Being the eldest sibling isn’t easy. We often get blamed for everything, our siblings always steal our clothes and we had to put up with stricter rules when we were growing up.
However, our little brothers and sisters get away with murder.
A report has revealed that the second born child is more likely to be a troublemaker and we’re not one bit surprised.
MIT economist, Joseph Doyle, has discovered that the second-born child is more likely to misbehave and it has a lot to do with how parents reared them.
The report revealed that second-born children are 25 to 40 percent more likely to get in major trouble in school and even with the law.
Experts believe that this has a lot to do with how strict parents are with their first born and how they tend to go easy on their second-born.
The child’s role models are also completely different to their big brother or sister.
Doyle explained to NPR, “The firstborn has role models, who are adults. And the second, later-born children have role models who are slightly irrational 2-year-olds, you know, their older siblings.”
He added, “Both the parental investments are different, and the sibling influences probably contribute to these differences we see in the labor market and what we find in delinquency. It's just very difficult to separate those two things because they happen at the same time.”
Thanks for giving us another reason to love being the oldest, science!
