Abstract: The Experience of the Oldest Daughter in the Family

My research question is “What is the experience of being the oldest daughter in a family?” This topic belongs to the field of Developmental Psychology. For 12 years I was the only child of my parents and the only granddaughter of my mother’s and father’s parents.

There are lots of families with only child and my research could help them to overcome psychological and mental difficulties in society. Opponents say that the problems, caused by an addition in the family depend only on individual psychology. My ideal audience will be some classmates and some of my uncles and aunts, because they have only children. I will be the researcher and inform you with what I have found out. I will look at TV shows to see how often this topic comes up.

Introduction

Oldest Daughter

A photo collage of me and my little brother.

There are lots of families with only 2 children, and every time the age difference between these 2 children becomes bigger. I can’t say whether it is good or bad for children and parents, but in every case, there comes the time, when family has some psychological problems – lack of communication, or problems with money and etc. but I believe, that every problem has a solution, if only you will not postpone it for a long time.

This topic belongs to the filed of psychology: Developmental Psychology. Development psychology is the field that studies person’s all aspects of human growth throughout the lifespan. Studying and analyzing the time from childhood to adulthood, scientist seek to understand and explain how and why people change their life.

I have been the only child in my family for 12 years; also I was the only granddaughter for mother’s and father’s parents. It is easy to predict, that I was lovely and sweet child for all my family, but time goes fast and when I was 12 years old, my mom presented me the best gift ever in my life – my little brother. His name is Aldiyar, in Kazakh language it means “Your Majesty” and for my family, as the most long-awaited one, he is a real king. From a princess I turned to a babysitter, and after years I understood, that it is great to have a sibling. I am the oldest grandchild of my mother’s parents, but there is a little brother, who is younger me only for 1 year, but our childhood was like a wartime. But unfortunately for him I was much stronger and after our fight he was running to his mom in tears. But know, I am respectful person, and he always asks me for advice. I really hope that Aldiyar will ask for my advice in the future life. But until that time I have 5 younger brothers and 1 little sister-princess.

My topic is urgent, because there are lots of families with 2 or more children and a huge age difference between them. Some of these families have problems in misunderstanding, but the lack of communication is worse problem. Of course every problem has its solution, but the problem should be postponed for a long time, because in that case it will be harder to solve the problem. All that I want is to inform people about problems of the oldest child and I may even help some of the families.

My opponents think that problems like this meet not in every family and even if they exist, it doesn’t mean, that they could be solved in the same way as other families. I actually don’t know if my topic is distributed or not, but I know that half of my friends will find my topic helpful and relevant, because it concerns them.

I don’t think that I have a perfect audience, because it may be helpful for parents, for their children, or even their grandparents. The only thing I know is that everyone will find something interesting and new in my writing.

As everyone has the role in his writings, I have I too – I am an informant. I will search for the most interesting and relevant topics, then I will thoroughly read them and I’ll get maximum information out of them only for you – my readers.

I think the most interesting features if my study design is that the problem of my topic is very social and common for everyone problem, the problem of the only child (daughter) in a family.

I am going to introduce my key terms and I will start with sibling rivalry. Sibling rivalry is a type of competition or animosity among siblings, whether blood related or not. Siblings generally spend more time together during childhood than they do with parents. The sibling bond is often complicated and is influenced by factors such as parental treatment, birth order, personality, and people and experiences outside the family.

My second term is identification. A process by which an individual unconsciously endeavors to pattern himself after another. This process is also important in the development of the personality, particularly the superego or conscience, which is modeled largely on the behavior of adult significant others.

My third key term is favoritism. The preferential treatment of a person or group of people over other people or groups in the same unit, such as a classroom, social group or workplace. Favoritism has a negative effect on workplace morale and in some instances can be illegal, especially if the treatment is based upon racial preferences or in exchange for sexual favors. As favoritism is the broadest of these related terms, we'll start with its definition. Basically favoritism is just what it sounds like; it's favoring a person not because he or she is doing the best job but rather because of some extraneous feature-membership in a favored group, personal likes and dislikes, etc.

The next key term is transference – the action of transferring something or the process of being transferred: education involves the transference of knowledge. Psychoanalysis the redirection to a substitute, usually a therapist, of emotions that were originally felt in childhood (in a phase of analysis called transference neurosis).

Literature review

During the research I found 3 articles, related to my topic, and which are proving, that the problem exists. I am going to focus my literature review on the experience of the oldest female child in the family, the person who is being the only child the family for a period of time and then joined by siblings.

My first article is named “Does Birth Order Really Matter?”, and written by Sue Flanagan and Patty Morrison, in 2007. Authors are trying to prove, that the birth order, influences person’s behavior, and its future life seems obvious – bossy. They say, that firstborns, become very rule-conscious and goal-oriented, because they definitely know what they want, and what is more important- I they know how to achieve their goals in a very right way. Firstborns are very bossy, because there is a huge responsibility for the younger ones on their shoulders. At the same time, younger siblings believe that their brother/sister is an example of the right behavior, they think of the older ones as a leader.

Then the authors write about the only children in a family. They dispelled the myth about spoiled and selfish child, who doesn’t care of anything, but him. Nowadays, only children in a family, more alike firstborn: they are also well organized, reliable, serious and conservative. However, parental pressure and expectations are huger that firstborn’s.

The Middle Child – the most unloved child in a family. It is very hard to predict middle child’s characteristics: he/she can be shy and introvert, or the friendly and outgoing one. Moreover middle child may feel “squeezed” by the older or younger siblings. For example will take a middle girl in a family: she has a special role, she is both a big sister and a little sister, that gives her more opportunities, than other ones have.

The youngest child – is an eternal baby, even when he is adult with his own family, parents believe, that he is still a baby. Youngest child loves attention, from anyone, but at the same time, there is a serious “air” in his head, he seems very outgoing and the most spoiled one. The great thing is that youngest child has two or more older siblings to learn form, but he may also depend on them too much.

My second article is written by Michelle Duffy, in 2008 “Tough At The Top: How The Oldest Child Of The Family Gets The Hardest Discipline”. The author as the authors in the previous article, describes behavior of all the types of children, for example, she says, that middle child has special syndrome, where in some cases of social life has some psychological problems. Michelle Duffy believes, that the role of the oldest child is the hardest one, they have so many responsibilities and duties, whereas parents decide to be more relaxes and calm in growing up other children. She also notices, that parents only after some time realize how tough it was to grow up for their first child. They start remember all the hard work that their child did. But after they question themselves “We are stone guilty of using our oldest one, and what?” they realize, that now there is nothing they can do.

Primary research

Observation

Because I wanted to understand how to help other families to overcome problems and misunderstandings with their oldest daughters, I decided to do my observation on Sunday, because children and their parents have a day off, in “Happylon” Game Park in “Sputnik” shopping center. I went there on the 31^st of March at 12 o’clock, because usually at that time there are lots of children playing after tasty breakfast. I came there alone, without my brother and sat on the branch near the attractions and started snooping around. As I expected there were lots of children without adults, but with older sisters/brothers/uncles/aunts. And the first interesting and surprising fact for me was that older brothers cared and played with their younger siblings more than older sisters.

Because I have a lot of male cousins, I know their crazy behavior. And before my observation, I saw them only arguing, fighting and playing cruel games. I didn’t see any love and care between them, but then I understood that it happens regularly, but it doesn’t affect their fraternal (brotherly) relationships. And when I was sitting on the branch, I noticed a boy, whose age was nearly 15 years, with his little brother (nearly 7 years) and sister (nearly 5 years). He was carrying an old and shabby packet with 1 L. juice and changing clothes for his siblings. They were not from rich family, but they had very happy life. Two little children were playing in labyrinth and very few times ran up to him, to drink some juice. When they were coming at him, he was checking their clothes (should he change them or not) and after they came tired, he changed their clothes and they sat near us on the branch, just to relax. I saw myself in him, because he was so careful, I immediately started respecting him. I understood that there are lots of older brothers, who care about their younger siblings as good as older sisters, sometimes even better than older sisters. After these cute children, I noticed fashionable girl entering the game park with the smartphone in one hand and a bag in another. “But she is too old for these attractions?” – I thought, but then I saw a boy, coming after her with a pocket full of unhealthy junks. I immediately understood, that she made to go and look after his younger sibling. She sat on the branch in front of me, without breaking away from her phone and started chatting with her friends. Her little brother just put the packet near his sister and went away to play. He was going around some time and then started playing the attraction near us, just to be seen to his sister. He played few games and then started shouting his sister, he was asking her to come up to him and look how much point he scored, but she didn’t cared. She said something indistinctly, like: ”Ok, yes, you are cool, whatever…” but he wasn’t satisfied with her answer and went far away from her. I waited for him and started being nervous and I felt myself being his older sister, than this girl. Then I decided to go and look where is he and in another side of the gaming park I saw him sitting alone, playing arcade and eating chips. He was disappointed and in very bad mood, but then he found a friend and they started playing and eating together: they become friends. After a while I saw his sister coming, she said: “come on, we should go home, I want to go out with my friends”, he was shocked and asked her for more time to play with his new friend, but she didn’t care, she said him, that if he won’t come with her now, she will just leave him alone in this shopping center. The boy was so angry, he threw all snacks on the floor and went away, but the girl didn’t pay any attention and just followed him. I felt very sorry for him…

I sat on “my” branch and looked around. There was nothing special and interesting and it was nearly 5 o’clock. I decided to go home, but near the exit I saw a girl nearly 12 years old and a boy, nearly 5 years old. They were playing “Guitar hero” – it is a game with guitar simulator, but it is too complicated for 5 years old boy. The girl surely knew what to do, but she decided to teach her little brother how to play. It was very interesting for me to watch, how will she explain everything to 5 years old boy, because I had the same situation: Aldiyar also asked me to teach this game. So I stood near them and I was shocked. This little girl acted as an adult, she spoke calmly and she was so patient. I didn’t know this game, and with Aldiyar learnt how to play, but it was very nervous experience, because he is very impatient. Finally, after few trial games, they started playing together and while playing, I noticed little boy’s look his sister. I felt his respect and love, and his look made me respect her. I was so grateful to their parents for an excellent parenting, I hope that there would be more such older sisters like this girl.

While I was observing for interesting and unusual details and activities, I understood that there are so many siblings with huge age gap, just like in my situation. But there are families with careful older sisters. We have family-friends with oldest daughter (19 years old), teenager son (16 years old) and a little boy with physical problems (5 years old). All three children in this family have physical problems, but the youngest one is deaf. This is terrible situation, but anyway, the oldest daughter doesn’t help their mother, but the middle child does. He loves his little brother more than anything in the world and he really looks after him: he plays with him; he feeds him, puts him to sleep and etc. Once he even saved his life, just like me. Oldest son had to do his homework and asked their sister to look after their brother for a while, she said OK, but then she decided to listen to some music. She wore headphones and forgot about her little brother. This little boy, climbed on the window and started looking down, but fortunately at that time, middle child decided to check up his little brother and when he saw him on the window, he immediately run up to him and actually saved his life. He was arguing with his sister for a long time and didn’t forgive her for such negligence yet. But on the other side, I have a friend, who has 2 little stepsisters, but despite this fact, she loves them very much, as well as they. I decided, that such “bad”, careless sisters are not very common and it cheers me up.

The fact that there so many families with huge age gaps between their children, made me think about: “Why is there such a gap? What problems do these families have? Why not more children?” And now I want to know what problems prevent women from giving birth and what age gap between children is the best.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14