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I saw this on Facebook, it is a repeat of something I've heard all my life. People believe that second children are more likely to be "troublemakers" (or insubordinate) than the other children of the same couple.

Furthermore, it claims there's a "new study" backing this up.

A new study claims that second born children are more likely to be troublemakers

Is there such a research? Did it find something consistent with this belief?

Sklivvz
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    second child trouble maker reporting in: http://www.mit.edu/~jjdoyle/BDFK_Delinquency.pdf – daniel Jul 23 '17 at 19:25
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    Here is an opposing view: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4105693/pdf/nihms598434.pdf – D Krueger Jul 26 '17 at 10:52
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    @daniel: Would you like to turn that into an answer. Pseudo-answers in comments are frowned upon here. – Oddthinking Aug 15 '17 at 19:01
  • @DKrueger: Ditto to above. – Oddthinking Aug 15 '17 at 19:01
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    @Oddthinking It wasn't intended as an answer, just a reference. I am more familiar with English Language & Usage where references are left in comments to help those who might wish to answer. I can delete the comment if it's an issue. – D Krueger Aug 16 '17 at 11:58
  • "more likely" - but it doesn't explicitly state what the baseline/standard is. I'm assuming more likely "than the firstborn." Would a finding in this regard create the expectation that third and/or fourth children would be even greater troublemakers, or less? (Full disclosure: Fishing for something to throw in the face of my older brother, the third-born, at our next family get-together). Can't navigate to links right now because of work firewall. – PoloHoleSet Aug 16 '17 at 14:43

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In scientific research, it's important to build up a body of evidence before we can draw conclusions. Once we have enough studies, if we see that a few find a real effect of birth order on personality but the majority find no effect, then we should probably abandon the theory of birth order and focus on other things that can affect personality.

A quick review of the literature leads me to believe that in the last 5 years, psychologists have found a lot more evidence against birth order theory than for it. Here are a few:

I'd say personality is a lot more complicated than just birth order. One study doesn't a whole theory prove!

Brythan
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Amanda Daly
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