The baby of the family goes for the yocks

by Brian McKim & Traci Skene on December 18th, 2007

Sharp-eyed FOS Jouni Kallio (from Finland!) sent us a link to a Time magazine article that says that researchers have concluded that the baby of the family is more likely to find a wacky job… like comedian:

Younger siblings, by contrast, are looser cannons, less educated and less strapping, perhaps, but statistically likelier to live the exhilarating life of an artist or a comedian, an adventurer, entrepreneur, GI or firefighter.

“If you’re bigger than your siblings, you punch ’em,” Sulloway says.
But there are low-power strategies too, and one of the most effective ones is humor. It’s awfully hard to resist the charms of someone who can make you laugh, and families abound with stories of last-borns who are the clowns of the brood, able to get their way simply by being funny or outrageous. Birth-order scholars often observe that some of history’s great satirists– Voltaire, Jonathan Swift, Mark Twain– were among the youngest members of large families, a pattern that continues today. Faux bloviator Stephen Colbert– who yields to no one in his ability to get a laugh-often points out that he’s the last of 11 children.

The staff here at SHECKYmagazine is 100 per cent Baby of the Family. It may well be that a lot of you out there are last-born as well. We aren’t sold on the reasons that the scientist above has cooked up.

The Female Half theorizes that it’s a function of just how close the parents are to “giving up” by the time the baby rolls around. Siblings 1 and2? They’ve got New Mom and New Dad– very serious about their roles, determined to raise a child (or two or three or more) and turn him/her/them into a responsible adult. All that grit and seriousness tends to ebb by the time the last child arrives. The other siblings may well be funny. They may have the ability to be artists or GI, but they’ve been charged with “making the family proud.” The pressure is on to get into a legitimate line of work. For the baby? Not particularly.

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