ABSTRACT
It would not be misleading to argue that the most consistent theme in birth-order studies from the last century to the present has been the special eminence of first-born children. From Galton's speculations of 1874 to Zajonc's Confluence Model of 1975 there has been a 100-year preoccupation with the "psychological" primogeniture of the first-bom. In our book, The sibling (1970), Ben Rosenberg and I suggested that it was time for a shift in emphasis. 1 Together with Alfred Adler, another nonfirst-born, we argued for greater attention to the other siblings. In particular we sought to draw attention to those interactions that took place between siblings that might help to explain the unique characteristics of each sibling position.
