Middle Child Syndrome Research Paper

As recent studies show, the order in which the child are born could make significant impacts on a person’s personality, self-esteem, and even ambition. Because parents cannot treat their children in the same way, every child goes through distinct conditions and eventually develops unique characteristics. Moreover, parents would have different experiences with each child depending on the child’s birth order; for example, parents would treat the first-born child with less experience and sometimes expectations for more responsibilities while they would treat the youngest child with more affections and cares. All those factors contribute to children’s future personalities. Some factors came along with birth orders could be serious to the development of the child and one of the illness caused by birth order is known as the “middle child syndrome”. Middle child syndrome, as the name indicates, occurs in the middle children in a family of three or more children. As research shows, the middle child often receives less attention from the parents. Because of the stereotype that the first or the last child is more precious and important, parents unconsciously show more affection to them, and leave the middle

However, most middle children have lower self-esteem and become withdrawn as they feel less warmth in the family. As one article on Middle child syndrome states, “The middle child takes notice of this and feels unloved. This leads to their feelings of inadequacy and that empty feeling that many of us often experience” (Danish). This shows how middle children sometimes, unfortunately, are easily forgotten and feel left out of the family. Eventually, when the children grow up, they are sometimes more shy and more afraid to express their feelings because they feel they will not be taken care as much as others. All those symptoms characterize the effect of the middle child