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The Birth Order Trap

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 May 2016

Joseph Lee Rodgers
Joseph Lee Rodgers*
Affiliation:
University of Oklahoma, USA
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Extract

Born to Rebel (Sulloway, 1996) embeds a theory of birth order within an evolutionary perspective that gives a refreshing new twist to theorizing about family structure. Most past birth order “theorizing” is of the type that both begins and ends with “Isn't it interesting that….” In Rodgers and Thompson (1985/86), we documented birth order research on presidents and strippers, artists and assassins, hockey players and cigarette smokers; even the birth order of birth order researchers has been investigated. Sulloway (1996), in contrast, provided explicit mechanisms to explain why he believes that birth order plays an important role in revolutionary behavior. The mechanisms derive from sophisticated thinking about both evolution and family dynamics.

Type
Roundtable Commentaries
Information
Politics and the Life Sciences , Volume 19 , Issue 2 , September 2000 , pp. 167 - 170
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Politics and the Life Sciences 

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