History 1301
Professor Ramey
November/8/2015
Relations Between Siblings Society has created a picture of the word family to be portrayed as a house wife, a providing husband, daughter, and son who all have no worries or problems. This perfect image does not exist in reality, some may say they have fulfilled this ideology but they always have something that is not a perfect picture. There are dilemmas that occur between a husband and wife or even between siblings. These problems might be insignificant or be the reason behind a deep rooted loathing of one another, sibling rivalry occurs between brothers and sisters because of many factors that affect them. Factors that bring forth these rivalries can be straight forward as …show more content…
These subconscious factors stay with us throughout our life. Some factors that encourage these behaviors are the actual birth order, psychological birth order, and irrational relationship beliefs; as stated in “The Relationship of Psychological Birth Order to Irrational Relationship Beliefs” by Melek Kalkan. Actual birth order is essentially “the location in a family and refers to four basic positions –oldest, middle, youngest and only” (Kalkan, 455). Each one of these position has tasks which adult traits, lifestyle, and other dynamics reflect on how these tasks are carried out in childhood. The distinctiveness of the four fundamental positions that is provided by Melek Kalkan is as follows: “The firstborn child is depicted as powerful and influential (Campbell et al., 1991). Firstborn children adhere to rules and respect authority. They may become leaders as responsible children. …These children are the center of attention but they are described as the “dethroned” children because they feel dethroned when the second child is born (Gfroerer, Gfroerer, Curlette, White, & Kern, 2003). The middle child may feel squeezed between the firstborn and younger siblings. Middle children may be seen as being in a race with the first child in order to overtake the privileged position of the oldest. They may be viewed as peacemakers or arbitrators to help others achieve justice (Ashby, …show more content…
He explains how the oldest sibling feels “dethorned” when another child comes along to the family. This happens because the oldest child is not the center of attention anymore and has to share it with his new sibling. The middle child feels that he or she does not have a place in the family because he or she is stuck between the eldest and youngest. The middle child feels as if all the attention goes to the responsible first born or the youngest who is everyone’s favorite. The youngest on the other hand are perceived as the baby of the family and may be pampered or spoiled. When parents only have a single child , the child becomes the center of attention, however; they are under pressure from their parents to live up to their expectations and be who they want their child to be. This birth order does not determine how the child will behave because the middle child might behave as the first born; the youngest might act like the middle child or even the oldest, the reason behind this is the psychological birth