(Dr. Leman) - The Birth Order Book Review

The Birth Order - Book Review

Dr. Kevin Leman's The Birth Order Book: Why You Are the Way You Are caused a bit of a pop cultural sensation when it was first published, and is still relevant in the updated edition published in 2009. The book's premise is that the order in which you and any siblings you might have were born has a lot to do with your personalities, in both positive and negative ways. According to Dr. Leman, birth order can influence what type of person you are, your strengths and weaknesses, the kind of people with whom you are compatible for marriage, and the sort of profession you might choose or be well-suited for. Birth order, according to this book, can also help you overcome your personality if there are negative traits.

In terms of genre, this book is a mix between a scientific study and self-help. Clearly, the author, who is a psychologist according to his biography in the book, has a scientific background and has a lot of experience to draw on, both from his medical practice and in his own life (especially since he has five children himself.) The book definitely has good scientific underpinnings. However, it is certainly not a rigorous scientific study, since it lacks some basic scientific ideas. The information contained within the text is not the result of one scientific study or even of multiple studies, at least not ones that are well-described within the book. Instead, it is a collection of anecdotes, statistics, and good ideas from the author. The scientific community would not necessarily accept this book as a standard source to be used for scholarly research: this is more of a pop psychology book, meaning it is meant to be accessible to a casual reader. Someone who is not a scientist can definitely enjoy this book, and it is entertaining looking for one's own personality traits and trying to see if they are related to birth order via the book's stories and examples.

One thing noticeable about the book is that, while it is not an overtly religious text, it definitely has some overtones of religion and references to Judeo-Christian concepts, with Christianity seeming to be a particular focus. This did not impact the experience of reading the book negatively, however. In fact, I found it to be interesting in the sense that it was clear that this was a part of the author's life that had a lot to do with his personal worldview. It did not detract from the book at all for me, although since I am not an observant Christian it was not a reason on its own to give the book my recommendation, either.

From a more academic perspective, birth order has been a field of psychological study for many years, going back at least seventy years, as seen in Haldane, Cedric, & Smith . Like many scientific disciplines, the study of birth order has gone through phases in which it is studied a lot, and phases in which it is not a focus of scientific inquiry. Through the years, birth order has been said to correlate to and with everything from income earning potential to intelligence. Rodgers et al synthesized a lot of the previous literature in an attempt to make sense of the conflicting data that existed on whether or not birth order had a relationship with intelligence. By examining data from the National Longitudinal Study of Youth, they found that while parents with less intelligence (measured by I.Q.) tend to have large families, large families do not necessarily make low-I.Q. children. That is, being lower in the birth order is not a negative predictor for intelligence. On the other hand, Sulloway, agrees with many of Dr. Leman's contentions regarding artistic children and where they might typically fall in the birth order.

Reading this type of study along with Dr. Kevin Leman's book provides some perspective that I believe is much needed on the issue of birth order. Birth order may have something to do with how parents treat a child and perhaps even with the inner workings of a child's mind, but it is definitely a case of nurture, in my opinion, rather than nature. That is, I do not necessarily agree with Dr. Leman that there are inherent characteristics for people at different places in birth order. While he presents a lot of stories that fit his ideas, they are clearly carefully selected, and the stories of thousands of individuals do not likely match up with Dr. Lehman's ideas nearly as well. Yet, these stories are not mentioned. As a result, the book makes a strong and convincing argument at first glance, but when looking beneath the surface, more questions seem to arise.

According to Dr. Lehman, as an only child, I am supposed to be responsible to the point that I might even be too much so, and also am supposed to be quite a perfectionist. While I am certainly a perfectionist, I believe that this is due more to being from a family of people with very high standards, who always encouraged me to have extremely high standards for myself is well. If my parents had happened to have more children, the other children would be equally likely to be perfectionists, since all the siblings would have the same high standards applied by our parents. Therefore, while I see at least one instance in which Dr. Lehman's theories are borne out in my own life, I do not think that they are necessarily sound science, since he does not do a very good job establishing the causal relationship between behavior and birth order. He has a lot of anecdotal evidence, but that is all.

Ultimately, while I enjoyed this book, I found it a bit frustrating. This may be because I am somewhat scientifically minded. Dr. Leman seems to think that as an only child, I should be a natural leader, but I often choose to take a back seat to others to be sure that work is done thoroughly and correctly even if that means I do not get a lot of credit. Too often, in the course of reading this book, I found myself noticing a prediction about my own personality or future, or that of one of my friends, and realizing that there was not enough scientific evidence cited to back it up. It is clear that there is scientific evidence out there on birth order, and those looking for an academic study of the subject are more likely to find what they are looking for elsewhere. However, for an entertaining book with some interesting nuggets of knowledge about something that affects the lives of every individual, The Birth Order Book is a wonderful choice of reading material.

References

Haldane, J., Cedric, F., & Smith, A.. A simple exact test for birth-order effect. Annals of Eugenics, 14(1), 117-124.

Rodgers, J. L., Cleveland, H. H., Oord, E. v., & Rowe, D. C. Resolving the debate over birth order, family size, and intelligence. American Psychologist, 55(6), 599-612.

Sulloway, F. J.. Born to rebel: Birth order, family dynamics, and creative lives. New York: Vintage Books.