Born to Rebel: Birth Order, Family Dynamics, and Creative Lives

Abstract

Born to Rebel: Birth Order, Family Dynamics, and Creative Lives. Frank J. Sulloway. New York: Pantheon Books. 1996. 653 pp. ISBN 0-67944232-4. $16.00. Born to Rebel is a lengthy and ambitious book. Apart from its main story, 70 of its 653 pages devoted to appendices, 96 to end notes, and 84 to an extensive bibliography. Furthermore, the reader is confronted with many tables and a collection of remarkable illustrations. Its author's central argument is that, all things being equal, one's order furnishes the best possible predictor of one's personality and future life course. This, in turn, leads to Sulloway's claim that questions about why some people and initiate radical revolutions synonymous with the question of why siblings so different (p. xiii). Some people, in his view, simply are born to rebel (p. xiii). The origin and nature of such differences among siblings explained as follows: It is for first-borns to identify more strongly with power and authority. They arrive first within the family and employ their superior size and strength to defend their special status. Relative to their younger siblings, first-borns more assertive, socially dominant, ambitious, jealous of their status, and defensive. As underdogs within the family system, younger siblings inclined to question the status quo and in some cases to develop a revolutionary personality. In the name of revolution, later-borns have repeatedly challenged the time-honored assumptions of their day. (p. xiv) The focus on the family as a system in conflict is not new in the family field. A small band of conflict theorists have been stressing the basically competitive structure of marriage and family process for almost 30 years. In that perspective, the explanatory focus is, as in this book, on the strategies that individuals and their potential allies in families employ to maintain a functioning, negotiated order of process. What is original in Sulloway's work is a single-minded insistence on the general and deterministic nature of his explanations. Also unique is his use of the facts of in order to demonstrate the general validity and the timeless quality of his conclusions. By retelling history (p. 356), he aims to transform it into a genuine science. Born to Rebel is divided into four sections. Its main argument rests on a wealth of data and is augmented by sophisticated statistical procedures, as well as an array of case materials. My brief comments focus on the credibility of the author's theoretical orientation and on the relevance of his findings to the family field. It makes sense to assume that most people grow up in some type of family setting and that many raised together with siblings. The explanatory worth of birth order, sketched in the two earlier citations, therefore, does deserve the attention of family scholars. The same holds for the claim that behavioral solutions to the dilemmas of family life preadapt people to the merits of change (p. xviii). One wonders, however, how natural it is for firstborns to identify more strongly with power than their younger siblings? Moreover, should they do so, whose power? The father's? The mother's? That of living grandparents? What is natural in the complex reality of family living? Does the notion of naturalness imply a measure of biological determination? If so, how much? And what exactly is determined? In a similar vein, one may question the assumption that laterborns invariably underdogs. Their position in their families of origin does not depend exclusively on their relations with their firstborn brothers or sisters, but also on those with their parents and other siblings. Conceiving of a family as a microsystem directs one's analysis toward what happens between, rather than within, its members. Birth order may well affect the quality of such bonds, but one cannot assume that it determines them or, for that matter, the personalities of those involved. …