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I think birth order has a lot of ramifications in a person's life. Oldest children tend to be most responsible and therefore aren't very good at having fun (I know because I am one). They would do best to marry a youngest in the family. Oldest children also tend to excel in school and in their chosen professions. Middle children are the easiest to get along with and the youngest in the family have more of a tendency to just enjoy life. Of course there are always exceptions but for the most part I would say there is a lot of truth to what is written about birth order.

I was hoping someone had some studies on the subject.

Alfred Adler, the Austrian psychiatrist, is the one who started this whole notion of birth order affecting one's personality and progress through life.

It is an intriguing notion, and one that has caught the imagination of the public and has entered the pop psychology realm as a 'true fact', but in fact, the theory is in dispute, and has been for quite a while.

Most studies are anecdotal with no controls for other variables, and therefore of not much value. Others are so highly biased toward one position or the other that they are not particularly helpful.

Studies whose purpose was to examine all the literature on the subject have found wildly conflicting results and conclusions.

So the bottom line is: we don't really know if birth order affects a person in any significant way, but the data seems to be coming down on the side of 'not a whole lot'.

I have been using the professional search engines to look for any recent studies, and so far have come up empty.

Probably birth order is only one of many things that affect a growing child, along with family dynamics and demographics, economic status of the family, geography, culture, gender, and a host of other factors.

Thanks, Marti. I was just curious whether there were any studies on the subject I could look up. You answered it for me.