Are you the oldest, the youngest or in the middle? And does it matter? The honest answer is we don’t know. While there are certainly traits and possible advantages and disadvantages of birth order most research now suggests that inherited temperaments have more influence on our personality than our position in our families. Although interestingly the research also suggests that we as parents have more influence over our children’s experience of their position in the family than we previously thought. So, holding all of that in mind what do we know about the statistics on birth order First born I guess the first obvious thing we know about first born children is that they are the only children who have the full attention of their parents even if this is for a very short period. The oldest child tends to be the most responsible of our children, often working hard to do things well. They see their parent’s competence and want to copy what they see. From this perspective the oldest ch