I was reading this article today. It’s a well presented article with a lot of good points on both sides of the birth order argument. As a kid I found this sort of thing fascinating because of my family’s dynamics. Both of my parents are youngest siblings (my dad of two, my mom of six) and yet neither are the stereotype of the younger sibling. My mother is much more like an older sibling and my dad simply isn’t what the article says a younger sibling is, stereotypically. He’s more educated and more financially successful than his older brother, but they’re very different people with very different personalities. I perfectly fit the mold for oldest child and my sister is different from me in the way a younger child / older child dynamic stereotypically is. Bryan, however, is the younger of two but is everything the stereotypical older child is — that, or he’s simply his father’s clone. All of his father’s siblings (the three of them) and his father are all Type-A personalities — it’s as if his parents had a horde of oldest children. All of this experience basically shows me that you can’t judge a dynamic without knowing the family personally (which is what the article eventually ends with, in terms of scientific methods of studying families).

This is what makes writing and creating characters and pulling apart their dynamics interesting for me. I often don’t think about family dynamics when I’m writing in the sense of the article, but when I look back, I unconsciously incorporated some of what the article said. The flip-flop theory: first child smart/independent, second child rebellious/humorous, third child smart/independent is a pattern in a family of three siblings I’ve written. Another: the second child “stepping up to the plate” when the first isn’t in the picture any longer. But experiences definitely have an impact on character behavior as well. If one child is the only one of the family to go out and have a heroic adventure and return changed, independent, and intelligent, that isn’t so much reflective of a birth order issue as much as it is the experiences of the character. That same character could be oldest, middle, or youngest and still have that experience — but perhaps their birth order would influence how they reacted in each of the situations. A fiercely independent oldest or only child could look at a monster to fight in a wholly different light than a more timid, less independent, or formerly coddled middle, youngest, or only child.

I’ve read a lot of books lately (yes, again) and a lot of things discussed in the article are heavily evident in Patricia Briggs’ Dragon Bones (and to a lesser extent in Dragon Blood). (I’ve also read Assassin King by Elizabeth Haydon and Robin McKinley’s Deerskin, but that’s neither here nor there with this argument.) Oh good, well-written characters — that’s probably my number one thing in a book I love. What a difference in reading a book when it’s filled with compelling characters! A good plot is always, to me, secondary to the people who move it forward. (Not everyone agrees with me; there are some die hard plot lovers out there — a lot of genre fiction does often rely on that.) But to me, a real, emotionally compelling character means all the world.

Anyway, enough internet browsing…