Middle Children Have a Secret Power—Here’s How to Help Them Hone It, According to a Psychologist

As a middle child, I got a lot of “middle child syndrome” jokes growing up. And while I didn’t feel overlooked by my parents, I have always been the typical peacekeeper (a typical birth order trope). Need to break it to Mom that you’re not coming to Thanksgiving? Work through a decades-long feud over which brother is the official owner of a first-edition Millennium Falcon? Remind you about a Father’s Day said father swore he does not care about but secretly does? I’ll be your official emissary! So, when I came across the book, The Secret Power of Middle Children: How Middleborns Can Harness Their Unexpected and Remarkable Abilities, my interest was piqued, and I had to ask the co-author, Dr. Catherine Salmon, PhD, what exactly is this so-called secret power—and how do you help middleborn kids activate it?

Dr. Catherine Salmon, PhD., is a professor in the psychology department at the University of Redlands. With expertise in evolutionary psychology and human sexuality, she has served as associate editor of Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences, as well as book review editor for Evolutionary Psychological Science. In collaboration with Katrin Schumann, Dr. Salmon is the author of The Secret Power of Middle Children. She has also written chapters in numerous books including The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology.

According to Dr. Salmon, the unique ability of middleborns is that they are excellent negotiators: “They have always been in a non-power position among siblings (not the larger older first or the pampered, baby last), and so they learn early on to get what they want/need through figuring out what others want.” 

For instance, in an interview back in 2011 with “Talk of the Nation,” Dr. Salmon painted this picture: Imagine growing up in a family where the firstborn gets what he wants because he has more authority and is physically larger. The lastborn gets what he wants by whining and being babied. But, as Dr. Salmon points out, the middle child doesn’t have a choice to be the authority or the baby. The result? “They often get very good at negotiating, figuring out what the other person wants and needs, and then manages to get them what they want and what the middle child themselves want at the same time.” In other words, middleborn kids tend to develop a very strong social-emotional game out of the gate, learning how to create solutions with multiple positive results. 

Surprisingly, Dr. Salmon says that parents shouldn’t do a thing. Yes, call out your middleborn’s (and all of your kids’!) accomplishments, but there’s nothing inherently wrong with the dynamic within the family unit. Sure, maybe middleborns tend to be overlooked or even sometimes neglected within the family, but as Dr. Salmon tells me, they actually benefit from this by gaining more freedom and less parental expectation. So, while it might be your instinct to cure your family of “middle child syndrome,” one perspective argues that there’s nothing to fix: “I don’t think parents need to encourage [this super power],” shares Dr. Salmon. “But I think in general, parents should not stress about how they divide time/attention between their kids—middle [children] achieve because of their position.” 

Well, it’s not like all those parenting podcasts you listened to should go out the window. It’s a good thing to work on yourself and your role as a parent. Dr. Salmon still believes in calling out achievements when kids deserve it to help build self-esteem. She also advises parents to avoid comparing middle children (or any of your kids) to their siblings. No one is saying to purposefully ignore or create hardships for any child, but the moral of the story is that middle children’s secret power comes from the fact that they’re middle children!