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. Middleborns tend to be less family-oriented than firstborns or lastborns, while sex differences seem to focus on the utility of kin in certain domains. If this is a reflection 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 toward family, friends, and mating were examined. Two hundred and fortyfive 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 significant impact in several areas. Middleborns expressed more positive views toward friends and less positive opinions of family in general. They were less inclined to help family in need than firstborns or lastborns. Mating strategies also appeared to be influenced by birth order, most notably in the area of infidelity, with middleborns being the least likely birth order to cheat on a sexual partner. ~YWORDS: Attitudes; Birth order; Helping; Parental investment; Sociosexuality

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, V5A 1S6, Canada. Email: csalmon@sfu.ca
Copyright 2003 by Walter de Gruyter, Inc., New York Human Nature, Vol. 14, No. 1, pp. 73--88. 73 1045-6767/03/$1.00+.10

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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 fitness (genetic posterity) in ancestral environments. The focus of this paper is on the impact of birth order not only on familial sentiment, but on nonkin 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. One's expected contribution to parental fitness resides mainly in one's reproductive 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 universal 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 firstborn 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, firstborns have always benefitted from an early absence of sibling competition for parental investment (Jacobs and Moss 1976). However, there is a counterveiling effect in that as parents themselves grow older, the fitness value of an offspring of any given age and phenotype increases relative to the parents" residual reproductive 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 fitness value gives firstborns 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 benefit 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-

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port that middleborns find parents to be less supportive (emotionally and financially) than do firstborns and lastborns. Based on the notion that evolved motivational mechanisms have been designed to expend an organism's life in the pursuit of genetic posterity, one might expect nepotistic strategies of investment and a natural solidarity between kin. Such behaviors have been well-documented in many species (for an overview, see Daly and Wilson 1978: chap. 3), leading toward 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 firstborns and lastborns (in terms of parental investment) suggests that it may be the middle birth order positions that derive the least benefit 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 firstborns or lastborns and less likely to be actively interested in their family histories, or to make kin ties a part of their self-identity. Middleborns were also found to be less influenced by the rhetoric of kinship and family solidarity when used in evocative political speech. In fact, rniddleborns were more likely to be influenced by terms of friendship (Salmon 1998). If middleborns are less affiliated 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 Sulloway's (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 environment. Other studies (Draper and Harpending 1982; Surbey 1990) have suggested that offspring w h o 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 w h o 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. Attachment theorists have also suggested that different sorts of early childhood experiences might produce individual differences in preference for long-term committed versus short-term uncommitted romantic relationships (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

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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 reciprocal 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 infidelity? Or will they be less likely to follow such patterns, interacting with mates much as they do with friends? Sociosexuality scores (SOI) may provide some insight. Individuals at the low end of this construct, 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 engaging 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, reflecting the importance of non-kin sexual relationships to middleborns. This study begins to explore the idea that if middleborns are less affiliated with family, are they instead specializing in non-kin reciprocal relationships, with the following predictions:
Prediction 1: Middleborns will have less positive attitudes than firstborns or lastborns toward family in general. Prediction 2: Middleborns will have less positive attitudes than firstborns or lastborns toward helping family in need. Prediction 3: Middleborns will have more positive views than firstborns 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) sociosexuality scores than firstborns 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-five Simon Fraser University undergraduate students were asked to complete a questionnaire on family and social relationships. Participation in this study partially fulfilled an experimental requirement for ~in introductory course in psychology. Twins and only children were dropped from the sample, leaving two hundred and

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twenty-seven subjects. Seventy subjects were male, the other one h u n d r e d and fifty-seven were female. There were ninety-six firstborns, seventy-two middleborns, and fifty-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 middleclass) families. Subjects were asked a series of demographic questions. They were also asked about parental favoritism and questions concerning their attitudes/beliefs about family life (the Familial Orientation scale, adapted from Rundquist and Sletto 1936, which measures positive or negative attitudes toward family). One example of the type of statement that makes u p this Family Sentiment scale is "A person should be willing to sacrifice anything for one's 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 helpingrelatives 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 ratings 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 addressing 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 obligation, helping attitudes, and sociosexuality. The chi-square was used to examine the data on cheating on one's partner.

RESULTS

When subjects were asked a series of questions addressing family sentiment and obligation (the Familial Orientation scale), middleborns expressed significantly less positive attitudes toward family than firstborns or lastborns, F(2,111 = 6.94, p < 0.001. A Tukey's HSD test revealed that the ) differences between firstborns and middleborns and between lastborns and middleborns were significant (p < 0.001 for both), whereas there was no significant difference between firstborns and lastborns. In addition, when subjects completed a series of questions addressing

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34

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0

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20 firstborns middleborns lastboms

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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 obligations.

attitudes toward helping kin in need, middleborns were significantly less likely than firstborns or lastborns to have positive attitudes toward helping family members in need, F(2,m) = 6.89, p < 0.002. Again, a Tukey's HSD test revealed significant differences between firstborns and middleborns (p < 0.005) and between lastborns and middleborns (p < 0.002), and no significant difference between firstborns and lastborns. However, when the questions addressed helping strangers, there were no birth order differences, F(2,m) = 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 significantly more positive views on friendship and its benefits than either firstborns or lastborns, F(2,m) = 10.99, p < 0.001. Again, when a Tukey's HSD test was performed, the differences between firstborns and middleborns and between lastborns and middleborns were significant (p < 0.001), but there was no significant difference between firstborns and lastborns.

Birth Order and Attitudes toward Family and Friends

44.

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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 reported to share the same favorite child. Interestingly, of the 95 subjects that responded, 64% said that their mother's favorite child was a son. In terms of birth order, 45% of the subjects" mothers favored a firstborn, 22% a middleborn, and 33% a lastborn child. For the 107 subjects who responded about their father's favorites, 60% of fathers favored a daughter. In terms of birth order, 36% of fathers favored a firstborn, 21% a middleborn, and 43% a lastborn child. When only sibships of three were considered, middleborns were significantly less likely than firstborns or lastborns to be chosen as a parental favorite, ~22 = 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 significantly higher than females was found but there was no significant impact of birth order when it was examined on its own, F = 2.71, p = 0.87. However, there was a significant interaction between sex and birth order, F = 4.34, p < 0.05. For males, all scored relatively high on SOI (particularly firstborns and middleborns), but for females the predicted

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42 40 38

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Figure 3. Scores on attitudes toward helping friends and friendship scale with respect 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 firstborns or lastborns. Interestingly, in terms of infidelity in particular, middleborns reported "cheating" on a partner in a "monogamous" relationship significantly less than did firstborns or lastboms, ~2 2 -----14.30, p < 0.001. In terms of the number of times such an incident of cheating had occurred, there was no significant birth order difference, though firstborns did so with slightly greater frequency than other birth orders. It is worth noting that birth order effects in this study were not an artifact 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 significant impact. In this study, all subjects came from sibships 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

90 80 -r 70
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Figure 4. Percentage of subjects, by birth order, who have "cheated" on their partnet.

the reproduction of an individual's genes (Hamilton 1964). Based on the concept that evolved motivational mechanisms have been designed to expend an organism's 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 conspecifics are referred to as kin investment, of which parental investment is the most fundamental. This study addressed issues of kin investment in terms of their influence on individuals of varying birth orders. In particular, predictions about the attitudes that middleborns (as opposed to firstborns and lastborns) hold toward family, friends, helping behavior, and parental favoritism 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 parents and less tied to family than firstborns 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 firstborns or lastborns. When subjects were asked a series of questions addressing family sentiment and

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obligation, middleborns expressed significantly less positive attitudes toward family than firstborns or lastboms. In addition, middleborns were significantly less likely than firstborns or lastborns to have positive attitudes toward helping family members in need (while there were no birth order differences with respect to helping strangers). As mentioned earlier, firstborns seem secure in terms of parental preference (Daly and Wilson 1984); they also get a head start on parental investment 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 parent's 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 direct offspring. As a result, middleborns seem to lose out in terms of parental investment. Unsurprisingly, therefore, firstborns and lastborns appear to identify more strongly with family members and are more positive about helping kin than middleborns, w h o 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 environments 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) developed the idea of niche differentiation with principal reference to the ways in which one deals with one's 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 appear to be less affiliated 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. SUlloway (1996) has proposed that rebelliousness, risk-taking, diversity of interests, 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 reciprocal 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-

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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 influence might also be greater amongst middleborn children, a finding that would mesh well with current work on peer influence in school age children (Harris 1998). Such work has suggested a large role for peer influence (as opposed to parental influence), something that might be seen in higher levels among the many middleborns in the population.

Mommy's Little Boy and Daddy's Little Gift

Common sayings regarding "Mommy's Little Boy" and "Daddy's Little Girl" beg the question, are middleboms often left out because both parents have a favorite child and the middle one isn't a favorite? When subjects listed a parental favorite, mother's favorite tended to be a firstborn son, while daddy's 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 conflict and whether it is sex-linked. Freud's theories (1910, 1953) about parent-offspring fantasies are well known, fantasies about mating with the opposite-sex parent and resenting the same-sex parent as a rival (Freud 1925). Daly and Wilson (1989) have elegantly critiqued this perspective, suggesting that Freud collapsed two distinct father-son conflicts into one: an early conflict over how a woman's reproductive resources 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 romantic love styles are predominantly owing to non-shared environments, raising the possibility that love styles may be responsive to the family environment 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 intercourse 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

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might be more likely than their older sibs to engage in high-risk strategies such as mate poaching and infidelity. 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 significant impact of birth order, with middleborns having lower SOI scores than firstborns or lastborns. 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 resource in the way male support can be for females. It is also possible that the male inclination toward unrestricted sociosexuality creates a floor effect. In direct terms of infidelity, middleborns reported having cheated at least once on a steady partner significantly less than firstborns 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 diversification of alternative phenotypes within species (Gross 1996). The idea of alternative strategies with respect to human personality has been discussed by Gangestad (1996). Research on alternative strategies in non-human animals has shown that in most cases the environment plays a large role in determining the pursuit of particular tactics within a strategy (Gross 1996). This emphasis on technical plasticity in response 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' relationships with family, friends, and mates, additional questions are relevant to these issues. An exploration of the relationship between birth order, exchange orientation, and the value of items exchanged with friends would seem particularly fruitful with regard to the nature of middleborns as reciprocity 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 financial 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 subjects) would prove even more informative with regard to parental investment per se, though clearly it is the perceptions of middleborns which should correspond most closely to their resulting behavior. The issue of the

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impact of birth order on mating strategies also clearly needs further examination. It may be that in a larger sample, the middleborns would have shown significantly lower SOI scores. They certainly were less likely to have cheated on a partner while in a committed relationship. It would be beneficial 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 significant impact on familial sentiment, with middleborns being less family-oriented than firstborns or lastborns. This study also suggests that middleborns place greater importance on and have more positive views of non-kin friendships than firstborns 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 middleborns (not males) have lower SOl scores, and both male and female middleborns were less likely than firstborns 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 w h y 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 Research Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Psychology Department of Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia. Her research interests include birth order and relationships, the link between reproductive suppression and anorexic behavior, female sexuality, and the evolutionary study of literature and the media.

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