When it was reported that the youngest sibling in a family is usually the funniest, I was over the moon. I’m the youngest of three. This news validates my entire existence.
YouGov has been comparing the personality traits of the oldest and youngest sibling in families with more than one child. That sounds oddly specific, but it isn’t – YouGov’s figure for the proportion of families with at least two children is 86%. So we’re working with a decent chunk of the population here.
That said, the responses have been taken directly from the siblings – take their one-upmanship with a pinch of salt. The youngest child is (apparently) more likely to be the funnier sibling and the one more favoured by the parents. Even if they say so themselves. More of them claimed these traits than their older brothers and sisters.
Any parent will tell you that they’re not supposed to have a favourite child. I, however, am now and forever Mum and Dad’s ‘little baby’, which has become more and more irritating as the years go by. It started out as quite a nice thing, but who wants to be the baby of the family at 27? Who really wants to be cooed at down the phone when they’re trying to talk about their day at proper grown-up work?
When I was a baby, I was kept figuratively swaddled in cotton wool and bubble wrap to protect me from the many, pervasive evils of this world. And by god, there were so many evils and they were pervasive as all hell. Nothing was safe. I was the kind of child who looked ‘gullible’ up in the dictionary to check it was still there. The only way that I could have been any more mollycoddled is if my name was Molly.
As a result, I made a lot of my own world around me. I made stuff up, to be blunt. I’d say it’s true that my affinity for comedy first emerged at a young age because of that. I used to write a lot of crazy stories filled with awful gags. (“I was half shocked. The other half of me was surprisingly ambivalent about the whole situation.”)
Oldest brothers and sisters have plenty of things to celebrate, though. By self admission, they’re more likely to be responsible, successful, self-confident and organised AND to have more control over their priorities. Crap. Where does that leave me?
