The Pecking Order : Which Siblings Succeed and Why

Rating:
Summary: Interesting Premise Weakly Presented
Review: Dalton Conley presents a very interesting idea - that is, one's level of success relative to one's siblings is less the result of birth order or genetics (as is popularly believed) and more the result how much family resources (time, money, love) one receives while growing up. Along the way, he rescues the theory that parental influence is a factor, an idea that has recently been discounted.

Although his theories are interesting, the book does not do them justice. It is repetitive and, while there are many interesting profiles of siblings to illustrate Conley's premise, he does not seem to make use of all the text to give a solid foundation to his ideas. For example we learn of sisters with ineffectual parents who ended up supporting each other, financial and emotionally. After college, one went on to become a success while the other stuggled in many ways. After a page or two of reading their case we learn that one of the sisters suffered terrible injuries in an automobile accident and required two years to physically recover and more years to emotionally recover. When Conley states that it's impossible to speculate why one sister has done better the reader is incredulous - didn't he just say that one sister had catastrophic injuries? Might not that have something to do with it? It's an interesting story, but one that takes up space and is seemling unrelated to the thesis. The book is riddled with such time wasters added perhaps to flesh out meager content or study results.

Still, the book is intermittently interesting and if the reader is patient to work through the superfluous content, it could be an enjoyable and informative read. Those looking to cut to the chase about inter-familial class or economic differences would do well to look elsewhere.

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: I loved the blurb on the cover and looked forward to reading this book. When Conley described how he wanted his book to be different from every other "birth order" book out there, and would use lots of statistical studies to back up his points, I was totally hooked!

Unfortunately the book just didn't amount to much. The author gives lots of anecdotes and statistics, but never manages to draw any conclusions more interesting than (1) only children and oldest children have the greatest chance for success (2) youngest children have the next greatest chance for success. Now, this is reasonably intriguing, but it only takes Conley a couple chapters to make this point. Beyond that, all the chapters are totally inconclusive. He deliberately includes an anecdote to show "a", followed by another anecdote showing "not a." After while this is pretty tiresome to read. I suppose if the reader had bought into every pop theory out there, Conley's book might serve as a good counterpoint, but otherwise it is disappointing.

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: I loved the blurb on the cover and looked forward to reading this book. When Conley described how he wanted his book to be different from every other "birth order" book out there, and would use lots of statistical studies to back up his points, I was totally hooked!

Unfortunately the book just didn't amount to much. The author gives lots of anecdotes and statistics, but never manages to draw any conclusions more interesting than (1) only children and oldest children have the greatest chance for success (2) youngest children have the next greatest chance for success. Now, this is reasonably intriguing, but it only takes Conley a couple chapters to make this point. Beyond that, all the chapters are totally inconclusive. He deliberately includes an anecdote to show "a", followed by another anecdote showing "not a." After while this is pretty tiresome to read. I suppose if the reader had bought into every pop theory out there, Conley's book might serve as a good counterpoint, but otherwise it is disappointing.

Rating:
Summary: mediocre take on fascinating topic
Review: I was disappointed in this book. The topic has probably been of interest to everyone at one point or another in their lives; who has not wondered at least once if they would be leading a different kind of life if they were the oldest, youngest, or only child?

While I appreciated the liveliness of the many examples used to illustrate the author's points, the luridness of some made it hard to take the evidence as anything but purely anecdotal. At times, it seemed like the author was rather too-eager explain how he arrived at his conclusions. There is nothing wrong with that necessarily, but I think most readers of psych books written for a general audience are willing to take more on faith than the author expected.

The most original point for me was the author's declaration that birth order didn't always mean that a child would go on to be a leader, a follower, a failure or whatever. Birth order does not necessarily predict a child's personality either. Instead, divorce, death, remarriage, economic background, helps determine how many resources a parent has to divide amongst his/her children. In fact, economic difference is often wider between adult siblings than it is between children from different families.

This book will probably hold your attention, but some readers may be left wanting more hard evidence and less anecdotes.

Rating:
Summary: Highly Recommended! Great Food for Thought
Review: I was inspired to read this book after a couple of friends of mine bought it and loved it. I wasn't sure what to expect, because I've always been a bit suspicious about the whole pop-psych birth-order thing. However, this book not only validated my suspicions about putting too much stock into that (Conley doesn't believe in birth-order theories, either), it also did a great job of addressing the myriad of factors that can (and do) affect sibling outcomes and family relationships. What I like best about the book is that it approaches such a complex topic without oversimplifying or dumbing things down. It does a great job of integrating sociological insights into real world phenomena (something that academic disciplines don't always do, unfortunately). Besides that, it's written engagingly-- Conley really knows how to hold his audience, and he strikes exactly the right balance between academic-speak and common sense. This book will make you think in new ways about why you and your siblings have turned out differently. Forget those simplistic, personality-based reasons you've been holding on to; there's way more to it than that!

Rating:
Summary: Interesting but Incomplete
Review: This book was a very interesting read with a disappointing conclusion. Conley presents convincing evidence for which siblings succeed and why, but lacks an effective ending making the book feel incomplete. It is as if the author is afraid to make a solid statement about what his findings mean. Still, there is a lot of good information here and I would recommend it to anyone interested in this topic with the understanding that it isn't particularly well written.

Rating:
Summary: The Common Sense Approach to Siblings' Success
Review: You and your siblings probably grew up together in the same areas, attending relatively the same schools, with the same set of parents/step-parents/step-siblings, etc., and you both were set in probably a similar socioeconomic background for most of your lives before the age of 18. Yet you are very different people, with very different careers, experiences, higher education backgrounds, and families.

Why. Some researchers claim that birth order makes all the difference- others like to throw gender into the equation. Even others say that the ever mystifying gene pool is responsible for every difference between siblings.

In "The Pecking Order", Dalton Conley proposes a new idea; Not so much that one variable is responsible for all differences, but that many variables factor into siblings' different experiences growing up and make them the adults they grow to be. You say, this is common sense! Yes it is, and it's hard to believe it's taken this long for a researcher to propose that idea.

The extensive research of Conley and his team is manifested in this book. Conley explains the many different variables in detail and how they affect siblings- the gene pool, birth order, family size, gender, death, desertion, divorce, immigration, family migration, socioeconomic change, and random acts of kindness/cruelty performed by those not within the family circle.

The book not only contains the factual research of Conley's team but also the interviews and stories of sets of siblings from every background imaginable, and how their different experiences affected their outcome as an adult. The interviews add a level of the personal to the book, and they validate the authenticity of the research findings.

The information is impressive in and of itself, but Conley's writing style makes for a casual, one-on-one teacher to student type reading environment. He also includes an expansive, 100+ page assortment of his appendix, notes, sources, and index. These are very helpful if you'd like to dive more into the subject.

Conley also reminds us that how siblings turn out is truly subjective- to all of the reasons he lists as well as how people turn out in general.

Very well-written, very informative, and by the end you are examining yours and your siblings' childhood experiences in a new light.

JK