This story validated what first-born children like my husband and I always suspected: First-born children really do bear the brunt of parents' "tough love." I will NOT let my sisters off the hook after this one. LOL!

From MSNBC's coverage of the study:

“The folklore is that parents punish the older child more than the younger ones,” says Lingxin Hao, a sociology professor at Johns Hopkins University and an author of the study, published in the latest issue of the Economic Journal. “But it isn’t just folklore — this is a national pattern.”

First-borns who dropped out of school were 20 percent less likely to be getting most of their annual income from their parents than younger siblings in the same situation, Hao and her team found after reviewing annual surveys, involving more than 7,000 kids each year, conducted from 1979 to 1994 by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

In addition, the researchers found, first-born daughters who got pregnant as teenagers were 30 percent less likely to be getting most of their money from their parents than younger female siblings.

This part of the study really struck a chord with me, as I remember my dad and even teachers at school lecturing me on helping my sister get better grades in school. Keep in mind I was the nerd and she was the cool kid that didn't do homework. As if she was going to listen to her tightly-wound sister. Ha!

“Parents have an incentive to play tough with their kids, especially the older ones, to try to establish this signal to the other children that they’re not a pushover,” says Joseph Hotz, an economics professor at Duke University and a co-author of the study.

It’s all for the sake of setting an example, a refrain first-borns know all too well. By punishing the oldest kid more severely, Hotz says, parents are hoping to essentially scare the younger brothers and sisters straight, keeping them from making a similar mistake.