The stereotypical story of parenting involves nervous first-time parents attempting to make everything perfect for their firstborn. By the time the second child is born, the parents have become much more relaxed. A study reveals that this stereotype is more accurate than you may have thought.
A study that was published in Social Development involved 55 families, each of which included a mother and her 20-month-old firstborn. An average of three years later, the same mothers participated in the study again, with their 20-month-old second born children.
The researchers observed the mother’s interacting with their firstborn child. The researchers returned later to observe the same mothers interacting with their second child. What they found indicates that mom’s hold similar views and attitudes when parenting their first and second child. However, the mom’s parenting behaviors with their two children differed.
“First-born children tended to be more sociable and emotionally available to mothers than second-born children who were not similar in their rank order (for example, mothers who engaged in a lot of play with their first-borns did not necessarily engage in a lot of play with their second-borns), but there was no systemic average difference in the amounts or qualities of mothers’ interaction directed toward first and second children.”
What does this mean? It’s possible that a mother could have two kids who were vastly different from each other at 20-months of age. The moms might have adapted their parenting behavior to best fit an individual child.
Azure Hall, in an article on Romper, points out that a lot of things can change between baby number one and baby number two. The most significant one could be that parents of one child have more energy than parents of two or more children.
For example, if baby number one is napping, it gives mom the opportunity to rest and recharge. However, if baby number two is napping, mom doesn’t get to take a short rest because child number one is probably awake and active.
The study contributes to understanding socioemotional domains of parenting and child development, birth order effects, and the shared and non-shared contexts of siblings’ environment within the family. It adds to other studies about how parents interact with their firstborn as compared to how they interact with each additional child.
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