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Middle child’s day? Yes, there is a date for this.

Yesterday was the Day of the Middle Child. Yes, it’s official, there are days for everything and a pair of boots. But does it really make sense to say that middle children are different from everyone else? I mean, aren’t children, by definition, all different, whatever their position in the family hierarchy? Well, as a mother of four (and thus a mother of not one, but two middle children), I think I can agree with the thesis that yes, they are all different, but some are more different than others.

Some say that children today seem to be born taught. Here at home, one of our children seems to have been born knowing that he would not be the last. In fact, he still had no more siblings and was already behaving as some experts say middle-aged people tend to behave (Martim was about 3 years old when he wiped his ass on some curtains, urinated on his grandmother’s carpet when he had visitors , drank syrup, showed his cock to the whole neighborhood, among many other adventures that are still successfully remembered at Christmas dinners). He was always the middle one, even before the middle one existed, so I don’t know if he’s a fortune teller, or if the theories about the sandwich boy are just that: theories.

The Austrian psychologist Alfred Adler (1870-1937) was the first to study the importance of birth order in defining personality traits: “It is a common fallacy to imagine that the children of the same family are raised in the same environment. Of course, there is much that is common to all, within the same house, but the psychic situation of each child is individual and differs from the situation of the others by the order of their succession”. (Adler, 1964)

It actually makes some sense. The first child represents the great blow to the head of the parents. Faced with love of this magnitude for the first time, parents may feel an urge to create the perfect self: smart, athletic, gregarious, cultured, funny, some kind of unattainable all-in-one (but let’s not spoil their dreams). . ).

When my first child was born, I remember feeling like I had my life’s mission in my hands. And I thought poetic things like “It’s like having a blank book, and we’re the first here to write it. It is like having a piece of clay and we are the ones who are going to shape it”. It was the hormones, of course, and a generous dose of drama that has been with me from an early age. But I think it happens to very good people. That first and primary love can have violent side effects. And then, in the circle of friends, several first children begin to be born, so there are also contests to see which of them will be best positioned to win the cup for the best written book -son, the best sculpted in clay-. son, etc., outside, that there is no lack of metaphors of raw material capable of becoming a work of art.

It is perhaps for all this that the first children tend to be simpler, more educated, better students and, many times, too perfectionist.

Before Alfred Adler raised the question of birth order as a condition of personality, Francis Galton (1822-1911), an English anthropologist, mathematician, and statistician (and cousin of Charles Darwin), published the book English Men of Science: Their Nature and Breeding (1874). In this work, Galton studied the profile of 180 leading scientists, and during his research he noticed something peculiar: most of the renowned scientists on his list were firstborns.

At that time, however, the reasons given for this supposed brilliance of the eldest sons had to do mainly with the fact that the former had more possibilities to study (for the latter, there were often no economic conditions). But it was also concluded that the parents gave more attention and responsibility to the firstborn, which, according to later studies, has remained unchanged over the years.

Going back to Alfred Adler, the psychologist affirmed that the first-born had a greater identification with the environment of the adults and, therefore, they developed that sense of responsibility more (but they also became more easily neurotic). The younger ones would have a more creative future, and the middle ones (he himself was a middle child) would be more emotionally stable and accustomed to sharing (with the older ones and the younger ones).

After Adler, studies, more or less (or not at all) scientific, multiplied in countries around the world. There were those who claimed that there was a relationship between personality and birth order in the family, and there were those who peremptorily dismantled this idea.

Among those who corroborated Adler’s theory is the American psychologist Frank J. Sulloway, author of the book Born to be Rebel (1996). Sulloway’s method was truly pioneering: he analyzed 121 historical facts and used biographical information on more than 6,500 people. In the events analyzed there were 28 scientific revolutions, including Copernicus’ Heliocentric Theory, Darwin’s Theory of Evolution and Natural Selection, or Wegener’s Theory of Continental Drift. Sulloway collected information on the scientists who played a central role in each of the revolutions (supporters or antagonists). Among all the factors analyzed, the psychologist found one that turned out to be the first influence. You guessed it: birth order. According to Sulloway, the scientists born later in the family were the most avant-garde, capable of more easily adopting highly disruptive theories for the time. In contrast, firstborns aligned more with the status quo.

But then came those who took it and broke it into little pieces. Among them Stefan Schmukle stands out. The German psychologist conducted a study, published in 2015, in which 20,000 (twenty thousand!) individuals analyzed from three different countries participated: the United States of America, Germany and the United Kingdom. At the end, the conclusion, which goes something like this: “We found no consistent effects linking birth order to extraversion, emotional stability, agreeableness, conscientiousness, or imagination. Based on the very high statistical sample, as well as the consistency of the analytical results, we have to conclude that birth order does not have a lasting effect on personality traits.”

Faced with a study that puts 3 countries to the ground and a sample of 20 thousand souls, it is hard to believe the story that continues to sell us as true, that children have different personalities depending on whether they are the first, the middle, or the last. . Although, looking at my tiny (compared to 20,000 objects of analysis) “lab,” I’d say that what they point to as middle-child fits perfectly with my first middle-child, Martim.

It’s just that Martim isn’t just the middle child. He is the middle child who was born after a boy and before a girl. I know that these definitions of gender (and the associated stereotypes) are falling out of use, but the truth is that I felt on several occasions that his position in the family hierarchy ended up being a bit unpleasant. He wasn’t the oldest (the oldest was “verified” on all of Adler’s assumptions and “disciples: straight, responsible, feeling good around adults), he wasn’t the only boy, he wasn’t a girl. So, as if that wasn’t enough, another child was born, the fourth child, who embodied the spoiled baby of the family (again, as advocates of birth order theory as the great shaper of personality suggested).

The truth is that this idea of ​​the middle child continues to have followers, and even one day a year to celebrate it (August 12). Books continue to be written on the subject, articles published in the most varied national and international press proliferate. There are jokes on the subject and even memes.

In short, they say that the middle children are rebellious, sociable, less familiar, more independent and likely to live far from their country of origin, less perfectionists. Then all of a sudden I would say that if we were to compare children to domestic animals, the firstborn would be dogs and the middle ones would definitely be cats. I just don’t know what other parallels we could make with the other brothers, but it’s something I’m going to focus on (bullshit, I have more to do).

It’s worth it…

Read Mama sometimes has a head full of thunder (ed. Soul two Books)

A book that is delicious, and I am not the only one who says so, since it was a finalist for the Algar Prize for Children’s and Young People’s Literature. It was written by Bea Taboada and illustrated by Dani Padrón (ed. Alma dos Livros, 2022) and I like it because it shows children that adults (especially mothers) are not perfect. They have emotions, they are angry, they are sad, they forget, they are happy. “Sometimes the mother has clouds in her head. You forget about my lunch and we’re late for birthday parties. Other times, the mother has a rainbow on her head. She sings in the car and give me a million kisses. Sometimes the mother has a head full of thunder. She speaks loudly and grits her teeth hard. Do I also have clouds, rainbows and thunder in my head? An excellent approach to the complex world of emotions, all human, all common to all of us.

go to the theater to see I hate my sister

It is on stage at Quinta da Ribafria, in Sintra, today (Saturday, August 13) and tomorrow. The work is for people over 6 years old and, on the day that I write about brothers, it could not be more recommended. The show is divided into two performances with dramatic texts by Sébastien Joanniez. In one we have the older sister, in the other the younger sister. Both complain about their role in the family, using humorous and inventive language. Both confess to hating their sister but what is implied is that, after all, they love each other without remedy.

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Sonia Morais-Santos She is the author of the blog “Cocó na Diaper“. She is a former journalist, she has four children and two dogs, she has worked for various newspapers and magazines in Portugal and has published four books. [ver o perfil completo].