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Summary: How Birth Order Affects Personality

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An identity can be formed through many different experiences. In the article “The Achiever, the Peacemaker and the Life of the Party: How Birth Order Affects Personality” by Dr. Gail Gross, the article shows how birth order may affect personality. Birth order affects identity. The eldest child, the middle child, and the youngest child all have different personalities and identities. Since birth order affects identity, the eldest child a different personality than their siblings.
The first-born children have a certain identity because of the way their parents raised them. The mother and father both have most likely never raised a child before, and are therefore very over-protective and concerned about everything their child does. For example, Gross shows how parenting affects a first-borns identity when she states, “Because they have so much control and attention from their first-time parents, they are over-responsible, reliable, well-behaved, careful and smaller versions of their own parents.” The first child develops an identity based on how his or her mother and father are paying attention to every single move the child makes. Mothers and fathers are not the same parents with every child, and therefore parent differently towards the …show more content…

His or her certain identity has been created because the parents pay more attention to the eldest than the youngest, but they pay less attention to the middle child than the last-born. For example, Gross shows how the youngest has a different identity than the other children when she states, “... you have more freedom than the other siblings and, in a sense, are more independent.” The mother and father were more laid back and lenient with the youngest child, therefore allowing the child to have a more creative and independent identity. Since the parents raise the last-born differently, all of the children will have different

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