Recently at a friend’s house for dinner, a group of adults sat around the table and watched my six-year-old daughter gently redirect the little boy she was pretending to read to.
“One, two, three, eyes on me,” she said when his attention had started to wander from the book. He automatically repositioned himself into a cross-legged posture, and my daughter nodded beatifically. “Very, very good,” she said. “Thank you for using your listening ears.”
It was adorable, and also fascinating to see our only child step into a role more typical of an older sibling. Used to being around primarily adults, our kid is more often in the center of the action, inserting herself into every conversation and attempting to lure someone into a game of make believe or hide and seek. If she’s not commanding the attention of every eye in the room, she’s engrossed in an independent activity like drawing, playing with her dollhouses, or looking at books on her own. Watching her play the adult with this little boy was a special chance to gain some insight into how she is processing the way we are raising her.
“It was adorable, and also fascinating to see our only child step into a role more typical of an older sibling.”
“Now, what do you see here?” she asked him. When he correctly identified an elephant, she cheered. “Good job!” she said, beaming. “I’m so proud of you!”
Our daughter has known the little boy his whole life — he is our godson, and they share a birthday exactly three years apart. He lives across the street, and our families have a weekly dinner together. So it’s no wonder that Poesy behaves this way with him but not necessarily with the kids at her school or in her extracurricular activities — he is more of a constant presence, one that she is sometimes interested in and sometimes irritated by, their interactions remarkably like how I remember behaving with my own younger brother at their age.
While she behaves differently when we are with him, I should note that I do as well. I find myself reminding her that he is younger than she is, asking her to help him and to have patience. I praise her when she is accomodating and controls her frustration if he takes one of her toys or throws something. I’m not being very thoughtful about how she might internalize this in the moment; I’m usually just trying to enjoy my dinner and keep the kids from becoming completely feral in the meantime.
“While she behaves differently when we are with him, I should note that I do as well.”
Watching Poesy with our godson is a joy, and everyone agrees, saying how sweet it is that she gets to play the big sister whenever they’re together. And that’s exactly what she’s doing — and what I’m asking her to do.
When I think about it later, I feel a little uncomfortable with what I might inadvertently be teaching her when I encourage her to step into this role — namely, to tamp down her own feelings in favor of everyone else’s. And this rubs me the wrong way because that’s exactly what I was taught to do from the moment my first younger sibling was born, when I went from being an individual person to becoming The Eldest Daughter.
But before we get into that, we need to talk about birth order theory.
What is birth order theory?
The order in which we are born undoubtedly has an impact on our development, though the science behind it is not exactly conclusive. Alfred Adler, a 19th- and early 20th-century Austrian psychotherapist, was the first to coin the birth order theory itself — and all the enduring stereotypes we associate with each child today.
“The order in which we are born undoubtedly has an impact on our development, though the science behind it is not exactly conclusive.”
To sum it up: “Key points of Adler’s birth order theory were that firstborns were more likely to develop a strong sense of responsibility, middleborns a desire for attention, and lastborns a sense of adventure and rebellion.”
Most of the studies and questionnaires that support the theory are deeply flawed, and yet the notion endures — at least as popular theory. “Such categorizations are popular because they’re rather intuitive, and one can always find an example of the sensible big sister or the rebellious young brother in their circle of acquaintances.”
When I ask my friends if they think their birth order had a significant impact on their development, most of them are emphatic that it does. But no one is more convinced than my fellow Eldest Daughters.
Who we are (and how we fit)
I’d personally never really given much credence to the idea that my birth order had a notable impact on my development until the term “Eldest Daughter Syndrome” started making the rounds on social media a few years ago.
Characterized by tendencies toward perfectionism and people pleasing, the term is not a psychological diagnosis so much as a cultural experience that comes from being the firstborn girl.
Watching these videos, I felt myself nodding along, mentally checking every box as behavior patterns for EDS were mentioned: The pressure to be “good,” or polite and likeable so that everyone around you is comfortable — check! A sense of shame and guilt whenever an awareness of your own unmet needs crops up — check! Anticipating, managing, and proactively monitoring everyone else’s feelings, because you never learned that adults are capable of enduring uncomfortable sensations such as disappointment — check! Constantly suppressing your own emotions until a sneaky resentment builds, so deep in your subconscious you don’t even realize it’s happening until one day, someone asks you, “Why are you so angry?” (Check check check!!!)
“Watching these videos, I felt myself nodding along, mentally checking every box as behavior patterns for Eldest Daughter Syndrome were mentioned.”
After marveling at this new insight into myself, I would send the video off to a friend or my husband and then go on with my day. The information was filed away now, pasted into my mental scrapbook of categories that all helped me piece together the sense of not only who I am but why I am the way I am.
There are the culturally established groupings, like personality types, attachment styles, love languages, astrological signs; the social and associative shorthands, like writer, artist, mother, woman, wife; and then there are the circumstances, events, and environments that I experienced that shaped and changed me into the person I am today.
I understand why I am drawn to categorizing myself, to finding the lanes that might be mine, and the communities I could be part of. Belonging and connection is a deeply human desire, and it’s natural to gravitate toward organization and structure in order to find that sense of security. I am an Eldest Daughter, and a people pleaser, and a perfectionist.
But I don’t think it’s the whole story.
Sum of our parts
As a storyteller, I have always been fascinated by the ways that a seemingly universal experience can have such wildly distinct impacts on different people.
Take a break up, for example — the most benign, middle-school version you can imagine. While most people might feel some embarrassment, sadness, or even heartbreak, some people might become so devastated they decide to quit dating altogether; others might have a new partner by gym class the next day. It can be tempting to attribute these distinctions to any number of the neat categories we align ourselves with: A middle child is going to spiral about being abandoned again, and immediately go out and try to find a new partner, while a Scorpio is going to TP their house and then post a dozen thirst traps on Instagram. And maybe those reasons make sense to us in the moment, or even for a long while — but I think there is so much more to us than that.
“There is something ineffable about the way that we are individually changed by our lived experiences, an alchemy that can’t be summed up and explained away with a single theory.”
There is something ineffable about the way that we are individually changed by our lived experiences, an alchemy that can’t be summed up and explained away with a single theory. Birth order theory almost instantly falls apart when studied transnationally, for example, and the size of families significantly alters findings as well.
I can even begin to poke holes in it anecdotally, when I scroll through all the other saved social media psych-diagnostic posts that have helped me to connect these very same traits (people pleasing, perfectionism, emotional monitoring) as being rooted in having ADHD, or just from being a woman.
“The whole is greater than the sum of its parts,” is a loosely translated quote attributed to the Greek philosopher Aristotle, which introduces the concept also known as emergence. The idea is that we are so much more than our individual experiences or components. There’s an interconnectedness within us that creates something much bigger than what any single element might be on its own.
“There’s an interconnectedness within us that creates something much bigger than what any single element might be on its own.”
When I was pregnant, I hired a doula named Olivia who was a mother of six. “Oh honey,” she told me, “They come out who they are, from minute one.”
I smiled and nodded, secretly clinging to my Type A conviction that nurture would outweight nature. And then Poesy arrived, and I realized that Olivia was completely right. Though the conditions of Poesy’s birth — her parents, her environment, our temperaments and values and choices — will all effect her in ways we won’t always anticipate, the inner truth of the person she is has been there from the moment she arrived Earthside.
I know that being an only child will have an impact on her life; but so will all the times I accidentally encourage her to tamp down her own feelings in order to be a good example to a younger child. But the person she is — someone who made her first joke at four months old, who lives for a party, who thinks deeply about language and has never met an object she couldn’t transform into an accessory — will interact with these conditions in her own unique way. The experience of her birth order won’t match up with other only children the world over, in other words, because no matter their commonalities, they will each be transformed by it in their own way — and then go on to interpret this experience in their later lives over and over again, always a little differently.
It’s easier to see a part than a whole, especially one as complex and mysterious and enormous as a person. But if we pay attention and we keep reminding ourselves, we might be able to train our eye to zoom out a bit, beyond any one tiny part of our much greater whole.
Stephanie H. Fallon is a Contributing Editor at The Good Trade. She is a writer originally from Houston, Texas and holds an MFA from the Jackson Center of Creative Writing at Hollins University. She lives with her family in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, where she writes about motherhood, artmaking, and work culture. Since 2022, she has been reviewing sustainable home and lifestyle brands, fact-checking sustainability claims, and bringing her sharp editorial skills to every product review. Say hi on Instagram or on her website.
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