Hey folks, Poppa Large (aka Oliver) here. Sorry for being the infrequent poster I am (and as always, thanks to Jason for holding the site down with his rigor and foresight). As a quick update, my daughter is now four years old and after many years of insisting that we were "one and done," there's some (slight) shift around the resistance to having a second kid. We'll see though, we'll see. I'd also like to congratulate my co-blogger at Poplicks, Junichi Semitsu, who recently became a Rice Daddy himself with his first child, a half Japanese/half Lebanese son.
Just saw this article that I thought would be of particular interest here: Jeff Yang writing about how first-born Asian American kids buck the conventional wisdom.
Would love to hear what folks here think about this and how it conforms to their own experience.
I know for me, it sounded rather on-point. I was definitely the rebellious first-born (though not in the awry-with-the-law sort of way) while my younger sister is the one who actually went into our dad's line of work (albeit temporarily).
2 comments:
Thanks for posting about this on RD since Jeff didn't. ;-)
As the only-child father of now TWO girls, the whole sibling thing is an unknown to me, so we'll see what happens. I know that with my wife and sister-in-law, they sort of conform to the "traditional" idea of rule-following first-born (my wife's a doctor) and rule-breaking second-born (she's a musician), though my wife did do things that weren't quite traditional (going cross-country for school, for example).
I know that, re: the sibling attention gap, I'm glad that I'm able to be home during our second-born's formative years, just as I was with our first, and I think that'll be an important leveler. Again, I don't know from siblings, so we'll see! (She's only 3 months!)
My situation growing up is almost identical to Grace Lee's. I was the non-conforming, "artsy", rule-breaker. I spent 5-years as a TV news journalist and then switched careers at a drop of a hat. I decided, "Hey, I want to be a filmmaker and a Hip Hop music video director". So, that's what I did.
My younger brother, however, is a UCLA grad majoring in Economics. He's way more reserved than I am, fiscally conservative and less inclined to take risks.
But, the plot thickens. I have a 6-year-old son and 4-year-old daughter. My son seems to exhibit the "follow the rules" mentality, while my daughter undoubtedly plays by her own rules. She has this free-spirited demeanor that I see in myself. And I don't mean in the "every 4-year-old is free-spirited" kind of way, if that makes any sense. We'll see how this all plays out though.
I tend to subscribe to the whole sibling "polar opposites" theory, but I think it all comes down to the roll of the dice. Yes, kids are shaped by their varying personal experiences, but I think the disposition is more biological. I call it nature, with a little nudge from nurture. :)
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