Dr Baker also showed that elite athletes are more likely to be
laterborn children in a family, while non-elite athletes are more likely to be first-born children.
The laterborn children are the babies of the family (Adler, 1927; Stewart 2004) and may receive attention from all family members and therefore develop stronger attachments than the middle children.
Firstborns are often ambitious, more conforming, have a closer identification with parental authority (Sulloway, 1996), and tend to have higher self-esteem than laterborns (Falbo, 1981).
The fourth son, Henry, diversified in classic scatterbrained laterborn style, by delighting everybody and taking on many unrelated careers.
If this is the case, and all things being equal, one would expect firstborns, who are usually sure of their parents' interest, their inheritance prospects, and so on, to be dominant, industrious, and socially conservative, and laterborns, for whom competition with the beloved firstborn is more urgent, to be more extraverted, radical, and rebellious.
"Nature has led deer in this hurricane-prone area of Louisiana to breed earlier in the year than in other portions of the state because high water from flooding can kill
laterborn fawns.
The findings indicated that firstborn athletes reported sign significantly higher cognitive and somatic state-anxiety as compared to laterborn athletes.
The dichotomous variable definition suggests that an individual is a firstborn or laterborn child in his or family, as indicated by his or her year of birth.
The mean KAI score of 90.1 for firstborns (n = 78) was significantly lower than the mean KAI score of 94.2 for laterborns (n = 90) (t(167) = 2.42, p < .01).
This process is made more likely by the finding that, compared to laterborns, firstborns are "more strongly identified with their parents and readier to accept their authority" (Ernst & Angst, 1983, p.