When it comes to sibling relationships, fairness rarely comes into play. If you’re the older sibling, you probably have quite a few grievances, like not being allowed to watch a PG-13 movie until you were actually 13, whereas little Bobby got to watch them at 10, having a 10 o’clock curfew which was pushed back to midnight for your younger sister, and the list goes on.

For the younger siblings reading this article, you can bask in the glory of that which is unjust: researchers at Hopkins’s sociology department recently published a study confirming this lack of equality in parental discipline.

The study, which was headed by Lingxin Hao, sought to determine whether parents punished older children more harshly for risky behavior, particularly dropping out of high school and having children in their teens.

Using game theory, Hao discovered that parents enforce stricter punishments on the oldest child so they can set an example for the younger siblings by indicating that they disapprove of such behaviors.

The greater the number of younger children in the family, the more likely are parents to enforce harsher punishments on the eldest child.

However, following through with these punishments declines with younger siblings when they become teenagers, as there are fewer children in the house and parents lose the energy and willpower to be the tough disciplinarians.

For only children, behavior mirrors that of the younger siblings: Parents cannot make an example of an only child by punishing her, so they punish her less often.

Compare Liesl, the oldest of seven in The Sound of Music (”You’re not going to tell Father, are you?”) with Veruca Salt, an only child in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (”I want an Oompa-Loompa and I want one NOW!”).

By measuring the the parental responses to teenage childbirth and dropping out of high school, Hao found that parents were more lenient toward younger siblings in these situations, providing them with more support into adulthood compared with their older brothers or sisters.

Furthermore, older children committed significantly fewer examples of such risky behaviors compared with their younger siblings. The common stereotype depicting the oldest child as the diligent, responsible one and the youngest as the class clown may actually have a scientific basis.

Even the declining number of children per family may contribute to the purported rise in spoiled kids. With fewer siblings around, discipline may be lacking because there are fewer younger kids who need an example.

So the next time you complain to your parents that they’re being unfair to you (if you’re older), pull out this article and prove you’re right.

Source: Johns Hopkins News-Letter, MD
http://tinyurl.com/4p2zuy