BIRTH ORDER
By Sasha Alex Lessin, Ph.D.
Ph.D. Anthropology, UCLA
M.A. Counseling Psychology, University for Humanistic Psychology
Contributing Author: Janet Kira Lessin
Learn more about Adlerian and other therapeutic modalities at:
https://wp.me/p1TVCy-5QW
YOUR FAMILY TRAINED YOUR FIRST VIEW OF THE WORLD
Every child enters life small, dependent, and unable to survive without caregivers. Every child begins life in an unequal relationship with larger, stronger people who control food, protection, affection, rules, and punishment.
Alfred Adler argued that these early experiences shape each child’s first conclusions about power, belonging, competence, and worth.
Adler proposed that birth order influences the role a child adopts inside the family. The oldest child faces one set of challenges. The middle child faces another. The youngest child and the only child each face distinct opportunities and challenges. These early adaptations often remain active long after childhood ends unless people recognize and revise them.
I interpret Adler’s insights through a broader framework. In my view, humanity continues to reproduce domination hierarchies that reflect the ancient Anunnaki struggle between authoritarian rule and cooperative partnership. Within this interpretive framework, Enlil, later identified with Yahweh, and Marduk, later associated with Zeus, represent a consciousness of domination. Princess Ninmah represents partnership, balance, mutual care, and shared responsibility.
Your family became the first classroom where you learned either domination or cooperation. This exercise asks you to discover whether your childhood role still directs your reactions or whether you now choose your responses with awareness.
As a child, you learned far more than language and manners. You learned authority, fairness, competition, cooperation, exclusion, reward, and punishment. Every family develops its own social system. Within your family, each child discovers where he or she stands.
Some children conclude, I must obey.
Others conclude, I must compete.
Other children reason, I must please everyone.
Some children tell themselves, Nobody notices me.
Those conclusions often survive into adult friendships, marriages, workplaces, politics, and spiritual communities. This status angst expresses the pathology inherent in domination consciousness, the pattern Earth cultures imprint on us again and again.
Domination dementia survives as the governing principle in many modern societies because people recreate inside adult institutions the emotional hierarchies they accepted during childhood.
Partnership consciousness begins when adults recognize those patterns, reparent themselves with more balanced giving and taking, and replace automatic superior-inferior reactions with conscious choices to share, cooperate, and seek mutual satisfaction.
You learn to ask yourself:
Why do I become anxious whenever someone holds authority?
When did authority first enter my life?
Did my idea of right originate when I depended on my parents?
Guide: Then your first government was your family.
Adult: So I still respond to old rules.
Guide: Now you can write new ones.
GET YOURSELF FREE
Domination dementia survives as the governing principle in many societies because it supports the public narratives of elites who stand atop Anunnaki-derived caste systems, national hierarchies, and institutional power structures. It also mirrors the emotional hierarchies people accepted during childhood.
Partnership consciousness begins when adults recognize those patterns, reparent themselves through balanced giving and receiving, and replace superior-inferior reactions with conscious choices that support mutual satisfaction.
REFLECT, ANSWER, LEARN
Ask yourself:
Why do I become anxious whenever someone holds authority?
When did authority — the right of someone to tell me what to do — first enter my life?
Did my idea of right originate when I depended on my parents?
How do I react when someone uses power to enforce what they say?
When did I realize family members were trying to enforce their preferences on me?
How did the members of my family of origin push for what they wanted?
How did I push for what I wanted?
What role did I adopt to survive inside my family system?
Do I still play that role in adult life?
What new role could I choose now?
ONLY CHILD: FROM PERFECTION TO PARTICIPATION
Adler notes that an only child occupies a distinctive position within the family. Without brothers or sisters competing for parental attention, the only kid often develops a close relationship with adults.
Parents typically invest considerable time, encouragement, and high expectations in their only child. As a result, many only children become mature, responsible, intellectually curious, independent, and highly motivated to succeed.
They often feel comfortable around adults, enjoy learning, and may display leadership, creativity, and strong concentration from an early age.
This family position also presents unique challenges. Because only children seldom experience the daily give-and-take of sibling relationships, they may find sharing, compromise, and teamwork more difficult to master. Many feel pressure to excel or to avoid mistakes, believing their worth depends upon achievement. Some assume adult responsibilities too early, carry excessive worries, become lonely if overprotected, or expect special attention because they have long been the family’s sole focus. These tendencies are starting points for growth. Healthy development encourages the only child to move beyond perfectionism toward participation with others.
Learning to cooperate, share responsibility, accept mistakes as opportunities for growth, and build satisfying friendships, the only child discovers that genuine fulfillment comes not from standing apart but from belonging. As Rudolf Dreikurs later emphasized in extending Adler’s work, the healthiest personality develops through social interest—the capacity to contribute meaningfully to the welfare of others and to experience oneself as an important member of the human community.
From my perspective, domination consciousness encourages people to define themselves through status, achievement, and individual superiority. Partnership consciousness invites us to discover our deepest fulfillment through cooperation, mutual support, shared leadership, and service to the common good. The only child’s greatest growth comes when the pursuit of perfection gives way to joyful participation in the larger human family.
FIRSTBORN: THE DEPOSED PRINCE OR PRINCESS
According to Adler, the firstborn begins life as the family’s sole focus. Parents direct attention, affection, and protection toward one child. Then another child arrives. The firstborn loses exclusive status. Adler called this experience dethronement.
Some firstborn children answer this loss by becoming dependable, organized, productive, protective, and responsible. Others attempt to regain influence through perfectionism or control. Some even become successful leaders and some become adults who believe everything depends upon them.
Domination consciousness often grows from fear of losing status. Partnership consciousness replaces status competition with shared responsibility and mutual respect; leadership succeeds best when it serves the group rather than protecting personal rank.
Firstborns conclude, If I don’t stay in charge, everything falls apart.
If you ask, Who told you that? Your firstborn friend would probably say, Nobody. But if you’ve been reading Dr. Lessin, you’ll suggest, Maybe your childhood taught you that lesson, and you don’t have to take care of everyone.
SECONDBORN: THE COMPETITOR WHO SEEKS A DIFFERENT PATH
The secondborn enters a family where someone already occupies first place.
Instead of becoming another copy of the oldest child, many secondborns seek a different path to recognition. Adler believed this position often develops persistence, flexibility, innovation, and determination.
Competition can sharpen talent, but competition can also produce lifelong comparison. People trapped inside domination consciousness measure themselves against others every day.
People grounded in partnership consciousness measure today’s growth against their own yesterday.
The goal of a person who shifts her or his consciousness from domination to partnership shifts her or his obsession with defeating rivals to developing her or his own gifts for the benefit of the community.
Secondborn may lament, I spent my life trying to catch my older brother, but when I ask, Did you ever ask what you wanted for your own satisfaction in life? What would you want a memorial gravestone or plaque to say of you when you die?
MIDDLE CHILD: FROM COMPARISON TO COOPERATION
The middle child occupies a position Adler considered particularly complex. Growing up between older and younger siblings, the middle child is squeezed from both directions. They have neither the authority often granted to the eldest nor the special attention frequently given to the youngest.
Adler observed that this position can produce one of two very different patterns. Some middle children become highly skilled negotiators and diplomats. They develop a keen sensitivity to fairness, learn to understand different perspectives, and often become excellent mediators who help others resolve conflicts. Because they have spent much of their lives balancing competing interests, they frequently develop exceptional empathy and cooperation.
Others experience life quite differently. They may feel overlooked, unnoticed, or uncertain of where they belong. Constant comparison with older and younger siblings can leave them questioning their own worth or searching for a distinctive identity.
The middle child often develops a strong capacity for empathy precisely because they have had to navigate competing demands from a young age.
Domination consciousness encourages rivalry, comparison, and competition for attention, status, and power. Partnership consciousness invites every person to appreciate differences without ranking them, to cooperate rather than compete, and to contribute unique gifts to the community.
As middle child, your goal is not to become more important than your brothers or sisters. Your goal is to discover your own strengths, cooperate with others, and make meaningful contributions that enrich everyone’s life.
YOUNGEST CHILD: FROM DEPENDENCE TO CONTRIBUTION
The youngest child enters a family where older siblings already occupy many roles. Parents have gained experience, and older brothers and sisters often help care for the youngest.
Many youngest children develop warmth, humor, charm, imagination, and creativity as they discover their own place within the family.
The youngest child often learns how to win affection through personality rather than authority.
Many become entertainers, artists, innovators, teachers, or people who bring others together. They often notice opportunities that older siblings overlook because they do not feel bound to established family roles.
This position also carries risks. Some of the youngest children grow accustomed to others solving problems for them. They may postpone difficult decisions, avoid responsibility, or expect rescue when challenges arise.
If they depend upon others to carry life’s burdens, they weaken their own confidence.
Domination consciousness keeps people psychologically dependent upon rulers, experts, or authority figures who promise security in exchange for obedience. Partnership consciousness invites everyone to develop competence, accept responsibility, contribute to the common good, and share in both leadership and service.
The youngest child’s path is to embrace both domination and cooperation, thereby navigating the dimension of giving and taking well, with self-reliance, responsibility, and cooperative service.
Instead of waiting for someone else to solve problems, the youngest can become one of the people who help solve them.
DO-IT-YOURSELF EXERCISE
Ask yourself:
Do I wait for others to rescue me?
Do I avoid difficult decisions?
Do I depend upon approval before I act?
Do I contribute as much as I receive?
How can I become more self-reliant while remaining caring and cooperative?
Choose one responsibility that you have postponed. Complete it this week without waiting for encouragement or permission.
Illustrative Dialogues
Youngest Child: Someone else always knows what to do.
Mentor: Perhaps they learned by doing what you now avoid.
Youngest Child: What if I fail?
Mentor: Every capable person failed while learning.
Youngest Child: Then confidence grows from action, not from waiting.
Mentor: Exactly. Partnership needs contributors, not spectators.
YOUNGEST KIDS ADVANCE FROM DEPENDENCE TO CONTRIBUTION
REFERENCES
Adler, Alfred. 1927. Understanding Human Nature. New York: Greenberg.
(Originally published in German as Menschenkenntnis.) One of Adler’s clearest discussions of personality development, family atmosphere, and birth order.
Adler, Alfred. 1931. What Life Should Mean to You. Boston: Little, Brown and Company.
Adler’s most accessible explanation of social interest, family constellation, and the influence of birth order on personality.
Adler, Alfred. 1956. The Individual Psychology of Alfred Adler. Edited by Heinz L. Ansbacher and Rowena R. Ansbacher. New York: Basic Books.
The standard collection of Adler’s writings, including his mature views on family constellation and birth order.
Adler, Alfred. 1964. Problems of Neurosis: A Book of Case Histories. New York: Harper & Row.
(English translation.) Includes numerous clinical examples illustrating Adler’s interpretation of family dynamics and birth order.
For your Partnership Consciousness framework, I’d also include:
Eisler, Riane. 1987. The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future. San Francisco: Harper & Row.
(The title is The Chalice and the Blade, not The Blade or the Chalice.)
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