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The best way to use the information in this book is to see how your birth order may have led you to think and behave in certain ways. If those ways are working well for you, this can be just an interesting intellectual exercise. If some of the ways you think and act are causing problems for you or others in your life, you may want to use this information as a springboard for making some changes. Since people are most often motivated to make changes when they are dissatisfied, the birth order descriptions here focus on the more troublesome aspects of each birth order position rather than the more positive ones. It’s the troublesome aspects that you will want to deal with in some way; the good times can just keep rolling.

The information about birth order characteristics can also help you understand why others in your life think and behave as they do. It can be very constructive for you to understand that a person’s way of being with you may be related to these standard birth order characteristics and is not just deliberate perverseness on their part. You may be able to accept someone’s behavior more easily when you can say to yourself, “Well, that’s just how oldest brothers of brothers are. He’s like that with everybody; it’s not that he dislikes me.” The next chapter describes some of the ways birth order can affect different kinds of relationships.

Be sure you read only with the intent of using the information to discover how you might want to change in relating to others. It would be a misuse of this information to start labeling those around you as a “such and such” as a way of putting them down or trying to get them to change. As always, in attempts at self-improvement, remember that it’s not self-improvement if you’re trying to improve someone else. It’s difficult enough to change your own behavior; it’s impossible to impose change on someone else. However, if you change the way you act with someone, eventually that person may change in response to your change.

Many therapists prefer to work with the “healthiest” person in a relationship, the one who would appear to need changing the least, because that person has the best chance of successfully making changes. Changes on the part of one person usually alter the way a relationship functions. But don’t make that the goal of your change. Your only goal for change can be for yourself and how you treat others.

Understanding birth order characteristics precedes change, but doesn’t decree change. Knowing that some of your traits are common among people in your birth order position may simply help you see why you feel like a square peg trying to fit into a round hole. You can then decide whether you want to work on being rounder or whether you want to find a squarer hole to fit into.

Elsie, an oldest sister of sisters, had become a secretary because that was the only kind of work open to her as a young woman 30 years ago. She had good skills and good work habits, yet she had been dissatisfied in most of her jobs. She had little respect for the men and women she worked for (especially the women), was unable to be supportive of her bosses, and lost several jobs because of her “attitude.” When she learned about birth order characteristics, it began to make sense that she wouldn’t adapt well to the traditional subordinate role of a secretary. Learning that the fit wasn’t right for her motivated her to look seriously at other kinds of work where her birth order characteristics would be an asset rather than a hindrance.

Elsie might also have made the decision to pay particular attention to those aspects of her birth order characteristics that caused her problems at work and to be aware of when she was acting like an oldest sister rather than a professional secretary. She could then have consciously made the effort not to think of her boss as a younger sister who needed straightening out.

We hope that by learning a little bit about the usual characteristics for your sex and birth order, you will better understand and accept yourself and others in your life.

1. Generally, in this book, the word sex refers to the biological fact of being male or female. Gender refers to the attributes of masculinity or femininity as defined by our culture.