Second-born children are the biggest troublemakers in the family, according to study

A new study has revealed that the second-born child is the biggest troublemaker in families. 

It’s pretty common that the younger sibling gets away with everything, while the oldest feel the full wrath of the parents.

Parents are trialling things out with their first kid, creating big old rules and giving tough tellings-off. But once they work out what they’re doing and how to handle things, the future kids tend to have a pretty easy ride. 

A new study has found though that it is actually second-born children who are the biggest troublemakers. 

An economist from MIT in the USA, Joseph Doyle, has discovered that second-born children are more likely to misbehave.

He found that they are 25 to 40% more likely to get in major trouble in school, and even more likely get in trouble with the law.

The experts have revealed that this is strongly related to how strict parents are with their first and how much easier they go with their second in comparison. 

Mr Doyle revealed to NPR: “The firstborn has role models who are adults, and the second, later-born children have role models who are slightly irrational 2-year-olds, you know, their older siblings.

“Both the parental investments are different, and the sibling influences probably contribute to these differences we see in the labor market and what we find in delinquency.”

He continued: “It’s just very difficult to separate those two things because they happen at the same time.”

So we’ve finally got confirmation, the second child is definitely more likely to be a terror and get away with it!