Second-Mover Disadvantage

There's a business theory around the benefits of being the first to bring to market a new product, enter a new geography, etc. This "first mover" advantage is very much translatable to the phenomena enjoyed a first-born children - and subsequent disadvantage of second-born children - of a family. In his article titled "It sucks to be the second child", columnist Peter Hartlaub astutely outlines some of the specific misfortunes that fall upon he/she who starts second. I've taken a look and have considered how my wife and I have fared around the raising of our daughter Sophia.

Nobody checks to see if you're breathing. This is pretty true, but I'd chalk this up more to the absolute paranoia that grips you when you have your first child. Our pastor's wife once gave us these words of wisdom as new parents: "The goal of year one is just keep the kid alive" - in other words, don't stress out with development and behavior and such. As new parents, you freak out about SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, a.k.a. "Crib Death") and the life-jarring miracle of having a child gives way to the "oh crap, we have absolutely no idea what we're doing". I remember vividly that we had rented "Angela's Ashes" while Daniel was an infant, and after seeing Frankie McCourt's baby siblings die time and time again in their sleep, it caused me to hover that evening over Daniel's crib just a little bit longer.

Documentation of your upbringing will be half-assed. Spot on, again. We took an exponentially greater amount of photos and Sarah's put Chris-Hansen-investigative-reporter-quality effort into Daniel's scrapbook. Heck, we didn't take for granted that we'd have another child after Daniel, so we figured to capture the moments of who might be our only kid. By the time Sophia came around, little things like "recharging the digital camera batteries" and "ordering selected prints on Snapfish" oddly became a little more of a perceived hassle. In fairness, there's still a crapload of photos with Sophia as a baby - it's just that a good chunk of them also have Daniel in them as well.

Expectations are higher for intellectual achievements. I'm not sure this is the case. If anything, I fear that we've typecasted the kids in the way that we've responded to their precocious at a young age, specifically that Daniel is the more intellectual curious one and that Sophia is the more outgoing and socially adept one. We're careful not to create a self-fulfilling prophesy here, so we try not to feed those too much in their presence. Maybe this comes into play more when the second-child is older, but it's not as if I'm really fixated on Sophia's ability to color in the lines relative to Daniel at the same age.

Your 2-year-old legs are expected to move as fast as a 5-year-old's. Again, probably not so much in my family. Then again, this might be diminished because in my impatience I simply carry her to keep up with the rest of us. I don't think it's a matter of speed of walking - Sophia occasionally gets dragged by the arms because she insists on not listening and leaving when we're, for example, at a toy store or pet store.

Nobody hears your cries of anguish. Definitely not true. Our daughter is very loud, so believe me, we hear. Now whether those cries of anguish elicit more annoyance than compassion, maybe that's another story.