Relative Something

Somewhat out of context, I find the topic of birth order on my mind of late. Like so many other things in life, when I begin to think on this in a more focused manner, it appears to take on a significance so great as to be all encompassing. It defines most everything about people and social habits and opinions and behaviors and reactions to situations. At the same time, when birth order is entirely disregarded and unacknowledged, it becomes a trivial anecdote in comparison to the dramatic realities that transpire throughout lives daily.

I am absolutely certain that my birth order of being the 6th of 7 births for my parents, and the 5th of 6 children to grow up together, has been prominent in defining the person and personality that is me. One aspect of my birth order is that I didn’t ever develop a close bond with my parents. It was a rather formal distance of respect for their authority and appreciation for their providing for me. Much of my direct contact and physical interaction came from siblings, as Mom and Dad were occupied with higher level details. When older siblings were off to school in my pre-school years, my memory of care-taker is a neighbor woman who no longer had young children at home. She worked for us doing cleaning and helping my mother.

Recently, I became aware again of my memory of times when I would notice that my parents rarely were present to watch my sports games in school or my choir performances. Seldom did I notice it as a lacking, because it seemed normal to me. But there were times when it engendered feelings of loneliness for their support and attention. Ultimately, at the time, I considered it more of a blessing than a curse as I was afforded quite a bit of autonomy compared to some of my friends. One incident in which my mother did agree to be a volunteer parent supervising one of my school events made a significant memory for both Mom and me. It was when I was in Middle School and for some reason that evades my memory, I was the student in charge of the inaugural event we named, “Friday Fun Night.” For the rest of her life, I heard her tell the story of how amazed she was at how responsible and capable she discovered me to be when she witnessed me order pizzas and direct the variety of events that were planned for the night.

As I think on it now, it comes to mind that it was indeed only some of my friends that had closer parental support and scrutiny. We were late members of the much ballyhooed Baby Boom. There were an incredible number of kids in my grade in school who had older siblings that were in the same class-years of school as my older brother and sisters. I guess most of the parents of that time of large families were stretched thin to the point of allowing the younger kids to fend more for themselves and rely on older siblings for support. For most of the gatherings of my gang of classmates that I remember, we had little, if any, interaction with parents.

The influence of birth order gives me new insight to consider for the multitude of families I’ve uncovered in my personal genealogy research that had large numbers of children. I will now make a point to note the birth order of my ancestors when filling out the details of the grand story of my family’s history.