Kim 1

Jennifer Kim

Sociology 150

Prof. Brian Powers

Reader Group 2: Patrick

Birth Order Identity: Once the Baby, Always the Baby?

As the oldest child, my birth order has always allowed myself to explain my extreme possessiveness of power, responsibility, and control. Whether an excuse or truth, to me, birth order identity provided a great amount of relief, justifying particular behaviors that I could not associate with my personality. My desire to be academically above my younger siblings, my need to please my parents, and my belief that I had a responsibility to care for my parents as they age: do these feelings stem from my identity as the eldest or are they merely a causal effect of my self-expectations?

Seeing myself as a case where birth order identity significantly affects my interaction with social environments and perception of the world, I wanted to delve deeper into different individuals grasp of and adherence to their birth order identities. As I scoured the web for universal birth order stereotypes, I found that the trends were strikingly defined. The eldest were acclaimed as the responsible caretakers while the youngest were known to be pampered, leaving the middle child with a less secure role in the family. However, by conducting my own research on birth order identities through interview with subjects about their past lives within their families and how that has shaped their college paths ad present selves, I discovered a shocking amount of differences between all these children that should have had a similar identity based upon their birth order. In my field research, I focused on the identity of the youngest child and how that affects his or her assumption of responsibility and achievement in college and family. Sociologists like Conley suggested that there were defining characteristics like the vast amounts of care that youngest siblings receive that change their perception of achievement. But while all my interviewees identified strongly with being the baby of the family, due to their receiving of a lot of care and being able to get away with a lot of things, many environmental situation like financial stress and familial conflict challenged to redefine their view of responsibility in a harsh working reality of an adultbeyond their expectations to be pampered.

In order to legitimatize my claims in this paper, I conducted ten short interviewswith a 50:50 male to female ratioto assess the basic feel of these people and their relationship with the identity of being the youngest. However, in order to provide concrete examples of sociological effects of birth order in my essay, I chose four interviewees to focus on examples who have very unique experiences of this sibling identity, hinting also at different sociological developments of their sense of selves due to their experiences with this identity. For the sake of clarity in this essay, I will be referring to the subjects as B, D, J, and N in order to keep the confidentiality that made the subjects comfortable enough to share their academic and family history. For the purpose of seeing how people internalize this identity differently beyond just the knowledge of the fact that they are born this way, these four people provide striking data both disproving and proving sociological theories that we have discussed in classwhich demonstrates that birth order identity is malleable to sociological experience. A similar trend of behavior and experience within these different interviewees would have merely demonstrated the existence of a strong influence of this birth order identity on these peoples senses of selves. However, the differing variations of how being the youngest has changed these peoples perspectives suggest that Meads sociological theory is valid, a theory which describes how after a self has arisen, it in a certain sense provides for itself its social experiencesbut it is impossible to conceive of a self arising outside of social experience (Mead 122).

For all four interviewees, social context played an important role in how these different individuals all claimed their as the youngest of the family. As Erving Goffman states in The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, when an individual appears before others his actions will influence the definition of the situation which they have come to have (OBrien 263). Goffman believes that an individual will act in any way necessary to impress others in a way in order to give a specific impression that will evoke a specific response. For the youngest child, this manifests itself in the way they are treated, allowing them to assume similar responses in other situations. For D, when he and sisters would fight, his immediate response was to cry, knowing his parents would be more lenient on him as he was the youngest son. This leniency demonstrated by parents is a similar trend in the childhood of these four siblings. Both B and D were always given the best parts of the fish and got first pick always as the baby of the family. This social treatment due to birth order identity allowed all four subjects to recognize that being the youngest differentiated themselves from the rest of their siblingsa sense of self that developed from their role in their familysomething Goffman believes individuals use to translate similar responses in other situations. For J, because she was given so much care in the past, she admits that she craves the same attention here in Berkeley, because her parents are home at Maryland. The long distance relationship became a distinct situation that helped J to realize her dependence that she attributes to her younger sibling role, helping her to keep intact that identity even across the countrya role her older brother fulfilled, a social influence I will elaborate on later.

Seeing as there are similarities in the trends of how these individuals have acquired their birth order identities, Conley, in his You May Ask Yourself, explores further into the role of birth order especially in his theory known as the pecking order. He explains that the pecking order determines siblings positions in the overall status ordering that occurs within society not from talent or a lack thereof, but from societal influences on the family (Conley 482). Because of this, Conley brings up his biggest theory on birth order: the resource dilution model. This model suggests simply that parental resources are finite and each additional child gets a smaller amount of them leading to lower success and achievement rates in school, career, and future goals (Conley 530). Although D had the slightly lower grades as expected from this theory, the other three interviewees did not fulfill this expectation, being more successful than their older siblings. In fact, in lieu of Conleys theory and my research data which suggests that sociological factors that with birth order identity create a more internalized sense of sense, I found that due to certain social factors such as reference groups, financial background, and cultural identity, the youngest identity can be transformed beyond Conleys resource dilution model.

One crucial factor excluded from Conleys assumption of the resource dilution model was the role of the older siblings in the lives of these younger siblings. Although the uneven distribution of resources, the eldest getting proportioned the majority, may be true in Js case, she also believes she wasnt lacking because her brother had more to offer her. In fact, being able to attend the same college as her brother, J had been given a lot of advice and care from her brother, eating dinner with him every week so that her brother can constantly check her progress in school. For B, academically, she believes she had it easier than her brother. Since her brother also attended Berkeley as a senior with the same major, advice on classes and the resources he collected like old exams enables B to more easily trek through the IB requirements to become an optometrist. The effects of having or lacking such support is clearly demonstrated in Zimbardos Lucifer Effect which explains that the reality of any role depends on the support system that demands it and keeps it in bounds, not allowing alternate reality to intrude. In contrast to the abuse the guards inflicted upon the people participating in the experiment, and the damage the lack of a positive support system incurred on these individuals psychologically in the Stanford Prison Experiment, the older siblings were a more positive support system that allowed both B and J to surpass the achievement rates of their older siblings while grounding themselves in the reality of birth order identity. Their reliance on older siblings stemming from past childhood tendencies fell perfectly in line with their need to survive and achieve, allowing them to develop a sense of adult reality despite opposing birth order tendencies.

Another influence that changed these individuals grasp on their identity as the baby of the family was the reality of working life and independence in college. For J, her older brother recommended that she not live like him, but instead be studious because the world is a competitive market. As she struggled with applying to Haas this semester, that reality of fending for your own job in the midst of competition became true. This need to forgo younger sibling tendencies is clearly explained by W.E.B. Dubois concept of double consciousness, which unpacks how our awareness of how we are perceived constantly shapes and directs our own identity and behavior. Being the youngest at times is a disadvantage at times when being responsible is a highly valued trait in the workplace. Because younger siblings have multitudes on support from parents and older siblings, with their innate tendency to rely on others like Conley states, responsibility would be hard to cultivate and adjust to for the youngest birth order identity. Such social expectations allowed J to strive to rely less and endure more for her education, traveling extensively to work on her resume. N felt the exact same way, realizing the harsh reality of this world especially coming from a less secure financial background. Even as the youngest, her situation encouraged N to take up the responsibility and leadership that her older siblings should have taken, which also caused her to compromise her and others expectations that she should be pampered and taken care of as a younger sibling.

In fact, financial struggle became a vital factor in changing Ns perspective of her role in her family. Coming from a family of Hispanic immigrants, her brothers didnt have U.S. citizenship so N was treated and expected to be the oldest due to her birth status in the U.S. She never remembers being treated as the youngest because her unique situation caused her to take on different responsibilities that older siblings would typically be in charge of. In accordance to Conleys resource dilution model, Ns situation caused her to receive less benefits and experience more hardship, but the expectations of her parents forced her to assume the role of an eldest, which demonstrates the strong influence of social situations and people that could cause birth order identity to be forgone, in order to ensure survival and protection of family.

Culture was also another major factor in changing the perception of this birth identity for some of these individuals, especially D. As the youngest and only Korean son with two older sisters, D was practiced in culture to compete with his older siblings in order to train himself to fight off competitors in the outside world. But because his sister achieved so much due to Koreas high standard of achievement, D failed to achieve a similar level of success, ultimately giving up his desire to surpass his sister. For D, Blumers sense of racial position explains his inability to fully fulfill his innate birth order identity. Blumer states that race prejudice presupposes, necessarily, that racial prejudiced individuals think of themselves as belonging to a given racial group. For D, he remembers always being in competition with his sisters rather than ever seeing a benefit from having an older sibling, hinting at a stronger grasp of his Korean identity rather than the youngest identity. Because his father placed much more responsibility onto his shoulders because Korean culture and values expect strong, capable sons, D was forced to assume more responsibility as a son rather than the baby of the family. Kimmel notes this influence of rules placed by groups of people in his work Bros before Hos: The Guy Code. Thus in this heavy impression of culture, Ds younger identity transformed into one that magnified his sense of responsibility because he knew he had to obey his parents and sister, especially as the only son of a Korean family.

In the end, although Conley has the most general (due to his experiments of a great number of subjects) and probably most intuitive generalizations of the youngests birth order identity, by conducting research on four different takes on this identity, the social factors play a large role in affecting how this identity is retained. For both B and J, the younger sibling tendencies translated well in a reality that forced independence because they had a receptive support system through their older siblings. The identity they held as the youngest especially for B who was always referred to as (brothers name)s sister, the natural tendencies to seek help because their parents took care of them helped them integrate into the world. For N and B, however, the financial and cultural background surrounding their identity challenged them to redefine their role in the family due to conflict and maladjustment of such a pampered identity in this harsh reality. D had to take responsibility as the highly-valued son of a Korean family and N assumed the role as a main provider of the household due to her U.S. citizenshipan identity more important to her family and her survival than that of her birth order.

In conclusion, I had hoped that through this research, Id be able to determine the significance of birth order identity on achievement and influence in the individuals present lives. If it did have such significance, birth order would be so much more telling of certain characteristics than others. However, seeing the multiple social influences that break these individuals birth order identity to ensure survival of selves and family, they are forced to compromise with being the baby of the family to develop a sense of self more practical, a much needed adaptation to fulfill expectations the world has for a working, independent adult.

Works Cited

Blumer, Herbert. Race Prejudice as a Sense of Group Position. The Pacific Sociological Review. Volume 1, No.1. University of California Berkeley, Spring 1958.

Conley, Dalton.You May Ask Yourself: An Introduction to Thinking like a Sociologist. 2nd ed. New York: W.W. Norton, 2011. Print.

DuBois, W.E.B. "Double Consciousness and the Veil." Trans. ArrayThe Production of Reality. . 5th ed. California: Pine Forge Press, 1903. 474-478. Print.

Goffman, Erving. "The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life." Trans. ArrayThe Production of Reality. . 5th ed. California: Pine Forge Press, 1959. 262-271. Print.

Kimmel, Michael. Guyland. New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2008.

Mead, George Herbert. The Self, the I, and the Me. In OBrien: The Production of Reality (121-125). 5th ed. Thousand Oaks: Pine Forge, 1934. Print.

Zimbardo, Philip G.The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil. New York: Random House, 2007. Print.