Popular Beliefs Affecting Birth Order

There are many popular beliefs about birth order involving personality and intelligence. While some of these beliefs have research evidence to confirm them; there are also multiple factors that determine a child’s development that can affect birth order. Researchers must consider mechanisms, series of measurable events that can be link to the outcome. Examples of the mechanisms are different prenatal environment or social and emotional changes. In addition, parents may be more skilled in care, be less excited about a later-born, and experiences with siblings. These mechanisms can affect the birth order in any aspect of development and work separately or together. There is empirical research on birth order and IQ on firstborn children getting a slightly higher test score, but not all reports show the same relationship. For instance, some studies of …show more content…
For example, in learning speech firstborn are surrounded by adults, who have a larger vocabulary and complicated grammar, whereas, later born are surrounded by other children which limits the vocabulary scope; meaning that firstborn receive a head start in development and are able to stay ahead. However, there is evidence that later born children score higher on intelligence test, this could be possible because older siblings promote the development and become models for later born, having toddlers in the house hindered development, having younger children removes attention from older children. There was study done in Norway comparing the IQ scores for men of different birth order including some whose older siblings had died. The study examined birth order and the social order. The social order was reported to be significant factor and the second born son whose older siblings had died was equal in adult IQ to