Understanding How Birth Order Impacts Your Marriage

We tend to marry outside of our birth order and that's a good thing because simply marrying outside of your birth order increases the probability of success in marriage. You're going to hear more from Dr. Kevin Lehman today on Focus on the Family. Your host is Focus President and author Jim Daly and I'm John Fuller.

Every time Dr. Lehman's with us, he knocks it out of the park. His sense of humor, his stories, his practical applications all make for a great conversation. He's known as the birth order guy and he has some strong insights on how the order in which you were born affects your personality. His groundbreaking book, The Birth Order Book, really helps you better understand yourself and how birth order plays a role in who you are. Today we're coming back to a program with Dr. Kevin Lehman about improving your marriage relationship by knowing more about your birth order and your spouse's birth order.

This was really fun and eye-opening. It was and on previous programs as we've talked with Dr. Lehman about birth order and how it influences us as individuals and as parents, this was the first time we talked with him though about how that birth order affects the marriage relationship. Dr. Lehman is an internationally known psychologist, radio and television personality, educator, speaker.

He's written over 50 books on parenting, marriage, and family living. We're going to pick up the conversation as he describes how he developed an interest in this concept of the birth order. Well, I was sitting in a college classroom and I studied, I'm an Adlerian psychologist, not that I expect anybody to even know who Alfred Adler was, but he was a friend and a colleague of a guy named Sigmund Freud in Vienna.

And in public debate they found out they were very, very different people. For example, Freud would say you smoke cigarettes today because you were fixated at the oral stage of development on your mother's breast. Alfred Adler would say you smoke because you're stupid.

A little straighter. I liked him right off the bat. But I was sitting in a college classroom and my professor was talking about the firstborn child. And he described the firstborn as organized, doesn't like surprises, reliable, conscientious, a list maker, an achiever.

There's a right way to do things. I said, oh my goodness, he just described my sister. And he went to the middle child, opposite from the firstborn, yeah, check, hard to pin down, plays off of what's ever above in the family.

A mediator, a negotiator, huge with loyalty and friendships. And I thought, oh my goodness, he just described my brother. And yet my brother was an A student like my older sister, okay. So he was the firstborn male, let me point that out, as well as the middle child. So both attributes. Yes.

And then he went to the baby, and that was the clincher for me. Attention getting, fun loving, never met a stranger, could sell dead rats for a living. Well, listen, one of my claims to fame is I talked my way into Disney World. That's pretty good. Now check this out.

Not one ticket, not two, but nine. Don't tell Disney World. I won't. Let's keep this a secret, but I'll tell you.

Okay, have you ever paid them back for that? A lot of publicity right there in the mention. Well, really, I mean, babies have the skill to sell dead rats for a living. In the business world, your CEOs are your presidents, your accountants, your engineers are your firstborn children. Anything where technology pays off huge, you're most likely to find the firstborn.

Your entrepreneurs in the business world, Donald Trump, Steve Forbes, Bill Gates Jr. I mean, I know he's a college dropout, but the guy did pretty good, his middle child. So middle children tend to roll differently than the rest of the flock. Babies, charming, could sell dead rats for a living, like I said, got away with murder, most likely to retain their pet name.

Her name might be Mary Lou, but everybody still calls her Buffy, you know. So it's interesting to me how all these cubs come out of the same den, and yet they're all unique. Now, today, we're having smaller families, so we have a lot of only children who are step-cousins, so to speak, to the firstborns. Everything we said the firstborns are only put the word super in front of it. Super conscientious, super reliable, super, you know, they're little adults by age seven. And so a lot of families, like we, we have five kids, but we've got an only child in that five.

Well, how do you do that? Well, there's variables that affect birth order. Big age gaps, for example, set the night.

Let me ask you this question, that 80-20 rule. Do you find that, because some people will say, well, that's not me. I'm firstborn, but I act like a lastborn. Does that happen, and how frequent is that?

It happens all the time. And the variables of birth order, you really have to understand the variables, or you won't grasp what we're talking about today. The variables are sex, number one. You have five kids in the family.

One of them is a male. There's something special about one child in the family. So that kid could be in the second, third, fourth, or even fifth position and still have firstborn-like qualities. Because of his or her gender.

Because of their gender, okay. Then you have age gaps. A five-year age gap between same-sex kids, you would draw another line in a family. So that's where it splits off, okay.

Well, let me ask you about that. So there's five kids in my family. I'm the fifth born, the last born, but I'm six years from my closest sister. Right. They're all one year apart.

So what category would that be? You're a firstborn son. Are you the president of Focus on the Family or did I not hear John Fuller right? Are you the boss? Are you the boss? Well. Are you the boss?

Ask her the question. I've got the title. I've got the title.

I don't know. Actually, Jean's the boss. But do you see what I'm saying?

The gap sets those things up. Our youngest, little Lauren, is very creative and very detailed-oriented. And she's the baby of the family. But she's a functional only child.

So, again, only children do logarithms in their head at age seven. I mean, they're advanced from the rest of us. But I would think, especially in my case, I would say I'm average in those kind of discipline categories. But I'm more extroverted.

I like people. But that's the influence of those sisters above you. Okay. We're always affected by what's above us in the family, not what's beneath us.

Well, let me say publicly, thank you, Kim and Dee, for that influence. Well, here's the other thing. Twins.

Yeah. Twins break up the birth order. If you want to pray for a kid, special prayer, pray for the kid that follows the twins.

Because the twins, whether they're fraternal or identical, get an awful lot of attention. So people who say – I get letters from people, oh, this is non-biblical. I say, well, yeah, okay, Tom. Okay, Cain and Abel. The original title on the birth order book when it went to Revell Publishers with rubber bands and cardboard was, Abel had it coming. And the publisher said, Kevin, you cannot have a title like that.

I said, I like it. It's got a nice family flavor. How about Jacob and Esau and a bowl of porridge? I mean, there's a lot of things where brothers or sisters are diametrically different personalities.

Well, that gives us kind of a good background. Let's dial it up now when those firstborns, middleborns and lastborns get older and now they're going to marry somebody. We often talk about how opposites attract.

I think in our marriage counseling here, similar to what you experienced, Kevin, you see that that 80-20 rule usually applies. About 80 percent of us are attracted to people who are different from us. Talk about that magnetism and talk about how birth order plays into that attraction. Well, let's start with if both of us were the same, there'd be little use for one of us. Well, some opposites may have that thought.

But opposites do attract. I mean, as a baby of the family, I can tell you, I married Mrs. Uppington. And where is she? Mrs. Uppington, of course, is my pet name for my firstborn wife who loves restaurants with four and five forks.

There's a right way to do things. She was color coordinated at birth, I believe. But, you know, I can still remember as a young husband-to-be standing at that aisle as she walked down the flower strewn aisle. We spent $29 for flowers on our wedding. It was a big affair. And I remember looking at her little daisy she had.

To this day, she hates daisies. But I didn't realize that underneath that bouquet was a rule book. And firstborns tend to be the rule makers. Firstborns are good at spotting flaws.

That's why they're good engineers and good accountants, astronauts in outer space. Of the first 23, 21 firstborns, two only children. Not a middle or a baby in sight.

So here I am, baby of the family. Now, I knew nothing about birth order at that point, very, very little. But I didn't realize that what happens in marriage is that when two people marry, it's not two, it's at least six.

How do you get that man? Because you marry your in-laws. And you either reap the benefit of what happened in that family or you pay for it.

So it's not only your bride or your groom's birth order, but what kind of family did they come out of? Was there a critical-eyed parent there? Now, we talked about age gaps, gender. We didn't mention physical handicaps or mental handicaps, but that's part of the variables. But put a critical eye, and that means a person who can spot a flaw at 50 paces, in the marriage.

And you got trouble. Because they're going to be a flaw picker. That person isn't going to feel like they're loved. Women in particular who thrive on affection need to know that their husband has their back at every moment of their life.

Okay? And many of us as men who aren't great wordsmiths but were great critics can take the spirit of a woman and just level it with just a word or a look. That's a majority of the relational component, isn't it?

It is. When you describe that. That's most marriages.

I wrote a book called Smart Women Know When to Say No. In a contrast, the controlling male and the pleasing female. It's a very neurotic relationship. And like a moth to a flame, these people find each other out. So there's opposites that attract that aren't good, healthy marriages. Because one person does all the controlling, and the other is beaten over the head like a baby seal. Let me ask you this.

Some people are listening thinking, okay, this sounds good, this sounds psychological, and I get it. Where is God in this whole thing? Why did he design us like this? There's only so many emotions that we can feel. There's only so many attributes that we have.

There's only so many positions in birth order that you can be. And he puts that all together, and then you're attracted to your spouse. And yet, in most marriages, you have to learn to be selfless. Is it fair to say that if you put Christ at the center of your relationship, he can smooth out some of those rough edges? Well, that's what you hear all over the Christian kingdom.

You just put Christ at the center of your life. The problem is, if you've married a woman who came out of a very dysfunctional family, who didn't have a loving father. Number one, she's got all kinds of issues with God. So she's going to take a lot of sandpaper. She doesn't even see God as the loving father. She sees him as the critical-eyed person. She runs on guilt.

Now, I know I'm stepping on some toes when I say these words, believe me. But we tend to, in the kingdom of God, come up with these little platitudes. And so, yes, you want to rely on God for all things. If anything is going to overcome this great dysfunction in a family, it's the love of Jesus Christ in one's life. What I've learned is it takes people sometimes decades to get to that point where they really understand that the sin I'm going to commit next week. You know what, Jim and John?

It's already forgiven. See, Jesus came to this earth to put an end to religion, to put an end to religion, not start a religion. You know, it's all about a relationship. So, yeah, I mean, I can tell you, I don't know how people make it without God and marriage, if that's the question.

I know people do, but I don't know how they do it. Because there's times when you have this intimate union with this person where you'd want to either UPS them to a far-off land or kill them. Kevin, let's get practical. Let's talk about those combinations and put some meat on the bones of what we've talked about. Talk about two firstborns who marry. Is that typical?

What percentage of the population would that represent? Not typical. We tend to, now I'm speaking in general, we tend to marry outside of our birth order. And that's a good thing, because simply marrying outside of your birth order increases the probability of success in marriage. So opposites attract really does apply. Oh, they do, yeah.

Now, when you have firstborns and firstborns together, they spend a lifetime, it seems like, shooing on each other. You should do this, you should do that. They're the great improvers, okay? They see something that's out of place, and they immediately go over and straighten it up.

So what are some tools that you would recommend that they could do it better? Well, the division of labor is really important. I'm going to take care of this, and you take care of that.

Now, we'll report back in trade notes. I always tell women at my seminars, where are the firstborn women? And I see all these hands go up and say, I've got a great suggestion for you. Have a wallpaper party.

And just invite your firstborn girlfriends to help you wallpaper a room. And here's my prediction. By 11 o'clock in the morning, you'll have blood on the floor. Why?

Because you have all these people who know exactly how life ought to be. So you're a firstborn, and you're talking to your firstborn wife, okay? Now, lots of times you might just say, all right, listen, this is what we're going to do. Bingo. The hairs go up.

I mean, the ears are back. Hey, honey, I'd like to ask your opinion about something that I've really been struggling with. Now, the ears are open, the heart's open, you're on the right track.

So when you say, put some meat on the bone here for us, those are the kinds of things you learn to say to your bride or to your groom. Well, there's so many combinations, Kevin, and we can't cover them all. But let's go through a couple of more. Let's talk about firstborn and middle-born.

Pretty good match. Why? Because middle children never had their way at anything. No one ever said to a middle child, honey, what do you think we should do?

They were submerged by the firstborn, Little Miss Bossy, Little Miss Goody Two-Shoes, or Mr. Great-Student in school, and Little Schnooky, the baby of the family that got away with murder. So middle children are a little bit like going down to the blood bank and finding a universal donor, because they go with about everything. A middle child is a good match for a baby. A middle child is a good match, a great match for either an only or a firstborn.

They add balance in a very natural way. They never had mom and dad themselves. They negotiated for everything they ever had in life. And they're comfortable with that.

So that's a good skill to bring into marriage. So hooray for the middle children. They're the ones that keep peace. Right. They're the peacemakers. They are. Let's talk about the other combo, the oldest and the youngest. Well, that's a naturally good combination. It really is.

Firstborn and baby, and onlyborn and baby are very good. I remember coming home from CBS television in New York, and I said to Mrs. Uppington, I said, hey, you never said if you liked my spot or not. And she said, oh, you were good. Ouch.

That communicates a message. Oh, yeah. That's what you call a spit in your soup, by the way.

Oh, you were good. So that just sets me up to say, all right, what's the problem? And this is so embarrassing to say. She says, did you have to blow your nose in your tie? Oh, my goodness. She says, people read your books.

They look up to you. You're a respected psychologist. And there you are blowing your nose in front of Harry Smith at CBS. I said, well, honey, and I explained to her, I said, the floor director was giving us the wrap, okay? I know Harry did not see that signal.

And so Harry went to ask a question. In fact, we were talking about birth order that day. He said, Dr. Lehman, we never got to your birth order. What's your birth order? Well, the guy's counting down with fingers, you know.

I mean, you've got 10 seconds. So I took my tie and famed that I was blowing my nose in it to communicate that a baby of the family would do anything for a cheap laugh. Well, Mrs. Uppington did not appreciate her husband's humor, let's just put it that way. But she straightened me up lots of times.

But I would tell you in reverse that a Saturday night dinner at our house starts on Thursday. And I'm the one that helps lighten her up with things because she takes things way too seriously, okay? And she needs me, to put it bluntly. And I think that's the message with the firstborn and the baby, that we really need each other because the firstborn can be too perfectionistic.

And remember, perfection is slow suicide. Is it possible for a child that's in the middle, I mean, Jean, lastborn daughter, but she tends to have firstborn attributes of a bit of perfectionism. Is that typical?

It can happen all the time. Once you get to large families, and again, today, a large family is a family of four, for Pete's sake. But you have those families that are eight, nine, ten kids. Within the family, there's at least three sub-families in all probability. Just because of the age grouping. Because of the age grouping or the sex or one of those attributes. And I think that's what made the birth order books sell well over a million copies because everybody's got a birth order.

And everybody understands that all the cubs came out of the same den, and yet they're very different. So let's also include some of those things we talked about firstborns who marry and some things they can do intentionally to communicate better. Talk the other birth combos. How does a lastborn and a middle child in a marriage, how do they communicate better?

Well, lastborns have to understand one thing, that they're not the only person in the union. And I'm here to tell you, that's what us babies are good at. There's times I'm ashamed of how I think, ashamed of how I act, because it's so easy as a baby to think about only yourself.

Center of the universe. We practice what we call natural tithing in the Lehman family, which means if we see a need in someone's life, we can help meet that need, we do that. That's really good therapy for me. Just to give things to people without anything coming back. And I think babies in particular have a harder time being a good husband or a good wife, because they tend to be, by their nature, too self-centered. And you have to be other people-centered. Middle children are great at other people-centered, and that's why I mentioned earlier, middle children are tremendously loyal. They have friends outside of the family, which is key, outside of the family. Usually, if there's a kid that's ostracized in some way from the rest of the family, your best guess is it's that middle child. So you learn to communicate like a youngest to a middle. No one ever asks a middle child, what do you think? So you always want to be making sure that you're tapping into the feelings and ideas and concerns that your middle child's spouse has. On the other hand, as a middle child, you have to understand this spouse needs a few fish thrown their way, like you throw a few fish to a seal.

Oof, oof! And us little babies need strokes. Kevin, that is good advice.

Let me ask you this. So many young people are waiting to get married, so we have more 20-something singles and 30-something singles. They'll hear this, too. Thankfully, they're listening to focus on the family, and I'm grateful for that.

How do they apply that? I would think a firstborn applying what they've heard in the broadcast could take a real technical approach and begin their search for a spouse, and that could be the topic of discussion. Where's your birth order? Listen, that is such a good question.

For all of you who are looking for Mr. or Mrs. Right, listen to what this old man has to say. This one ought to get right to the heart of the matter. Does this person love God?

If a person really loves God, if they really love God, they're going to do what the Bible tells them to do, and they're going to be a good husband and good wife. You're already on first base. Now, does this person you're marrying have a temper? Uh-oh, yellow flag big time. Now, why would I pick on temper? Because temper equals control.

And that's why I say to all you parents who are listening, you've got kids who, when they lose, they throw temper tantrums and stuff. You better deal with that stuff right up straight right now, quickly. And so it really gets back to does he love God, does she love God, does this person have a temper, and what's the relationship like between this woman you're going to marry and her father?

Well, he was abusive. Well, get ready for a long road, a tough road in that marriage, okay? But understand it. That's a good thing.

You have to understand it, yes. But it's like making a cake, Jim. In one of my books, I talk about Daddy Attention Deficit Disorder. And it's like making a cake. If you make it, I'm not much of a cake maker for sure, but if you make a cake and you leave out one major ingredient, I've got news for you, the cake is going to fall. It's not going to be a good cake. Now, again, I'm stepping on a lot of toes here because there's a lot of women and men who have grown up in a home where the critical eye reigned and you were put down, you were discouraged, you weren't encouraged.

You were just hammered, and in fact, in many cases, you were at least verbally abused but sometimes physically abused. Think of the kind of husband you need to have. You want to pray for something? Pray for a husband that's near superhuman because he's got to come around and just love you. He's a guy that needs not ever demand anything from you and just to accept you so that you have a chance at loving this husband that you've fallen in love with. And when you reach for imperfection and understand how broken you are, and I need this man, I need this woman in my life, that's the point where you have the intimate connection to realize that this person loves you. Whether you have morning breath that could kill a cockroach at four and a half feet or whether you have a habit that drives you up the wall. I mean, that's what's great about just being thoroughly married and thoroughly connected.

But isn't it nice to know that God loves you despite all of your frailties that you know as a part of your life? That's what's cool about marriage, I think, that this person loves me at an intimate level and I can connect. And then there's not the performance stress, I think, on the kids. We're creating adults. You're not rearing kids. You're really rearing adults. And that's why you give responsibility to kids.

That's why you don't let them run over you. But you're training that son or that daughter to be a good husband or a good wife. Well, and that's what's so wonderful. We have to, especially again, I would say to the Christian community, we have to celebrate our differences and understand how to deal with the noise and the pain of being different. So, Dr. Kevin Leeman, author of the book, The Birth Order Book, we're grateful to have you here. Thank you for being with us. Oh, my pleasure.

Thanks. It's always good to have Dr. Kevin Leeman here at Focus on the Family. And it's really interesting to think about how your birth order in your family of origin can impact you as you interact as a couple.

It's interesting. And I know with Jean and me, she's number five out of six kids while I'm number five out of five. But she's that last daughter.

She's more like the middle child negotiator type trying to be the peacemaker. And I think my spontaneity kind of drives her crazy. I learned early in our marriage that I can't just say, hey, let's go do this or do that because Jean needs time to plan it.

And that's where the birth order lines up for Jean and me. You know, Focus on the Family cares about you and your marriage. We want your relationship with your spouse to be thriving along with your relationship with Christ. We have so many resources to help you in that. That's one reason we created the Focus on the Family Marriage Assessment.

It's an online tool. It's a quick little quiz you can take maybe five, six minutes long, and you'll get immediate results to help you have some insights on how you're succeeding in your relationship and maybe an area or two that needs a little bit of work. I always love that little couple of areas to work on.

Always some improvement. You know, another great place to start is to get a copy of the birth order book by Dr. Kevin Lehman. It's packed with solid insight and wisdom like you heard today. And in fact, when you make a monthly pledge today of any amount, we'll send you a copy of the birth order book as our way of saying thank you for helping us support families like your own. And if you can't commit to that monthly pledge, we get that. A one-time gift donation goes a long way, too. So join our support team. Do ministry with Focus on the Family today. Donate and get your copy of the birth order book when you're online.

We've got the link in the show notes or call 1-800-A-FAMILY. On behalf of Jim Daly and the entire team, thanks for joining us today for Focus on the Family. I'm John Fuller inviting you back as we once more help you and your family thrive in Christ. I was convinced that nothing could change what was going on in our marriage, and I didn't want to try anymore. But my commitment to God helped me try one more time. We went to a Hope Restored marriage intensive, and it was life-changing. The counselors created the safest environment we could imagine, so that let us really talk. We're on a much different course now, and I believe we received a miracle that week. Receive your free consultation at HopeRestored.com.