I've read a lot about birth order and how it affects personalities and outcomes, etc. Firstborn children are often higher achievers, get more schooling, and often have greater financial success. Finally, some people at BYU have done a study that may give us a clue as to why birth order affects who children become.
Its main finding is that parents give more quality time to their firstborn children from the ages of 4-13 than they do with subsequent children between those ages. This is for a number of reasons. Often parents are busier themselves as their children get older, often because of changes in jobs or mothers returning to the workforce; they also tend to get involved in the activities of their older children (i.e., sports) and drag the younger siblings along. Additionally, parents are much more likely to use the TV with younger children than with the oldest, which is not considered quality time. The trends seem to be consistent whether parents have 2, 3, 4, or more children (the youngest in any family tends to get about the same amount of time).
Basically, their conclusions are that parents who want to buck the trend need to spend more time participating in activities with their younger children, whether that be reading or playing together. Additionally, they are pursuing another line of research with the same data set that they believe will show that parental involvement and time trumps money when it comes to children's success later on.
I can already see the difficulty with trying to give both children equal amounts of time. Ryan literally demands a lot of attention and always wants me to play with him or read books with him. I do a lot for Sofia too, but it is mostly attending to physical needs right now (although I do try to get some playtime in as well). But that doesn't even count all the time I have to spend cooking, cleaning, shopping, etc. (we try to make that into quality time, even though it doesn't always/often work). And then I want to have a least a little personal time to write in my journal or my blog, to read, to scrapbook (which is mostly so I can document the family like the journal), or just to decompress.
It is so hard to find a balance, especially when there are so many demands (and more all the time) and I feel so exhausted! But I'm glad that I've read this now so it gives me something to think about.
Do any of you have any secrets for balancing your time?
2 comments:
I totally believe in birth order! Well, in my family it doesn't really apply to my older siblings but as for me being the youngest, I fit every category. Spontaneous, life of the party, carefree etc. I was not spoiled though(even my mom will attest to that). I think because we were all so close in age (6 kids in 8 years), I didn't have time to be spoiled. Being the youngest rules!
I don't think my family fit the proverbial mold on this. With having two sets of twins.. within 2.5 years of each other, no one son got more attention than the others. Except maybe Dan... born by himself and the youngest.. he always got more attention! ;)
And if you look at it, one of the older brothers is very dominant, but the other older brother is less dominant. My twin is more aggressive than I am.
So I guess I'm making an argument for nature over nurture in this case.
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