The Birth Order Book (5 page)

Family A

Male—14

Female—13

– – – – – – –

Male—7

Female—5

The dotted line depicts the obvious split in this kind of birth order ranking. The gap of six years between the second-and thirdborn child could easily cause the thirdborn boy to develop firstborn tendencies. This doesn’t mean he would have no characteristics of a middle child (in a family of four children, #2 and #3 are middle children). He could still become a negotiator; he could still have a lot of friends. But he also might be quite “adult”—conscientious, exacting—because he had so many older role models. Not only would his parents model adult characteristics for him but so would his much bigger (and more capable) brother and sister. And that’s where he could learn to function in a number of ways as a firstborn.

Gaps of five to six years or more in the spacing of the children can create another “family.”

For another example, what do you think would happen if I removed the 7-year-old male and the 5-year-old female from the family, and then inserted a 3-year-old male?

Family B

Male—14

Female—13

– – – – – – –

Male—3

Now what do we have? When the gap between the last child and the one above becomes more than seven years, you have a very good chance of developing what we call a quasi–only child. The little 3-year-old is the baby of the family, ordinally speaking, and he may take on baby characteristics if his parents and those two older siblings dote on him. But if he’s left to himself and doesn’t get much “cute little cub” treatment, he can easily become much like an only child, because he will be working extra hard trying to emulate all those big role models above him who are so much more capable.

Meet the First Leman Family

Here’s a real-life example of how spacing in children can affect birth order. My wife, Sande, and I first had our daughter, Holly. A year and a half later, Krissy joined the family. Four years later Kevey (Kevin II) was born.

Our first children followed the typical birth order patterns practically to a T. From day one, Holly was meticulous, perfectionistic, structured, hard driving, and very bright. She was also a stickler for the rules and being precise. If she wanted to know what time we were going to leave for an event, I couldn’t get away with saying, “Around noon.” I had to be clearer and make it, “We will depart the driveway by 11:55 a.m.”

It was no surprise when Holly latched onto Judge Wapner’s
People’s Court
as one of her favorite TV shows. (And later she became a real fan of Judge Judy.) After graduating from college, Holly returned to Tucson to teach and joined the faculty of a local public high school, where she taught English and creative writing to seniors. During her first year, we would run across parents of students in her class who would tell us two things. They were essentially happy with Holly’s teaching of their child, but the next word out of their mouths was “detention.”

“Oh,” I would reply, “your child doesn’t always come to class prepared?”

“No, but he’s learning!” would be the typical response.

Clearly firstborn Holly was a stickler for procedure, proper behavior, and coming to class prepared. Since then Holly has worn various hats at a variety of schools: as English teacher, administrator, the head of the English department, and curriculum developer.

Krissy, our secondborn, also wound up as a teacher of second graders. She was later appointed as director of curriculum. After her first year of work, her principal told her that she was the first teacher to serve on his staff in twenty-five years to whom he had no suggestions on how to improve. Then Krissy made the tough choice to bail out of the school system and become the best teacher we could ask for to our two grandchildren.

So was Krissy the same kind of hard-driving, precise, stick-to-the-rules-and-get-your-work-in-on-time personality as her sister? Not really. But on the other hand, Krissy was in full control of her class because she’s very
relational
with kids, a sure sign of a secondborn who has learned to negotiate, mediate, and go outside the family to make friends. From early on, this was Krissy’s pattern. We still talk about her first day at kindergarten when she frightened her mother out of her wits by going to her best friend’s house after school instead of coming straight home on the bus.

It’s important to know, however, that Krissy was our baby girl for at least four years before Kevin came along. So she was the baby of the family for much of her early life when her lifestyle (the way she sees herself and the world) was being formed. Maybe that explains why she can’t seem to shake the “Krissy” handle. I’ve suggested that sometime before she gets her AARP card, she should switch to Kris or her given name, Kristin!

Then there’s Kevin, our thirdborn, the baby of the first Leman family. He’s a classic lastborn—playful, great sense of humor, very creative—but he also has tremendous writing skills At present Kevin is a comedy writer for one of the funniest shows on television. He has won two Emmys and written two movies to boot. He’s a perfect example of a person whose personality encompasses a couple of birth orders: the baby who’s always looking for fun (and notice that he earns his living writing comedy), and the creative, gifted writer—a quality of many firstborns.

Kevin had the best of both worlds. He was the baby of the family whose two older sisters used to dress him up for fun. Once we were on a trip in a big van that had a bed in the back where the kids could sleep. While Kevin was asleep, his older sisters completely colored his body with magic markers. Kevin didn’t even wake up!

However, for all of his lastborn charms, Kevin is still the firstborn male in the family and has the resulting firstborn traits. Here’s what I mean. When he attended art school, he was very well liked. One day a classmate who was struggling to get her life together asked him, “Kevin, why are you always so happy?”

“Do you really want to know?” Kevin said.

“Yeah, I do!”

“Well, I love God and I come from a really neat family.”

When Kevin told me that story, I was so pleased I nearly popped my buttons. But I was even more impressed when he added the sequel: “Dad, that girl still smokes pot, but not as much. And she still rips things off sometimes. We went to Disney World together, and when we came out of this gift shop she had that look on her face. I stopped her and said, ‘Okay, let’s have it.’ She took it out of her pocket and handed it to me. I marched her right back into the store and she gave it back.”

You see, Kevin has a firstborn’s strong sense of responsibility along with his fun-loving nature. As a man who’s now 30, solidly entrenched in his career, and beloved by his family and co-workers, Kevin is far ahead of where I, his father, was at that point in life and then some!

How We Got Our “Second Family”

When the first edition of
The Birth Order Book
came out, our children were all young:

Family Leman (mid-1980s)

Holly—12

Krissy—10

Kevin—6

Sande and I thought our family was complete with our trio. Little did we know that a second family was on the way.

In 1987, more than nine years after Kevin was born—and Sande and I were both in our early forties—a little “surprise” package arrived, and we named her Hannah.

With such a large gap between Hannah and Kevey, Hannah definitely started a second round of birth order for the Lemans. She has been a joy to raise. Her firstbornness has always been on the compliant side. For example, at age 2 she’d organize us as parents, but always in a gentle fashion. When she needed a nap, she’d come up to us, take our hands, and say, “Tired now.” At age 11 she was already a budding artist. Hannah is now 22 and a recent college graduate.

But our second family was still not complete with the birth of Hannah. Almost five and a half years later came our little “shocker,” a little princess we named Lauren. Learning we were expecting for a fifth time—in our
late
forties—was a shock for both me and my usually implacable firstborn wife. After getting Hannah into preschool, Sande was just beginning to see some daylight and looking forward to having a little time for herself.

But by the time little Lauren arrived, everyone—including Sande, me, and the other kids—had adjusted to her arrival, and she was as welcome and as loved as her siblings had been. Today Lauren is 16, the baby of our second family and the true baby of our total family, though she, like Kevin, has all the responsible traits of a firstborn because there is a gap of five and a half years between her and her sister Hannah. Now we look like this:

Family Leman (2009)

Holly—36, classic firstborn, teaches English

Krissy—34, classic middle child, educator, mommy of two

Kevin—30, functional firstborn, Emmy-award-winning comedy writer

Hannah—22, exhibits many tender baby characteristics; teacher

Lauren—16, baby of the entire family but also a functional firstborn, very precise, cautious

For the first five years of her life, Hannah was the baby princess. Because of the huge gap between her and her older brother and sisters, Hannah actually had five “parents” who doted on her. At least, there were five very big and capable people she was trying to learn from and imitate. Then Lauren arrived and took the baby spot. And again, because of a rather large gap between her and Hannah (over five years), Lauren was not only the true baby princess of the family but also a candidate for functional firstborn traits. We like to say that Hannah had five parents and Lauren had six!

And the firstborn probabilities did develop. At age 2½ Lauren would set up her tape recorder on the floor and line up all her tapes next to it in perfect order. To a baby of the family like me, who could hardly line up to go to the bathroom, this was almost scary.

But Lauren topped that at 5 years old when all of us gathered in the kitchen to discuss how our normal scheduling had been totally sabotaged for the next evening. Sande had a doctor’s appointment, so Krissy would have to pick up Hannah after school. Holly had a teacher’s meeting she had to attend, and I also had a meeting. We were all due to meet for dinner at 5:30 at a certain restaurant for a family celebration. As we chewed on all the details together, 5-year-old Lauren interjected, “My, my, my, this is very complicated.” Everyone sort of froze and just looked at her.

Don’t sell short the powerful imprint you and all of those older siblings are making on that lastborn.

I’m not sure where Lauren had learned the word
complicated
at that young age
,
but obviously she knew what it meant. (I can assure you I didn’t when I was 5.) I doubt that’s a typical observation for a 5-year-old, particularly for a baby of the family. But that’s where that variable of spacing comes in with Lauren. Whenever there’s enough of a spread between your lastborn and the one above to create the functional firstborn, don’t sell short the powerful imprint you and all of those older siblings are making on that lastborn. Granted, your little lastborn isn’t an ordinal firstborn, but he or she may carry some of the firstborn burdens. (More about that in chapter 4.)

Why Southwest Is Such a Fun Airline

One other good example of how spacing can create a firstborn personality in a lastborn child is Herb Kelleher, former president and CEO of Southwest Airlines. As I was reading with interest a business column in our local paper one day, I learned that Kelleher and his staff had built Southwest into one of the most profitable operations anywhere. One of the reasons he gave was, “We defined a personality as well as a market niche. [We seek to] amuse, surprise, and entertain.”
1

I jotted a note next to that quote that said, “Herbie must be a baby.” Later, when I telephoned him for an interview, he told me that, indeed, he is the baby of the family (fourthborn of four), but that there is a nine-year gap between him and his next older brother. And the other brothers are thirteen and fourteen years older. With all that coaching and all those capable people to model after, it’s no mystery that Herb Kelleher, baby of his family, made it to the top and became CEO of a prominent airline.

That’s why Kelleher is a mixed bag. As a CEO he was in typically firstborn company. At the same time, he loves to enjoy himself, and that’s his baby side. You may have seen past Southwest TV commercials where Kelleher was cast as a referee who called unnecessary roughness penalties on luggage handlers who were a bit too careless with the baggage. While he didn’t force his employees to be amusing and entertaining, they often followed suit. If you’ve ever been on a Southwest Airline flight and have listened to the flight attendants singing their zany songs to the passengers, you know what I mean. Kelleher’s legacy lives on.

While still CEO, Kelleher said, “We don’t force attendants to be entertainers. We just tell them if they feel comfortable doing things like that, great! And if they feel uncomfortable, don’t bother. They actually come up with many of these things themselves.”
2

The Gender Variable

Almost hand in hand with the spacing variable is the obvious variable of sex. We’ve already seen that a laterborn child can become the firstborn girl or the firstborn boy. And I’ve mentioned how a number of US presidents are functional firstborns because of being the first male in the family. I always find it fascinating how often birth order plays a role in developing political leaders.

Once I was speaking to a Young Presidents group at a resort in Tucson. Just as I reached the part of my talk where I stated how birth order impacts our lives, I spotted Fife Symington, who was then the governor of Arizona, in a far corner of the room. When I asked for a show of hands on who was a firstborn, a middle child, or a lastborn, the governor put his hand up to identify himself as a baby of his family.