BIRTH ORDER AND RELATIONSHIPS

Family, Friends, and Sexual Partners

Catherine Salmon
Simon Fraser University
Previous studies (Salmon 1999; Salmon and Daly 1998) have found that
sex and birth order are strong predictors of familial sentiments. Middle-
borns tend to be less family-oriented than rstborns or lastborns, while
sex differences seem to focus on the utility of kin in certain domains. If
this is a reection of middleborns receiving a lesser degree of support
from kin (particularly in terms of parental investment), are middleborns
turning to reciprocal alliances outside the family, becoming friendship
specialists? Are there comparable birth order differences with respect to
mating strategies? In this study, the impact of birth order on attitudes to-
ward family, friends, and mating were examined. Two hundred and forty-
ve undergraduates completed a questionnaire relating to their attitudes
toward friends and family as well as some aspects of mating behavior.
Birth order did have a signicant impact in several areas. Middleborns ex-
pressed more positive views toward friends and less positive opinions of
family in general. They were less inclined to help family in need than
rstborns or lastborns. Mating strategies also appeared to be inuenced
by birth order, most notably in the area of indelity, with middleborns
being the least likely birth order to cheat on a sexual partner.
KEY WORDS: Attitudes; Birth order; Helping; Parental investment;
Sociosexuality
Copyright 2003 by Walter de Gruyter, Inc., New York
Human Nature, Vol. 14, No. 1, pp. 7388. 1045-6767/03/$1.00+.10
73
Received May 29, 2002; accepted September 30, 2002.
Address all correspondence to Catherine Salmon, Psychology Department, Simon Fraser
University, 8888 University Drive, Burnaby, British Columbia, V5A1S6, Canada. Email:
csalmon@sfu.ca
74 Human Nature, Vol. 14, No. 1, 2003
Theoretical models of the evolution of parental inclinations predict that
parents will often treat their offspring differentially. There are grounds for
predicting discriminative parental solicitude in relation to a number of
variables, including offspring age, parental age, birth order, offspring sex,
and cues of parentage (Clutton-Brock 1991; Daly and Wilson 1995; Trivers
1974; Trivers and Willard 1973). The unifying notion behind these theories
is that natural selection has shaped parental psychologies to function as if
they value individual offspring and investments in their development
in proportion to the expected impacts of such investments on parental t-
ness (genetic posterity) in ancestral environments. The focus of this paper
is on the impact of birth order not only on familial sentiment, but on non-
kin reciprocal relationships (friends and sexual partners).
There are several theoretical and empirical reasons for expecting birth
order to play a role in parental investment. The anticipated relevance of
birth order is, in part, a corollary of the relevance of offspring age. Ones
expected contribution to parental tness resides mainly in ones repro-
ductive value (expected future reproduction) and this quantity increases
with age until at least puberty, making an older immature offspring more
valuable from the parental perspective than a younger one. This becomes
apparent, in humans, when tough choices have to be made. When one
child must die so others can survive, it is apparently a cross-cultural uni-
versal that the youngest is the likeliest victim (Daly and Wilson 1984). For
these reasons, Sulloway (1995, 1996) has argued that it is ultimately their
security in their expectation of parental favoritism that makes rstborn
children defenders of parental values and the status quo while laterborns
are relatively inclined to be rebels.
In addition to the security of parental preferences, rstborns have always
benetted from an early absence of sibling competition for parental invest-
ment (Jacobs and Moss 1976). However, there is a counterveiling effect in
that as parents themselves grow older, the tness value of an offspring of
any given age and phenotype increases relative to the parents residual re-
productive value. Thus, older parents will have a tendency to invest more
in offspring, all else being equal, than younger parents (Clutton-Brock 1984;
Pugesek 1995).
Although their initial uncontested status and their greater tness value
gives rstborns an advantage in the battle of courting parental investment
(Davis 1997), this advantage may be offset by a growing willingness of
aging parents to give more of themselves to the benet of their laterborn
young. Moreover, as Sulloway (1996:305) notes, a lastborn child has the
advantage of being the only member of the family to receive investment
undiluted by the needs of a younger rival, so the losers in this battle may
be middleborns. In fact, studies by Kennedy (1989) and Kidwell (1981) re-
Birth Order and Attitudes toward Family and Friends 75
port that middleborns nd parents to be less supportive (emotionally and
nancially) than do rstborns and lastborns.
Based on the notion that evolved motivational mechanisms have been
designed to expend an organisms life in the pursuit of genetic posterity,
one might expect nepotistic strategies of investment and a natural solidar-
ity between kin. Such behaviors have been well-documented in many
species (for an overview, see Daly and Wilson 1978: chap. 3), leading to-
ward a general expectation of benevolence or emotional attachment to
close kin. Studies of altruism have suggested, for example, that there is a
greater expectation of receiving help from parents and siblings than from
close friends or strangers (Bar-Tal et al. 1977; Cunningham 1986).
This emphasis on rstborns and lastborns (in terms of parental invest-
ment) suggests that it may be the middle birth order positions that derive
the least benet from nepotistic solidarity (Kennedy 1989; Kidwell 1982;
Salmon and Daly 1998). In support, Salmon and Daly (1998) found that
middleborns declare themselves to be less close to parents (and more so to
friends and siblings) than rstborns or lastborns and less likely to be ac-
tively interested in their family histories, or to make kin ties a part of their
self-identity. Middleborns were also found to be less inuenced by the
rhetoric of kinship and family solidarity when used in evocative political
speech. In fact, middleborns were more likely to be inuenced by terms of
friendship (Salmon 1998). If middleborns are less afliated with family, are
they instead specializing in non-kin reciprocal relationships? Do they have
more positive attitudes toward friendships and helping people other than
kin? And what about mateships?
In Born to Rebel, Frank Sulloways (1996) widely discussed examination
of birth order and personality, he proposes that individual differences in
romantic love styles owe themselves predominantly to the non-shared en-
vironment. Other studies (Draper and Harpending 1982; Surbey 1990)
have suggested that offspring who grow up in homes with inconsistent or
rejecting child-rearing practices tend to reach puberty earlier, to engage in
intercourse earlier, and to have more sexual partners than children who
have grown up in stable and loving homes. It appears that having learned
that they cannot count on parental investment, offspring from unstable
homes seem to be more likely to opt for short-term mating strategies. At-
tachment theorists have also suggested that different sorts of early child-
hood experiences might produce individual differences in preference for
long-term committed versus short-term uncommitted romantic relation-
ships (Bowlby 1973; Hazen and Shaver 1987).
However, if middleborns place more importance on non-kin reciprocal
relationships as some previous research has suggested (Salmon 1998;
Salmon and Daly 1998), one might expect them to invest more not only in
76 Human Nature, Vol. 14, No. 1, 2003
relationships with friends but also in relationships with mates. Instead of
engaging in more short-term mating strategies, they might place a high
value on maintaining a long-term committed relationship, treating their
mate in much the same way as they treat their friends, as a valued recip-
rocal relationship.
If middleborns feel that they cannot count on parental investment, will
they tend to follow a more short-term mating strategy? Perhaps be more
prone to indelity? Or will they be less likely to follow such patterns, in-
teracting with mates much as they do with friends? Sociosexuality scores
(SOI) may provide some insight. Individuals at the low end of this con-
struct, those with a restricted sociosexual orientation, typically insist on
commitment and closeness in a relationship prior to engaging in sex with
a romantic partner. Persons at the high end of the construct, those with an
unrestricted sociosexual orientation, tend to feel relatively comfortable en-
gaging in sex without commitment or closeness (Simpson and Gangestad
1991). For the most part, there is a consistent sex difference, with males
tending to be more unrestricted than females, but there is substantial
within-sex variation as well. Birth order differences may also exist, reect-
ing the importance of non-kin sexual relationships to middleborns.
This study begins to explore the idea that if middleborns are less afli-
ated with family, are they instead specializing in non-kin reciprocal rela-
tionships, with the following predictions:
Prediction 1: Middleborns will have less positive attitudes than rst-
borns or lastborns toward family in general.
Prediction 2: Middleborns will have less positive attitudes than rst-
borns or lastborns toward helping family in need.
Prediction 3: Middleborns will have more positive views than rstborns
or lastborns toward friends and friendship in general.
Prediction 4: Middleborns will be less likely to see themselves as one of
their parents favorites.
Prediction 5: Middleborns will have lower (more restricted) sociosexual-
ity scores than rstborns or lastborns and, in particular, be less likely
to cheat on a partner when in a committed relationship (as that
partner is a non-kin social, as well as sexual, resource).
METHODS
Two hundred and forty-ve Simon Fraser University undergraduate stu-
dents were asked to complete a questionnaire on family and social rela-
tionships. Participation in this study partially fullled an experimental
requirement for an introductory course in psychology. Twins and only
children were dropped from the sample, leaving two hundred and
Birth Order and Attitudes toward Family and Friends 77
twenty-seven subjects. Seventy subjects were male, the other one hundred
and fty-seven were female. There were ninety-six rstborns, seventy-two
middleborns, and fty-nine lastborns. The questionnaire took a half hour
to complete, and subjects ranged in age from eighteen to thirty-two.
Ninety-one percent were single, the rest were married or living with a
partner. The majority of the subjects came from middle income (or middle-
class) families.
Subjects were asked a series of demographic questions. They were also
asked about parental favoritism and questions concerning their atti-
tudes/beliefs about family life (the Familial Orientation scale, adapted
from Rundquist and Sletto 1936, which measures positive or negative atti-
tudes toward family). One example of the type of statement that makes up
this Family Sentiment scale is Aperson should be willing to sacrice any-
thing for ones family.
Subjects also completed two measures of helping behavior (one set of
questions addressed helping family members, the other set addressed
helping strangers or people in general). One example from the helping-
relatives scale was A relative in need can be a nuisance; one from the
helping non-kin scale was In general, we should not allow ourselves to
be distressed by the misfortune of other people. Subjects also completed
a scale measuring attitudes toward friendship (adapted from Parker and
Asher 1993). It included items like My friends and I can count on each
other to keep promises. All of these attitudinal questions asked for rat-
ings on a 5-point Likert-type scale, ranging from strongly agree (5) to
strongly disagree (1). Subjects were also given the sociosexuality scale
(Gangestad and Simpson 1990) as well as several other questions address-
ing their sexual behavior while in a committed relationship.
The most frequently used statistical measure was the ANOVA(F values
reported). It was used to analyze the data on family sentiment and obliga-
tion, helping attitudes, and sociosexuality. The chi-square was used to ex-
amine the data on cheating on ones partner.
RESULTS
When subjects were asked a series of questions addressing family senti-
ment and obligation (the Familial Orientation scale), middleborns ex-
pressed signicantly less positive attitudes toward family than rstborns
or lastborns, F
(2,111)
= 6.94, p < 0.001. ATukeys HSD test revealed that the
differences between rstborns and middleborns and between lastborns
and middleborns were signicant (p < 0.001 for both), whereas there was
no signicant difference between rstborns and lastborns.
In addition, when subjects completed a series of questions addressing
78 Human Nature, Vol. 14, No. 1, 2003
Figure 1. Scores on family and familial obligation scale with respect to birth order.
Higher scores indicate more positive views of family life and familial obliga-
tions.
attitudes toward helping kin in need, middleborns were signicantly less
likely than rstborns or lastborns to have positive attitudes toward help-
ing family members in need, F
(2,111)
= 6.89, p < 0.002. Again, a Tukeys HSD
test revealed signicant differences between rstborns and middleborns
(p < 0.005) and between lastborns and middleborns (p < 0.002), and no sig-
nicant difference between rstborns and lastborns. However, when the
questions addressed helping strangers, there were no birth order differ-
ences, F
(2,111)
= 0.59, n.s. All birth orders had less positive attitudes toward
helping strangers than helping kin.
Subjects were given a series of statements about attitudes toward
friends and friendship and asked how true such a statement was for them.
Middleborns expressed signicantly more positive views on friendship
and its benets than either rstborns or lastborns, F
(2,111)
= 10.99, p < 0.001.
Again, when a Tukeys HSD test was performed, the differences between
rstborns and middleborns and between lastborns and middleborns were
signicant (p < 0.001), but there was no signicant difference between
rstborns and lastborns.
Birth Order and Attitudes toward Family and Friends 79
Figure 2. Scores on attitudes toward helping family scale with respect to birth
order. Higher scores indicate more positive views toward helping family
members in need.
When subjects were asked about their parents having a favorite child,
very few subjects claimed to be the favorite and almost no parents were re-
ported to share the same favorite child. Interestingly, of the 95 subjects that
responded, 64% said that their mothers favorite child was a son. In terms
of birth order, 45% of the subjects mothers favored a rstborn, 22% a mid-
dleborn, and 33% a lastborn child. For the 107 subjects who responded
about their fathers favorites, 60% of fathers favored a daughter. In terms
of birth order, 36% of fathers favored a rstborn, 21% a middleborn, and
43% a lastborn child. When only sibships of three were considered, mid-
dleborns were signicantly less likely than rstborns or lastborns to be
chosen as a parental favorite,
2
2
= 12.9, p < 0.01. Middleborns seem least
likely to be a parental favorite, and parents tend to favor an opposite-sex
offspring.
In terms of the sociosexuality scores, the typical sex difference with
males scoring signicantly higher than females was found but there was
no signicant impact of birth order when it was examined on its own, F =
2.71, p = 0.87. However, there was a signicant interaction between sex and
birth order, F = 4.34, p < 0.05. For males, all scored relatively high on SOI
(particularly rstborns and middleborns), but for females the predicted
80 Human Nature, Vol. 14, No. 1, 2003
Figure 3. Scores on attitudes toward helping friends and friendship scale with re-
spect to birth order. Higher scores indicate more positive views of friends and
friendship in general.
birth order effect was found, with middleborns scoring lower on the SOI
than rstborns or lastborns. Interestingly, in terms of indelity in particu-
lar, middleborns reported cheating on a partner in a monogamous re-
lationship signicantly less than did rstborns or lastborns,
2
2
= 14.30, p
< 0.001. In terms of the number of times such an incident of cheating had
occurred, there was no signicant birth order difference, though rstborns
did so with slightly greater frequency than other birth orders.
It is worth noting that birth order effects in this study were not an arti-
fact of family size. One might expect that children in particularly large
families would receive less attention and care from parents than children
in smaller families. However, previous work (Salmon and Daly 1998) has
shown that on variables of familial sentiment, sibship size (when four or
less) has no signicant impact. In this study, all subjects came from sib-
ships of four or less.
DISCUSSION
Evolutionary thinking suggests that much of animal behavior (including
that of humans) can best be viewed as having evolved in order to facilitate
Birth Order and Attitudes toward Family and Friends 81
Figure 4. Percentage of subjects, by birth order, who have cheated on their part-
ner.
the reproduction of an individuals genes (Hamilton 1964). Based on the
concept that evolved motivational mechanisms have been designed to ex-
pend an organisms life in the pursuit of genetic posterity, one might
expect nepotistic strategies of investment and a natural solidarity between
kin. Activities that promote such genetic survival in conspecics are re-
ferred to as kin investment, of which parental investment is the most fun-
damental. This study addressed issues of kin investment in terms of their
inuence on individuals of varying birth orders. In particular, predictions
about the attitudes that middleborns (as opposed to rstborns and last-
borns) hold toward family, friends, helping behavior, and parental fa-
voritism were examined, as well as their sociosexuality scores. These areas
will be discussed separately.
Familial Sentiment
Previous research has suggested that middleborns feel less close to par-
ents and less tied to family than rstborns or lastborns (Salmon 1998, 1999;
Salmon and Daly 1998). The implication of this is that their ties to non-kin
such as friends are greater than that of rstborns or lastborns. When sub-
jects were asked a series of questions addressing family sentiment and
rstborns
middleborns
lastborns
82 Human Nature, Vol. 14, No. 1, 2003
obligation, middleborns expressed signicantly less positive attitudes to-
ward family than rstborns or lastborns. In addition, middleborns were
signicantly less likely than rstborns or lastborns to have positive atti-
tudes toward helping family members in need (while there were no birth
order differences with respect to helping strangers).
As mentioned earlier, rstborns seem secure in terms of parental prefer-
ence (Daly and Wilson 1984); they also get a head start on parental invest-
ment by being the only offspring until their siblings come along. But it is
also true that the value of each offspring increases relative to each parents
residual reproductive value with increasing parental age (Pugesek 1995).
As a result, lastborns should also experience enhanced investment from
parents as they represent that last opportunity for parents to invest in di-
rect offspring. As a result, middleborns seem to lose out in terms of
parental investment. Unsurprisingly, therefore, rstborns and lastborns
appear to identify more strongly with family members and are more pos-
itive about helping kin than middleborns, who are less positive toward
helping family and seem to have more positive attitudes toward friends.
Friends and Friendship
The sibships into which humans are born are crucial social environ-
ments with associated opportunities, costs, and niches, and it would be
remarkable if our evolved social psyches did not contain features adapted
to the peculiarities of sibling relationships. Sulloway (1995, 1996) devel-
oped the idea of niche differentiation with principal reference to the ways
in which one deals with ones ordinal position in a sibship. Evolutionary
considerations suggest that parents would favor their eldest offspring
(Alexander 1979), and when tough choices are required, there is evidence
that they do just that (Daly and Wilson 1984). As a result, middleborns ap-
pear to be less afliated with kin. They are certainly less susceptible to the
use of kin terms in political speech (Salmon 1998).
It has been suggested that if middleborns are less family oriented, they
are instead specializing in non-kin reciprocal relationships. If middleborns
receive less investment on average from kin, they might be expected to seek
reciprocal ties elsewhere, perhaps primarily in the bonds of friendship. Sul-
loway (1996) has proposed that rebelliousness, risk-taking, diversity of in-
terests, and cooperativeness are laterborn strategies to acquire a larger
share of parental resources. But these traits might also aid middleborns in
particular, not in acquiring parental investment, but in establishing recip-
rocal alliances with non-kin, making them accomplished mediators, and
high investors in their friends. Such friendships could be very important,
especially when resources from kin are scarce. In this study, middleborns
did indeed express more positive views on friends and friendship, sug-
Birth Order and Attitudes toward Family and Friends 83
gesting the importance of such relationships in their lives. This result
echoed the susceptibility of middleborns to the use of terms of friendship
as opposed to kin terms in political rhetoric (Salmon 1998). These results
raise the possibility that peer inuence might also be greater amongst mid-
dleborn children, a nding that would mesh well with current work on
peer inuence in school age children (Harris 1998). Such work has sug-
gested a large role for peer inuence (as opposed to parental inuence),
something that might be seen in higher levels among the many middle-
borns in the population.
Mommys Little Boy and Daddys Little Girl
Common sayings regarding Mommys Little Boy and Daddys Little
Girl beg the question, are middleborns often left out because both parents
have a favorite child and the middle one isnt a favorite? When subjects
listed a parental favorite, mothers favorite tended to be a rstborn son,
while daddys favorite was most likely a lastborn daughter. Middleborns
do appear to be the least numerous birth order among parental favorites,
and parents tended to favor an opposite-sex offspring.
While examining birth order and parental favoritism is somewhat novel,
there has been previous work of a theoretical and empirical nature on
parent-offspring conict and whether it is sex-linked. Freuds theories
(1910, 1953) about parent-offspring fantasies are well known, fantasies
about mating with the opposite-sex parent and resenting the same-sex par-
ent as a rival (Freud 1925). Daly and Wilson (1989) have elegantly critiqued
this perspective, suggesting that Freud collapsed two distinct father-son
conicts into one: an early conict over how a womans reproductive re-
sources are to be allocated (into her existing son vs. more matings) and a
later rivalry that is sexual but involves women other than the mother, such
as junior wives in a polygamous society (Boone 1988; LeVine 1965).
Mating Strategies
Waller and Shaver (1994) demonstrate that individual differences in ro-
mantic love styles are predominantly owing to non-shared environments,
raising the possibility that love styles may be responsive to the family en-
vironment in which an individual has been raised. Research has also
shown, for example, that offspring raised in houses with inconsistent or
rejecting child-rearing practices tend to reach puberty earlier, engage in in-
tercourse earlier, and have more sexual partners than children who have
grown up in more stable environments. Having learned that they cannot
count on parental investment, offspring from unstable homes seem to opt
for short-term mating strategies. Sulloway (1996) suggests that laterborns
84 Human Nature, Vol. 14, No. 1, 2003
might be more likely than their older sibs to engage in high-risk strategies
such as mate poaching and indelity.
As has been found in previous studies (Gangestad and Simpson 1990;
Gangestad et al. 1992), males had higher SOI scores in general. When the
interaction between sex and birth order was examined, it became clear
that, for females but not males, there was a signicant impact of birth
order, with middleborns having lower SOI scores than rstborns or last-
borns. However, there was no such effect in males, perhaps because while
females are a sexual resource for males, they are less likely to be a social re-
source in the way male support can be for females. It is also possible that
the male inclination toward unrestricted sociosexuality creates a oor ef-
fect. In direct terms of indelity, middleborns reported having cheated at
least once on a steady partner signicantly less than rstborns or lastborns
for both sexes. So it looks as though middleborns are interacting with
mates in much the same way as they interact with friends, being careful to
maintain high-quality relationships in both areas.
Other Considerations
One framework that may be useful for a consideration of these results is
that of alternative strategies, which concerns morphological, physiological
and behavioral diversication of alternative phenotypes within species
(Gross 1996). The idea of alternative strategies with respect to human per-
sonality has been discussed by Gangestad (1996). Research on alternative
strategies in non-human animals has shown that in most cases the envi-
ronment plays a large role in determining the pursuit of particular tactics
within a strategy (Gross 1996). This emphasis on technical plasticity in re-
sponse to the environment meshes well with the argument that siblings
pursue contingent tactics in response to the familial environment.
Although this study addresses some of the issues of middleborns rela-
tionships with family, friends, and mates, additional questions are relevant
to these issues. An exploration of the relationship between birth order, ex-
change orientation, and the value of items exchanged with friends would
seem particularly fruitful with regard to the nature of middleborns as reci-
procity specialists. In addition, more work needs to be done on birth order
and measures of parental investment. Some studies have suggested that
middleborns receive less nancial support from parents (Kennedy 1989)
while others have shown that middleborns clearly perceive themselves as
losing out in terms of parental investment (Salmon and Daly 1998; Salmon
1998). Looking at measures of parental investment (time, money, etc.)
across the childhood years (with young children and their parents as sub-
jects) would prove even more informative with regard to parental invest-
ment per se, though clearly it is the perceptions of middleborns which
should correspond most closely to their resulting behavior. The issue of the
Birth Order and Attitudes toward Family and Friends 85
impact of birth order on mating strategies also clearly needs further exam-
ination. It may be that in a larger sample, the middleborns would have
shown signicantly lower SOI scores. They certainly were less likely to
have cheated on a partner while in a committed relationship. It would be
benecial to look at this question with not only a larger sample but with one
more diverse in age, since a committed relationship may mean something
quite different at 20 years of age than it does at 30.
CONCLUSIONS
These results echo previous ones suggesting that birth order has a
signicant impact on familial sentiment, with middleborns being less
family-oriented than rstborns or lastborns. This study also suggests that
middleborns place greater importance on and have more positive views of
non-kin friendships than rstborns or lastborns, again suggesting that they
are specialists in non-kin reciprocal alliances. This issue of birth order and
mating strategies clearly needs further exploration. However, female mid-
dleborns (not males) have lower SOI scores, and both male and female
middleborns were less likely than rstborns or lastborns to report cheating
on their partners while in a steady relationship. Overall, these birth order
differences suggest the possibility of alternative strategies being pursued
by individual siblings as a response to differences in their experiences of
the family environment. Such strategies may indeed be why middleborns
appear to be non-kin reciprocal relationship specialists.
The author would like to thank Frank Sulloway and Charles Crawford for their
suggestions and support as well as two anonymous reviewers for their helpful
comments.
Catherine Salmon, Ph.D., is currently a Michael Smith Foundation for Health Re-
search Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Psychology Department of Simon Fraser Uni-
versity in Burnaby, British Columbia. Her research interests include birth order
and relationships, the link between reproductive suppression and anorexic behav-
ior, female sexuality, and the evolutionary study of literature and the media.
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