Children’s Personalities and Responsibilities: Do Sex and Birth Order Matter? Maria Romo

Abstract

The order in which children are born into a family often results in their having different responsibilities and being treated differently by their parents. This project sought to explore whether children’s personalities and responsibilities are influenced by birth-order and gender. Twenty-eight students grade 5th through 8th were observed for this study. Behavioral observations used event sampling to determine differences in frequencies of positive and negative behaviors between first- and later- born children as well as between children of different sexes. The study found that first-born children engage in more working and socializing behavior than their later-born counterparts, but do not show as much resisting and disrupting as later-born children. Also, overall, girls engage in working and socializing behaviors with a slightly higher frequency than boys. The categories of leading, accepting, resisting and disrupting were generally equal between boys and girls.