Steven Pinker -- How the Mind Works - Hampshire High Italian ...

Family Values 453grief correlates almost perfectly with the life expectancies of huntergathererchildren.On the other hand, a younger child, being more helpless, has moreuse for a parent's daily ministrations. Parents report more tender feelingsfor their younger offspring, even though they seem to value the olderones more. The calculations begin to change when parents get older anda new child is likely to be their last one. There is nothing to save for, andthe baby of the family is likely to be indulged. Parents also favor childrenthat one might call, in a cold-hearted way, better investments: more vigorous,better looking, more talented.Given that parents are apt to play favorites, offspring should beselected to manipulate their parents' investment decisions in their favor.Children are exquisitely sensitive to favoritism, right through adulthoodand after the parents' deaths. They should calculate how to make thebest of the hand that nature dealt them and of the dynamics of the pokergame they were born into. The historian Frank Sulloway has argued thatthe elusive nongenetic component of personality is a set of strategies tocompete with siblings for parental investment, and that is why childrenin the same family are so different. Each child develops in a differentfamily ecology and forms a different plan for getting out of childhoodalive. (The idea is an alternative to Harris' proposal that personality is astrategy for coping in peer groups, though both could be right.)A first-born child has been spotted several advantages. The first-born,merely by having survived to its present age, is more precious to theparents, and of course is bigger, stronger, and wiser and will be so for aslong as the younger one is a child. Having ruled the roost for a year ormore, the first-born sees the newcomer as a usurper. Thus he (or she)should identify with his parents, who have aligned their interests withhis, and should resist changes to the status quo, which has always servedhim well. He should also learn how best to wield the power that fatehas granted him. In sum, a first-born should be a conservative and abully. Second-born children have to cope in a world that contains thisobsequious martinet. Since they cannot get their way with thuggery andtoadyism, they must cultivate the opposite strategies. They shouldbecome appeasers and cooperators. And with less at stake in the statusquo, they should be receptive to change. (These dynamics depend, too,on the innate components of the personalities of the siblings and ontheir sex, size, and spacing; your mileage may vary.)Later-boms have to be flexible for another reason. Parents invest in