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On birth order and bringing home new things you love
Over the weekend I met some new people as I attended the end-of-summer picnic of one of the local choirs. Now that I'm neither teaching music nor working at a boarding school (read: the next best thing to indentured servitude), I've been looking forward to singing again instead of directing, and I like what I see from this group.
That isn't what I was going to blog about, though, that's just the set up. While there, I fell into a conversation about the roles that different children in a family fall into. The perfect oldest child--the parents have demanded a lot and the oldest has stepped up; the more lax younger child--the parents have mellowed out and the next kid reflects that. I don't really believe that the point within the family at which someone is born is destiny-determining. Sure, it has an influence, but so does lots of other stuff. I suspect there may be certain broad categories, though, that people fit into based on their birth order, but I'm sure how that plays out also depends on the parents and the age differential and probably lots of other things. What do you think?
As a tangent to this conversation, it was mentioned how difficult it often is for first children to accept younger siblings, at least if they're old enough to be aware that everything is changing. As one woman there described it, it's roughly equivalent to a husband bringing home another woman. "Honey, you know that I love you, but I love this new woman too and she's going to be moving in with us. I still love you and I'm sure that you and she will become great friends."
So remind me again: why is it okay to have another kid after the first, but people get all bent out of shape if you try to bring home another lover? By "people" of course, I mean mainly the first lover and conservatives (even if the latter aren't directly involved). Strange, the things people worry about...