{"id":127,"date":"2008-08-18T10:02:54","date_gmt":"2008-08-18T14:02:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thestormypresent.com\/ocean\/?p=127"},"modified":"2008-08-18T10:04:07","modified_gmt":"2008-08-18T14:04:07","slug":"on-the-accident-of-birth-order","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/thestormypresent.com\/ocean\/2008\/08\/18\/on-the-accident-of-birth-order\/","title":{"rendered":"On the Accident of Birth Order"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #800000;\">Being pretty on the inside means you don&#8217;t hit your brother and you eat all your peas &#8211; that&#8217;s what my grandma taught me.<\/span><span><span style=\"color: #800000;\">\u00a0 &#8211; Lord Chesterfield<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>I sometimes think it is a terrible thing we do to the oldest of those who are born.\u00a0 Being born of this wholesomely unlucky number of being the first, one is saddled with being &#8220;Responsible&#8221; right off without any chance of choosing another life. \u00a0<\/p>\n<p>This occurred to me as I watched a particular grueling episode of a TV show, where a family disintegrated.\u00a0 The argument was cliche, as well as the &#8220;you never loved me.&#8221; And the &#8220;you don&#8217;t know what I gave up for you.&#8221; and the ever popular. &#8220;I had to be the responsible one.&#8221; But then I thought&#8230;, Why? Why was it cliche, after all, even sterotypes have to come up from somewhere.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Now, one does not choose to be first, and it&#8217;s clear that one&#8217;s choices after the second child is born, are severely limited.\u00a0 From day one is taught to take care, protect and be mindful of one&#8217;s siblings.\u00a0 This pressure only increases if there is one parent, because the eldest becomes the defacto next parent. \u00a0 I do not find any of this wrong, or bad, I wonder however if this accident of birth order is enough to justify the pain in the later years.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Being pretty on the inside means you don&#8217;t hit your brother and you eat all your peas &#8211; that&#8217;s what my grandma taught me.\u00a0 &#8211; Lord Chesterfield I sometimes think it is a terrible thing we do to the oldest of those who are born.\u00a0 Being born of this wholesomely unlucky number of being the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,8],"tags":[262,372],"class_list":["post-127","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary","category-life-lessons","tag-age","tag-siblings"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/thestormypresent.com\/ocean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/thestormypresent.com\/ocean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/thestormypresent.com\/ocean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thestormypresent.com\/ocean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thestormypresent.com\/ocean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=127"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/thestormypresent.com\/ocean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/thestormypresent.com\/ocean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thestormypresent.com\/ocean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thestormypresent.com\/ocean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}