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.

Sorry, as the oldest of four children, I can’t help myself. But Parenting recently covered a Norwegian study showing that oldest children had slightly higher IQ scores than their younger siblings.

Before you elderly sibs puff up your egos as big as mine, the numbers were actually statistically insignificant and within normal range. In a family with three children, for example, the oldest would have a score of 103, the second child came in at 101 and third at 100.

Nonetheless, the oldest almost always had slightly higher scores, which the magazine speculated was due to mom and dad’s undivided attention -- at least for a little while -- high expectations and added responsibility.

While the magazine admitted that most of the character traits attributed to birth order were stereotypes –- since the numbers were insignificant -- it still entertained the possibility that there may be something to birth order. For example, 13 of the 41 U.S. presidents were firstborns as were the 21 of the first 23 astronauts. Firstborns, which are given props for their alleged leadership qualities, also make up a disproportionate number of Rhodes scholars and university professors.

I don’t know about intelligence -- although the sense of responsibility among firstborns in my family is well established -- but there is a strange pattern of marriages related to birth order in my family.

My husband and I are the oldest siblings in our families. I am the oldest of four children and DH is the oldest of two. My mom, the oldest of four children, married my dad, who like DH, is the oldest of two males. My mother-in-law is the youngest of three children and my father-in-law was the youngest of five children. My brother-in-law is seriously dating a woman who is the youngest sibling -- like him she is No. 2 of two children. My brother and sisters have always gravitated towards people who correspond with their birth orders. Weird, huh?

Also, many of my friends are first-born or only children.

Do you have any theories on birth order?  

Once when I was twelve or so, my sisters and I bought my mother a birthday present.  We found it at Spencer's, a store full of black lights and glow-in-the-dark posters, lava lamps, hanging beads.  To our young minds Spencer's held every groovy thing the 70s had to offer and we could not wait to present our gift to Mom.  

I remember with crystal clarity the look on her face when she opened the box.  The sidelong glance that she gave my father, who turned away at that moment, the apparent victim of a coughing fit.  I knew there was something that I didn't understand and I thought about it for a long time after.