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At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1976

Birth order, maternal age and birth interval in epidemiology.

Foetal wastage and congenital malformations are not so closely associated with birth order, maternal age and birth interval as is suggested by data pooled across sibships of different sizes. The point could only have been established by data on large numbers of individual sibships. Maternal age, parity and birth interval are convenient but confusing variables to work with. However if they are to be used, it is essential to recognize that if the condition being studied may be associated with fertility of the parents, one needs to ascertain numbers of completed sibships containing affected cases. Incidence rates by age, parity and birth interval imply nothing by themselves.

Birth Order↗
PubMed1979

Birth order and intelligence: an immunological interpretation.

The literature indicates that the IQs and school performance of children tend to decline with increasing order of birth. A hypothesis is here presented that the effect of birth order upon intellectual performance may result from an increasing probability of maternal immune attack upon the fetal brain in utero with order of parity. In support of this hypothesis, evidence is adduced from the literature that the fetal brain is antigenic, that fetal antigens may reach the immune system of the mother, that the incidence of maternal sensitization to fetal antigens increases with parity, that antibodies may readily cross the placenta and reach the fetal brain, that antibodies can be highly teratogenic, and that certain antibodies may damage, in a lasting way, the structure, function, and learning capacity of brains in experimental animals and human infants.

Animals↗
PubMed1992

Birth Order and health: major issues.

Birth Order has been described as a variable with a complex relationship to child and adult outcomes. A review of the medical literature over the past 5 years identified 20 studies that investigated the relationship between Birth Order and a health outcome. Only one of the studies established a relationship between Birth Order and a health outcome: third and fourth-born children have a higher incidence of accidents that result in hospitalization. The other demonstrated relationships are each explained by intervening variables or methodological limitations. Although Birth Order is not a strongly independent explanatory factor in understanding health outcomes, it is an important marker variable. Statistically significant relationships between Birth Order and health outcomes yield insights into the ways a family influences an individual's health.

Birth Order↗
PubMed1979

The birth order puzzle.

Studies relating intellectual performance to birth order report conflicting results, some finding intellectual scores to increase, others to decrease with birth order. In contrast, the relationship between intellectual performance and family size is stable and consistently replicable. Why do these two highly related variables generate such divergent results? This birth order puzzle is resolved by means of the confluence model that quantifies the influences upon intellectual growth arising within the family context. At the time of a new birth, two opposing influences act upon intellectual growth of the elder sibling: (a) his or her intellectual environment is "diluted" and (b) he or she loses the "last-born's handicap" and begins serving as an intellectual resource to the younger sibling. Since these opposite effects are not equal in magnitude, the differences in intellectual performance among birth ranks are shown to be age dependent. While elder children may surpass their younger siblings in intellectual performance at some ages, they may be overtaken by them at others. Thus when age is taken into consideration, the birth order literature loses its chaotic character and an orderly pattern of results emerges.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1976

Birth order, family size and school failure.

The effect of birth order on educational outcome in the Netherlands is reported for two major social classes, manual and non-manual. The rates of school failure (those who attended schools for the mentally retarded and who failed lower school) were studied in a population of some 200,000 young adult Dutch males born between 1944 and 1946 and whose families of origin had from one to six children. The data used were the records of the Dutch military pre-induction examination. Rates of school failure rose both with increased birth order and with increased family-size, with the exception of one-child families. School failure rates for the first, middle-and last-born were examined for the two social classes, with family size controlled. In general, school-failure rates were significantly related to birth-order position. For each family size and in both social classes, the last-born were at greater risk of school failure than were the first-born.

Adult↗
PubMed1975

Birth order and a two-dimensional assessment of personality.

Higher order personality dimensions of extraversion-introversion and neuroticism were studied as functions of birth order in two-sib families, using 141 female subjects, with control over sex of sibling and sib age separation. No significant personality dimension variance was attributable to birth order in females. The results were considered briefly in terms of the importance of birth order, heritability questions, and the possible contribution of birth order to lower order traits.

Age Factors↗
PubMed1976

The secondary sex ratio in the United States 1969-71: association with race, parental ages, birth order, paternal education and legitimacy.

The simultaneous effects of several variables on the secondary sex ratio have been examined using data from over 5,000,000 births which occurred in the United States during 1969-71. The previously described negative association of birth order and sex ratio has been confirmed. For legitimate and illegitimate births combined, maternal age and paternal age are unimportant factors once account is made of birth order. This pattern obtains for both blacks and whites. The sex ratio for legitimate and illegitimate births is equivalent but the fact of legitimacy or illegitimacy may affect the association of the ratio with birth order and the parental ages. Paternal education is not significantly related to the ratio, but the highest probability of a male birth is found among fathers with intermediate levels of attainment. Even though the association between sex ratio and order of birth is highly significant in the statistical sense, the proportion of male births changes less than 2% over the extreme values of birth order. Furthermore, it is emphasized that the association accounts for only a very minor (less than 10%) proportion of the total variation in the ratio.

Birth Order↗
PubMed1979

Parental age and birth order in homosexual patients: a replication of Slater's study.

Parental age (at patient's birth) and birth order were studied in 623 male and 89 female patients diagnosed as homosexual, who were born in England and Wales and first attended the Maudsley Hospital between the years 1961-1975. For male patients, mean parental ages were significantly higher than expectation, and mean birth order was significantly later. Regression analysis indicated that the raised fathers' age was probably of more aetiological importance than the raised mothers' age. The results confirm those of previous studies. The female patients did not show a raised parental age or late birth order.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1992

[A study on effects of parents age, birth order and mental retardation of unknown etiology].

On this report 461 matched cases of mental retardation of unknown aetiology were analysed on the relationship between the diseases and the parents age, birth orders with conditional Logistic regression. These cases were accurately diagnosed and selected from the Epidemiologic Survey of genetic diseases of Sichuan, China. The results found that mental retardation of unknown aetiology is related to the age of parents and birth order. The paternal age is the main factor while the maternal age in not a significant effect and birth order also in not a significant effect after readjusting the other factors. Compared to paternal age group of under 25. There are significant increase of relative risks of age group 30-34 and 45 above, about 1.8 and 2.7 fold increase in univariate analysis and 1.9 and 3.3 fold increase in controlling the maternal age and birth order, a chi-square test for trend of distribution of paternal age also indicates a significant dose response relationship between increasing risk with age. The significance of result and methods of analysis were discussed.

Adult↗
PubMed1979

Choice of ascertainment model II. Discrimination between multi-proband models by means of birth order data.

Probability models have been developed for family data, where each family has been selected or ascertained through a group of m probands, where m is a known parameter, not a random variable. The birth orders of the probands among the affected children are reported for each family. It is demonstrated that this information is sufficient for choice of ascertainment model. The conditional probability that an ascertained family with s children has r affected ones, depends, in addition to the segregation parameter, on the birth order of the youngest proband only. By means of the joint distribution of the birth orders of the other probands, it can be demonstrated if the ascertainment takes place through affected children near to or distant from each other in relative birth orders. Statistical methods have been developed for cases with two and cases with m probands.

Birth Order↗
PubMed1992

Birth order, development and personality.

First borns tend to be different, some of the time, than children born into the other birth orders. This seems due to parental treatment. Parents are often overly anxious about their first child, and may be more restrictive with the first child than with later children. It may be that this is especially true if the first child is female, given the tendency of parents to be more protective of females than of males. Also, the first child has more time alone with the parents than subsequent children, by virtue of having no siblings until the second child is born. From the above factors, it appears that first borns grow up more fearful than later born children but also more intellectually oriented. These are only tendencies and would not be absolutely true in every instance. But, the birth order does seem to initiate a tendency for things to be as stated. As a result, first borns achieve much more than the other birth orders, perhaps due to early adult-oriented styles learned when they had only the parents and no other siblings. If this speculation is correct, the same finding should hold for only children as well. The greater anxiety, achievement, and creativity of some first borns means their lives may be very different as a result of having been the first born child in the family.

Achievement↗
PubMed1992

Birth order, neuroticism, and psychoticism among Iranian children.

To investigate the effects of birth order, parents' education, and parents' occupation on four dimensions of the Junior Eysenck Personality Questionnaire, 262 elementary school students (100 boys and 162 girls) were selected randomly from four elementary schools in Shiraz. Analyses showed the main effects of birth order were significant on Neuroticism and Lie scales. Further, the effects of mothers' occupation on the Lie scale and fathers' education on the Neuroticism scale were significant.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1979

Anencephaly in Japan: paternal age, maternal age and birth order.

The statistical association between incidence of anencephaly and paternal age, maternal age and birth order was analysed in 1815 cases of foetal deaths with anencephaly reported during 1975--6. The birth order association was confirmed with an extremely high degree of statistical significance.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1977

Relation of birth order, family size and social class to psychological functions.

Findings are reported on birth-order and family-size effects for five psychological functions measured by the military preinduction test battery which was administered to a total population of 19-yr.-old Dutch men. These men were born between 1944 and 1946, were members of 1- to 6-child families and were from the two major social classes. A clear birth-order gradient was present on all test measures for both social classes. Family-size effects, however, differed by social class. The results extend to a range of psychological functions the findings previously reported for a single test of non-verbal intelligence, suggesting that family-structure variables play a role in understanding intellectual development.

Adult↗
PubMed1979

Birth order and parental age in microphthalmos and other ocular diseases.

We compared the distribution of birth order and maternal and paternal ages of blind school children throughout Japan with that of the total Japanese population of the corresponding age groups and with that of a subgroup of children with acquired blindness. The number of first-born children with microphthalmos was smaller, and the number of second-, third-, or fourth-born children was larger, as compared with the control groups. The differences were highly statistically significant by chi-square test. There was a less pronounced indication of birth order effect in amblyopia, congenital cataract, and optic nerve atrophy, which involved more first-borns than in the controls. The distribution of maternal age was also different from the control group in microphthalmos, congenital cataract, corneal opacity, and optic nerve atrophy. Less mothers in their 20s and more in their 30s produced children with these conditions. We believe this finding may be partly related to the rapid decline in infant mortality and in the incidence of congenital blindness in Japan.

Adult↗
PubMed1979

Age at menarche, family size, and birth order in athletes at the Montreal Olympic Games, 1976.

Age at menarache, family size, and birth order in 145 athletes at the Montreal Olympic Games, 1976, were determined through interview. The athletes represented 27 countries, but 76% came from Canada, Great Britain and the United States. On the average, athletes attained menarche later than the general population in their respective countries, the mean age at menarche for the sample of 139 athletes who had attained menarche at the time of the survey being 13.66 +/- 0.12 years. Six athletes had not yet attained menarche at the time of the survey. Gymnasts, runners and rowers attained menarche significantly later than swimmers, but gymnasts, runners, rowers and jumpers/hurdlers did not differ significantly among themselves in the age at menarche. Correlations between age at menarche and family size and birth order were significant, but low to moderate in magnitude. Athletes from larger families tended to have, on the average, later menarche than those from smaller families, this trend being more apparent in rowers and track and field athletes.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1979

Family-size and birth-order in obsessional neurosis.

Family size and birth-order of 156 British-born patients diagnosed as having obsessive-compulsive neurosis were determined from case-notes; these were compared with matched controls. Separate consideration was given to male and female patients. Mean family size of obsessionals was found to be smaller than that of controls. An excess of first-born was found among male obsessional patients.

Age Factors↗
PubMed1975

[Does there exist a correlation between the number of whorls of the finger tips and birth order of sibs? (author's transl)].

It was stated by Birdsong and Rashad (1972) that the child of birth order number six of Korean families has significantly more true whorls on the finger tips than older brothers and sisters. To verify this assertion we studied a sample of all members of 43 normal German families with 5 or more legitimate children. The findings of the epidermal finger pattern types and those of the toe patterns were analysed. Results indicate a different conclusion regarding the number of digital whorls which were not increased statistically with increasing number of sibs. The number of whorls were randomly distributed within the heritable range of variability of the particular family. It appears of importance that, due to our analyses, the value of information of the characteristic "number of whorls" is not reduced and does not require a specific consideration regarding birth order. Furthermore, it can be stated preliminarly that there is no hint pointing to an influence of the maternal age on the number of whorls in their offspring.

Adult↗