Research Prospectus

When I was trying to come up with a topic of research I went through many different questions I’ve always wanted to answer about my career field, criminal justice. I particularly chose to explore how birth order might affect criminal tendencies because it truly brings together two fields I very much enjoy which are psychology and criminology. For many years, I volunteered at an Orphanage in Miami, Florida called “His House”. I truly had a wonderful experience and I took so much from volunteering, but I was also curious because the personalities of the children I worked with were all so bizarre. The children at His House have many different ages, starting from as young as newborns to emerging adults. While volunteering at His House I met children from the same biological parents however their personalities were extremely different. Although there were brothers and sisters from the same mother and father, usually one seemed to portray stronger delinquency tendencies than others. In psychology, there is a condition called “middle child syndrome” which basically supports the idea that usually the middle child is the outcast and more introverted than the younger and older child. I have decided to tie in the middle child syndrome with the delinquent tendencies to create a thesis revolving around these two ideas. Perhaps, many people would be surprised to learn that birth order can have an effect on delinquent tendencies but I will demonstrate that the order in which children are born, does affect criminal activity, specifically the middle-born child’s. To support my thesis, I will need to conduct some thorough research on the middle-child syndrome so that I can clearly define it for my audience and thus strengthen my argument. I will also need to evaluate criminological theories and research some statistics that I may evaluate to see if my thesis is reasonable. I hope to find if indeed birth order can affect criminal behavior, and if so, is the middle child in the family more prone to this behavior. I came across an article titled “Birth Order and Risky Behavior” by Laura Argys from the University of Colorado, in this article Laura speaks of some empirical research that has been conducted regarding birth order and risky teen behaviors such as smoking marijuana, drinking, and crime. The article states that the results from this research provides the strongest evidence that bird order, particularly middle and last-born children are prone to these risky behaviors. Additionally, there is an online publication from the Legal and Criminological Psychological journal that refers to the characteristics of some sexual offenders, one of these is indeed birth order which according to this journal affects personality in a negative way. I can synthesize these two articles and make a unified argument open to the idea that birth order in general has an impact on criminal behavior, as proven by research. The American Psychological Association (APA) also has many publications; I found a particular one that carried a study involving criminal demographics and family history. The APA came to the conclusion that a father figure is important in the correct development of children, especially in the teenage years. The presence of a father figure in the family can be correlated with birth order, because as is very common in America, the risk of divorce is usually higher after the first child, perhaps leaving that middle child at a disadvantage with no father figure for guidance. Hopefully with much more research I will be able to create a strong argument to convince my audience that something as unpredictable and insignificant as it may seem, birth order, can indeed affect someone’s personality and success in life.