Middle child syndrome is a mindset that many children have due to being a middle child and getting less attention. Middle child syndrome has numerous causes that can or might lead to issues and personalities that arise from the syndrome. Being a middle child causes some children to feel disadvantaged, making those who study middle child syndrome want to address the causes, issues, and personalities, and wonder if they can be prevented. This also leads to the question of "are birth roles imposed on children?" meaning that they have certain roles expected of them according to the order in which they were born. While addressing these claims, the audience that is affected needs to be established.

The audience that is affected by middle child syndromes is anyone who is a middle child, or has a relationship with a middle child, whether it is through family, social, or work. Parents, siblings, bosses, friends, and coworkers of middle children and middle children themselves are those who would be affected by middle child syndrome. Parents get the brunt of the middle child syndrome symptoms since they are usually the point of frustration that the middle child blames the most. Siblings are affected because the middle sibling may have anger towards them for receiving the more attention than them. Bosses and coworkers work with middle children, who are known to have traits that make them very diplomatic, flexible and encouraging compromise, yet are competitive (Sulloway, 303). These are strengths in the work field, therefore bosses and coworkers benefit from middle children being on their team. As long as the competitiveness is healthy, it stands as a benefit. Friends are affected by middle children because that is where middle children get their most support. They tend to find friends outside the home and are sociable away from home. For example, I had many friends in high school that I hung out with often, unlike my other siblings. Middle children themselves are a large part of the audience I am trying to reach. I want the research I have done compared with experiences I have had to help them sort out things they are going through. This is why my arguments will be laced with logos and pathos. In Aristotle's triangle of persuasion, there are three points: logos (logic), pathos (emotion), and ethos (authority). I will be focusing on logic, or the research, as well as emotions affected by my experiences. I know these types of persuasions will appeal most to my audience because emotion draws people in so they can relate and logic helps back up the emotion.

In a brief overview of middle child syndrome, there are the problems that middle children face, the feelings they have, and the personalities they develop due to the feelings and problems. The causes of the problems they face can be explained by reviewing their past. At one point the middle child was actually the second born and there were the same amount of parents as children so the attention was easier to get. If there are more than three children in the family, the ones in the middle were the baby at one time as well so once they were replaced as the youngest, they have even less attention on them. Middle children are faced with the issues of not receiving enough attention from their parents and feeling left or squeezed out. According to Kevin Leman, "this results in the middle children feeling they were born too late to get the privileges and special treatment the first born seemed to inherit by right and they were born too soon to strike the bonanza that many last borns, or commonly referred to as "the babies of the family," enjoys-having the parents lighten up on the discipline," (150). This explains the problem of feeling like there is no defined place for them in the family. Middle children have to find ways to get their parents' attention so the "branching out effect" is a concept used to get attention. As Jeffrey Kluger describes in The Sibling Effect, "siblings who hope to stand out in a family often do so by observing what the older child does and then doing the opposite," (78). By not blending in with the older sibling, it is easier to be noticed by parents. The feelings that middle children experience are numerous. Middle children feel like they are squeezed out, rejected, less loved, and discouraged, (Stewart, 78).  All of these states of mind are not family oriented so they lead to personalities where the strong suits are not in any relation to family members. These personalities traits include "fewest acting out problems, most sociable, ...highest rate of success in team sports, high levels of relating well to older and younger people, tend to be competitive in areas not attempted by oldest children, and more likely to be faithful within monogamous relationships," (Eckstein and Kaufman, 72). None of these personality traits include characteristics that are involved or needed in strong family bonds. They separate themselves from the family and focus on friends, like relating to them, being sociable with them, and in strong relationships with other people with which they are friends. While all these traits are positive, they are strong in friendships outside the family. Middle children shy away from being sociable with family members and participate in opposite activities to distance themselves from those who they don't feel like appreciate them. A middle child can either be a loner, quiet, and shy or impatient, easily frustrated, very competitive and a rebel (Leman, 153). They can be sociable, friendly, outgoing, takes life in stride, laid back, a peacemaker, and avoids conflict. Many of these traits contradict each other and middle children can have all these traits at various times. The middle child is truly a mystery. 

While researching, I began asking myself questions that may explain what the research showed. First of all, the question "Is middle child syndrome real?" came up. Middle child syndrome's validity is a debated topic but every behavior that middle children experience can be explained so yes, it is real. The next question I needed to address was since there are all these contradictions within the middle children's behaviors, does that prove that middle children's problems cannot be defined? The answer to this is no because not every child with the same birth order is going to be exactly alike. They grow up in different environments and under different circumstances, such as a single-parent home. Not every youngest child is going to be exactly alike even though their personality type is the easiest to define. Reviewing what Leman said before about the middle child being a paradox and a mystery because they have such a versatile set of emotions, it would be accurate to say that middle children are the most emotional out of the birth rank of children. That does not mean that they are the ones that display emotion the most because middle children are best at hiding their emotions since they are not asked a lot at home about their feelings. Middle children are the most secretive out of all the other siblings since they think whatever their opinion is, it will just be ignored, even if it is important to them (Wilson and Edington, 99). 

Middle children can also vary in gender; according to Wilson and Edington, "one's gender must be taken into account as an extremely important variable," (8). Middle children who are the only male or female child in the family may not feel left out because they get attention by being the only boy or girl. Children who are the only one of their gender often seek relationships with parents and parents focus on them because they don't have another sibling near their age with which to play. Just by taking gender into account, it is easily noticed that all the factors or variable that in some way could contribute do, like gender and age. That is why middle children are hard to define. Are middle children expected to be difficult children and difficult in defining their characteristics? Middle children, even though they are almost always left out, some parents contemplate this whenever they are bringing home the third child. How are my children going to react to their new sibling? Middle children change after a new baby because this is how they became middle children. My mother said that after she had my younger brother and I became the middle child she had to constantly watch me to prevent me from hurting him. He took my place and my attention and since we were so close together (less than two years) I did not understand why. After a transition like that, it causes middle children to be confused in their role in the family, therefore becoming "difficult." Middle children are expected to react in various ways, even though the choice of reaction may be a surprise. 

There are still more answers needed. Leman discusses middle children's relationships away from home, explaining them as "to avoid the pain and frustration of being an outsider in his family, the middle child leaves home the quickest," (155). Middle children's trait of being sociable helps them to make friends away from home easily. The question we should ask ourselves are middle children encouraged by their family to seek friends outside the home as an unconditioned response to being the middle child? Since the middle child is normally left out by siblings, their parents may encourage them to play with neighborhood children and encourage them to and when they bring friends over. The middle children that I know were encouraged by their parents to find friends from school or in the neighborhood because they are independent by nature. What if they are not encouraged by their parents? Are they expected to find friends without encouragement? If society has taught parents to expect their children to take on these birth order roles, then they would expect them to take on the characteristics of the birth order roles too, such as making friends away from home. This can lead to problems, however, between parent-child communications and if the friends the middle child chooses are not the best choices. Feeling shunned from family, yet still wanting to get attention from parents, can lead to the desire of getting bad attention. 

All this leads up to the broad question of "Are there defined roles that all children are expected to follow?" Either consciously or unconsciously, the answer is yes. There are so many books out there, such as psychological journals and books written by family psychologists and counselors, many that I have used for this essay and all of them are trying to define children by their birth order. For what reason? I believe they are trying to define children that way they are easier to understand and to mold into that basis. Forer and Still, in The Birth Order Factor, say this: "whatever your position, it has been determined to a large degree how you attempt to meet the goals you set for yourself, or that have been assigned to you," (7). This quote makes it seem like society has made certain standards that each child has to meet, whether they are the first-born, last-born, or middle child. First-born children are known as being leaders, people pleasers, goal oriented, and the most responsible (Leman, 90). This can be very pressuring in their defense because they feel like they have to be perfect or that one little wrong will be there for the whole world to see. They are perfectionists. All this responsibility is expected of the first-born because they are the oldest. They normally have to do all the babysitting and parents usually expect more from the eldest. Now, let's take a look at the youngest, the baby of the family. These are normally characterized as the troublemakers, with traits of being charming, rebellious, engaging, and worry-free (Leman, 172-185). Even though some babies of the family may try to deny this, some would agree with this in full stride. The problems with this are that the youngest children may not be taken seriously and be labeled as a joke and never having potential to do anything. A weakness of last borns are they "may come across as undisciplined, prone to talk too much and too long; the kind who talks a good game, but can't always produce," (188). Being a last born does have a lot of stereotypes that people assume and ignore the positive qualities, such as being affectionate and outgoing. All three of these birth order roles are pretty typical and are assumed by many people. These defined roles can help people with positive traits, but hinder those with many negative traits, especially the middle child. 

By answering all these questions, it builds up to the final question, which is: "Is there any way to prevent the middle child from being the mystery child or 'diagnosed' with middle child syndrome?" If you build a strong relationship with your child, or, if you are a child, seeking a strong relationship with your parents is a great way to stop the middle child from feeling lonely and less loved than any other member of the family. Stopping at having just two children is a way that some people do prevent the middle child altogether, but if you treat your children the same and give them the same amount of attention, you can have middle children and there will be no problem. Something as simple as a parenting class could tell you that. An excerpt from an article I assessed said "while you cannot dictate the personality that your child will have, you can do your best to make sure that the middle child does not become invisible," (Danish). Good parenting is the only way to preventing a child, who should be surrounded with support, to feel alone. This also applies to other children as well, since roles can be reversed by determining psychological birth order and just because all children need parental attention. The benefits are endless. Children who have healthy childhoods grow up to have productive lifestyles and are less likely to be depressed. According to Susan Clark's thesis "perceived optimal parenting was related to low levels of social anxiety, depression, and general anxiety and high levels of global self-worth and social acceptance (16). All these stack up to the qualities of a well-rounded adult that can have a successful and happy life all due to good parental communication and displays of affection.

By answering all of the questions that pertain to solely middle children syndrome, I was able to discover the underlying question that applies to everyone: "Are birth orders expected?" To deter the thinking that everyone will fall under a category, we found that the only way to prevent that is to have good parenting. Good parenting is essential to their children having healthy lifestyles while they are young and while they are adults. Attention between siblings needs to be equal and the love needs to be equal.
