Developmental study of ordinal position and personality adjustment of the child as evaluated by the California Test of Personality1

Abstract

Adler (1927) theonzed that differential parent-child interactions are partially determined by the ordinal position of a given child He proposed that the child's subsequent personality organization reflects the behavior pattems evolved in response to the distinctive experiences he had by virtue of occupying a particular position withm the family constellation Nevertheless, efforts to correlate ordmal position with mental health status have yielded markedly mconsistent and mconclusive findmgs among both adult and child populations (eg, see Jones, 1933, Murphy, Murphy, & Newcomb, 1937 Studies mvolvmg children have been particularly sparse, with the majority of mvestigations antedatmg the development of modem personality tests and multivariate statistical methods of dealmg with complex vanables Rosenow and White (1931), Wile andDavis (1941), andPhillips (1956) found that first-boms were overrepresented m child guidance clmic populations However, PhiUips warned that the mother's mexperience rather than greater psychopathology among first-boms might account for the differential rates of clmic usage Moreover, Levy (1931) failed to find overrepresentation of any birth-order group m the clmic population he studied Similarly, Bennett (i960) found no differential mcidence of first-boms or later-boms among either her dehnquent or neurotic samples Consideration of actual symptomatology produces no greater 1 The authors would like to express appreciabon to Herman Diesenhaus and Jack Becktel for statistical consultation and to Noel Jenkin for valuable comments and suggestions

Influence of family structure and school variables on behavior disorders of children

“…Unfortunately, the evidence about this point is not consistent. Sometimes older children (Phillips, 1956;Tuckman & Regan, 1967) and sometimes younger children (Lessing & Oberlander, 1967;Schooler, 1961) have been found to exhibit a greater degree of difficulty. Singletons (Burt, 1925;Campbell, 1933) have also been said to be more maladjusted.…”