Bill Linnane: So what if birth order theory was debunked? All parents want a way to figure out their children

Adler theorised that the order you were born could affect personality and even outcomes in life. Photo: Getty

Bill Linnane

Does the order of your birth matter? The Austrian psychotherapist Alfred Adler believed it did. He theorised that where you came in the family affected aspects of your personality as well as your outcomes in life. Aside from being a contemporary of Freud and Jung, he was also one of seven children, so he was well-placed to come up with big ideas about why we are the way we are.

Many of Adler’s theories are still in play today in parenting discourse (he was also the person who coined the term ‘inferiority complex’) but birth order is the one which has stuck in my head as each one of my little treasures came along and started to develop their own personalities.