Study Proves Parents Tougher on Eldest Children: Playing Hardball Sends a Message to Younger Siblings

If you're an eldest child, you might think you had it harder than your younger brothers and sisters. Maybe your memories of growing up are quite different from theirs. Maybe you're amazed at family gatherings when your younger siblings maintain that Mom and Dad weren't so tough - while you remember screaming matches, groundings and endless unfair punishments. Well, now science is here to back you up. According to a newly published study, parents really are tougher on their firstborn than on subsequent children. And with good reason.

The study was carried out by Lingxin Hao of Johns Hopkins University, V. Joseph Hotz of Duke University, and Ginger Z. Jin of the University of Maryland. They published their findings in a paper titled Games Parents and Adolescents Play: Risky Behaviours, Parental Reputation and Strategic Transfers, which appears in the latest edition of The Economic Journal.

Hao, Hotz and Jin examined parent-child relationships from an economic standpoint that focuses on parents and children engaging in transactions to try and get the outcomes they want. In this model, parents' main method of discouraging their children's bad choices is withholding the "strategic transfers" of the title. This might translate into not paying for college expenses, or not allowing the child to live at home after they turn 18.

Previous work in this area focused on a "reputation model." Success in getting the child to avoid the undesirable choice beforehand, rather than merely punishing them for it afterward, depends on the child believing that the parents really will follow through with the threatened punishment. (Yes, it all sounds a lot like nuclear deterrence.) This can be difficult since withholding resource transfers ultimately harms the child, and that represents failure for the parents.