So, just how does your order of birth affect your parenting? One typical force at work is the tendency for a parent to over identify with the child in the same birth-order position. This can lead to putting too much pressure on the child or spoiling or favouring the child. When I interacted with our first three children while they were growing up, whose antics did I enjoy the most? Kevin II - our baby, of course. For example, when Holly was 13 and Krissy was 11 and they would complain to me about 7- year-old Kevey and his pestering ways, I would say, "Well, girls, let s remember he's the baby of the family. Little baby brothers do that kind of thing to sisters." I identified with Kevin. Do you think Holly and Krissy picked up on that? You bet they did. In my case, I was over identifying with my lastborn in an indulging way because, as a baby of the family myself, I loved to pester my older sisters and brother when I was small.
But let me be clear that over identification can also be done in a non indulgent, hard-line way, particularly when both parents are firstborns. This almost guarantees that the parents will have what I call "the critical eye." Instead of overindulging their firstborn child, they’ll probably be extra hard on him or her as they exert their own exacting standards.