Abstract
The effect of birth order on self-concept was examined in a sample of adolescent boys and girls. Based upon self-theory, which suggests that the two main processes of self-concept formation (e.g., reflected appraisals and social comparisons) are affected by the power and role relationships associated with ordinal position in the family, several hypotheses were tested: (1) The self-evaluations of only and oldest children are more positive than those of younger siblings; (2) middle-borns have the lowest self-evaluations; (3) these relationships are affected by the sex and spacing of nearest sibling; and (4) the self-conceptions of oldest and only children are more similar to those of their parents than the self-conceptions of younger siblings and their parents. Using analysis of variance and several different measures of self-evaluation, very little support was found for any of these hypotheses. The strongest support was found for the hypothesis on middle-borns, but even these relationships were not large. Several explanations are offered for these weak and inconsistent findings.
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Work on this study (Scientific paper 6485) was supported by Project 0364, Department of Rural Sociology, Agricultural Research Center, Washington State University. An earlier version of this article was presented at the annual meeting of the National Council on Family Relations, Washington, D.C., 1982.
Received Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Minnesota (1969), where he specialized in social psychology and family sociology. Research interests are socialization and self-concept formation, especially within the context of family relations.
Received Ed.D. in child development and family life from Indiana University (1974). Current research interests are family relations and child development within the context of remarriage.
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Gecas, V., Pasley, K. Birth order and self-concept in adolescence. J Youth Adolescence 12, 521–535 (1983). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02088668
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02088668