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NEWS photo Cindy Goodman
MARRIAGE AND family therapist Dr. Ronald Richardson, director of
the North Shore Counselling Centre, along with his journalist wife Lois,
have written ‘Birth Order and You: How Your Sex and Position in the
Family Affects Your Personality and Relationships.°*

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23 - Sunday, July 8, 1990 - North Shore News

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PAGE 28

sex determines personality

EVER WONDER why you
have the personality that
you do?

By SURJ RATTAN
News Reporter

A large part of it has to do
with your sex and the order you
were born in your family.

At least that’s the theory behind
a new book called Birth Order
and You: How Your Position in
the Family Affects Your Personal-
ity and Relationships. The book is
written by Dr. Ronald Richard-
son, the director of the North
Shore Counselling Centre and his
wife Lois Richardson, an author
and journalist.

In their book, the Richardsons
argue that the birth order and sex
of a person in relation to his sibl-
ings all play a part in forming in-
dividual personalities.

“The basic theory is that we
define ourselves in relation to
those who precede us,’’ says
Ronald Richardson. ‘‘The oldest
child, for a while anyways, is the
only child. They will tend to iden-
tify with the parent’s values. Very
often they become in the family
what is known as the good child.”’

Reunoids

He adds that the oldest child
begins to feel he is being threat-
ened when a second child is born.

“Once they’ve (oldest child)
gotten over the fact that the child
(second born) can’t be sent back,
they start working harder at pleas-
ing the parents,’ says Richardson.
“Parents are more anxious as
parents with the first kid. With
the second child the parents are
much more relaxed because
they’ve been through all of the
experiences with the oldest kid.’

Richardson says it is very im-
portant for parents to realize they
should not make one child com-
pete against the other and adds
that each child has to define
himself in relation to the siblings
that precede him.

Richardson also says that the
parents of the oldest child should
put less pressure on him to suc-
ceed and ‘‘openly give more love
and approval just for existing.”’

‘Sometimes the oldest kid gets
so good that the parents don’t
notice they have needs. A
wonderful example is Hannah and
Her Sisters, the Woody Allen
film. Hannah was the good oldest
sister. The whole theme of the
movie was that Hannah was out

CABI

of touch with her needs. Her hus-
band ends up having an affair
with the middle sister and his
complaint about his wife Hannah
is that she doesn't need him and,
in fact, she’s just as needy and
dependent as anybody else.”

‘In their goodness oldest kids
can almost get ignored."’

Richardson says the personality
of twins is determined differently
from that of the oldest, middle
and youngest child. He adds that
twins who are raised in separate
families are more like each other
than twins raised in the same fam-
ily.

According to Richardson, being
a twin is good preparation for
marriage as long as one twin mar-
ries another twin. One of the
worst marriage combinations, says
Richardson, is if a twin marries an
only child.

‘*There was a recent study done
in California on 50 twin couples
who were married to each other,
in other words, twins married to
twins. In a state where the divorce
rate is presently 50 per cent, the
divorce rate among that group of
twins was 12 per cent,’’ said

See Book
Page 24

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