainly from case studies on young children and adolescents. The studies focused on children and adolescents in families with two or more children and how they developed as a result. Most of the information complemented each other and produced results that were the most obvious. Such as, firstborns all appeared to have similar attitudes, behaviors and abilities across the studies and the same findings wer found with the middle borns and later borns. The educational achievement levels were obtained over a long period of time so the results could be as accurate as possible.
The information presented here will be information obtained from various sources of case studies and journal articles. The first area I looked at involved birth order as a moderator of development of the personality. It was found that "firstborn children are treated differently by parents throughout the lifespan than later born children" (Hoffman, 1991). It is these differential treatments that lead to later differences in personality. For example, if the parents treat the child with more respect and more affection than a later born child, that firstborn child will probably be better adjusted and have a stronger self concept than the laterborn child. The laterborn child also may have problems with affection and their emotions later in life as a result of the lack of affection by their parents earlier in life. The variables that were looked at in this study by Hoffman looked at variables such as acceptance, affection, intensity of contact and read- iness of explanation. In all the cases the firstborns were looked at were rated higher in these areas than the laterborn children, especially with regard to level and amount of attention given (Hoffman, 1991).
Two other aspects that I found interesting about firstborns was that parents tended to interfere with the firstborns more and they also gave them more responsibilities (Hoffman, 1991). This interference could lead them to feel more pressure and ess sure of themselves than their younger siblings who were given more independance and less responsibility. With regards to educational achievement of children of multiple children families, it was found that children of one-child families were the ones most likely to obtain the highest levels of education. The firstborns were the next most likely to attain high levels, followed by lastborn and then middle children (Travis et al., 1995). This is probably due to more pressure to achieve placed on the only child or firstborn thus they feel a stronger need to achieve.
Another factor that was mentioned in the study was that the mother's level of schooling had a direct affect on the child's ability to achieve higher levels of schooling. If the mother achieved a high level of education than the child is more likely to also, and the firstborn at that(Travis et al., 1995). Although birth order was not found to have an effect on educational achievement of children who were in families who were wealthy, meager or poor. This finding surprised me because I would think that wealthy families would tend to push harder for their children to succeed than children from poor families. Activity level was also looked at with regards to ordinal position. It was found, according to Eaton et al., 1989, that firstborn children exhibit higher levels of activity than laterborns and this is a consistent finding through young childhood but at about age 7 it was seen that activity levels appeared to remain more unchanged (Eaton et al., 1989). Thus the activity levels in successive birth positions decreased from oldest to youngest, but at about age 7 this difference was much less noticeable. In the study the infants, toddlers and young children were looked at according to a scale of hyperactivity, hypoactivity and "normal" amount of activity. When comparing the results of the children across birth positions the results that were mentioned before were found consistently.
With regards to levels of creativity in children it was hypothesized that the firstborn children would have the lower amount of activity levels due to them being more compliant than laterborn children (Gaynor et al., 1992). But, the opposite was also mentioned that children who are laterborn are less creative than firstborns. It was found that creativity is not a factor of family size or ordinal position, but that each child in successive birth positions had their own sense of creativity and that not one child was considered more creative than the other(s). So, therefore, the idea of birth order is dirctly related to education and personality but not with the idea of creativity. I have seen these examples of birth order in real life and not in studies. These findings directly relate to what I have seen in firstborn, middle children and laterborn with people and families that I personally know. When we see and work with children it's a good idea to take these realities in and understand that these can be additional reasons for differences in siblings in the same family.
References:
(1) Eaton, Chipperfield, Singbeil., Journal of Developmental Phsychology 1989, Vol. 25, No. 4, 668-672.
(2) Travis, Kohli., Journal of Social Psychology. 1995, 135 (4), 499-507.
(3) Hoffman, Lois W.,Psychological Bulletin. 1991, Vol. 110, No. 2, 187-203.