Research Shows Second-Born Children Are More Rebellious Than Their Siblings

If you are in a family of two or more siblings, you probably know how it goes. The first-born child is usually the smartest, the second or middle child tends to be forgotten and the baby of the family – well they are the baby.

New details regarding the behavior of second-born children have been released in a recent study. The research shows that second-born children are more likely to misbehave and sometimes suffer severe consequences.

Joseph Doyle, an MIT economist, reports that the "curse of the second-born child" might be true after all. Doyle and his colleagues found that second-borns (usually boys) are more prone to have a rebellious side compared to their older siblings.

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They collected data from thousands of sets of brothers in the U.S. and Europe. It showed that second-born children are 25 to 40 percent more likely to have a run in with the law or get in trouble at school.

According to NPR, the rebellious phase could be because the parenting style changed after the first-born. As a family grows, the dynamics change and not every child gets their parents undivided attention.

"The firstborn has role models, who are adults. And the second, later-born children have role models who are slightly irrational 2-year-olds, you know, their older siblings," Doyle told NPR. "Both the parental investments are different, and the sibling influences probably contribute to these differences we see in the labor market and what we find in delinquency. It's just very difficult to separate those two things because they happen at the same time."

Do you agree with these findings?

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