To live a life that has expectations is to spend years of your life trying to prove yourself. This has been what being the youngest child feels like, where comparison is a norm and the necessity to live up to your siblings is always on.
We often hear about the eldest child's struggles: how the oldest are forced to be independent at such a young age and how the parents see the middle child differently from their siblings. But have we talked about the troubles the youngest child goes through?
Youngest Child Syndrome
Youngest Child Syndrome refers to the idea that the youngest kids in a family tend to develop certain traits because of their birth order. According to psychologist Alfred Adler in 1927, the youngest child often grows up being more social, confident, and creative.
They usually learn how to get along with others easily and can be quite persuasive, sometimes getting others to do things for them. Many younger children are also said to be funny or entertaining, which might come from wanting to stand out and get attention in a family where everyone else is older.
The ‘have it easy’ sibling
When you tell a bunso, “You have it easy,” don’t be surprised if they roll their eyes or shut their ears. It’s the line they’ve heard all their lives. From the outside, this may look like the package they have in reality: hand-me-down lessons from older siblings and parents who are a little less strict.
But that picture leaves out the messier part. When people assume everything is handed to you, they rarely stop to see the effort it takes to prove yourself or the quiet frustration of always being measured against a reputation you never chose.
There must be a mistake somewhere
There’s this common joke about how being the youngest child means being the “baby” of the family. You’re spoiled, they say. You’re the one who’s always protected, the one who gets away with things the older ones never could.
It isn’t perfect as they impose. To be the youngest is also to have your every action always under a microscope. Every place you go to, every task you do, every decision you make. Because when you are the youngest, people expect you to know less, or nothing at all.
When the siblings leave
As annoying as our siblings make us feel, there’s silence that comes with being the last one at home. While older siblings branch out, build careers, or start their own families, the bunso is left behind in a house that grows emptier by the year.
What once felt like a lively home now feels like a hollow space filled with memories, and they have to carry that loneliness in ways that few notice.
The truth is, the bunso doesn’t really have it all
If there’s a thing every youngest sibling lacks, is to be independent in everyone else’s eyes.
The eldest carries responsibility, the middle fights for space, but the youngest carries expectation. You’re the one they pin their revised dreams on, the one they watch closely because they’ve already seen what life did to the ones before you. Every decision you make feels like it’s being measured against mistakes and missed chances.
So, at the end of the day, the youngest will fantasize about a world where they are allowed to dream, fail, and grow on their own terms. Because being the youngest shouldn’t mean carrying the family’s unfinished stories. It should mean having the chance to finally write their own.
