Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t8hqh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T07:03:36.610Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Sex Differences in Birth Order of Alcoholics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2018

Howard T. Blane ,
Herbert Barry III  and
Herbert Barry Jr.
Howard T. Blane
Affiliation:
University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213
Herbert Barry III
Affiliation:
University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Herbert Barry Jr.
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts 02114
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Studies of birth order of male alcoholics, reviewed by Chen and Cobb (1960), Sampson (1965), and Barry, Barry, and Blane (1969), generally showed more last-born than first-born cases. This difference was found in samples of more than 500 cases hospitalized in Denmark (Martensen-Larsen, 1957); Austria (Navratil, 1959); Canada (de Lint, 1964b), and Norway (Steén, 1966). Most samples in the United States have shown the same trend but with smaller numbers of cases, so that the difference was short of statistical significance. Ambiguous results have been obtained from the few studies of birth order of female alcoholics, generally based on small samples. The present paper reports on the birth-order distributions of a relatively large sample of male and female out-patient alcoholics in the United States.

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal of Psychiatry , Volume 119 , Issue 553 , December 1971 , pp. 657 - 661
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1971 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Barry, H. Jr., Barry, H. III, and Blane, H. T. (1969). ‘Birth order of delinquent boys with alcohol involvement.’ Quart. J. Stud. Alcohol, 30, 408–13.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Barry, H. III (1968). ‘Sociocultural aspects of alcohol addiction.’ In The Addictive States, ed. Wikler, A., Association for Research in Nervous and Mental Disease, Research Publications Vol. 46, Williams and Wilkins, Baltimore, 445–71.Google Scholar
Barry, H. III and Barry, H. Jr. (1971). ‘Birth order of psychiatric patients.’ Nature, 231, 57.Google Scholar
Blane, H. T. (1968). The Personality of the Alcoholic. Guises of Dependency, Harper and Row, New York.Google Scholar
Chen, E., and Cobb, S. (1960). ‘Family structure in relation to health and disease. A review of the literature.’ J. chronic Dis., 12, 544–67.Google Scholar
Davis, D. R. (1962). ‘Birth order and maternal age of homosexuals.’ Lancet, i, 540–1.Google Scholar
Hare, E. H., and Price, J. S. (1969). ‘Birth order and family size: bias caused by changes in birth rate.’ Brit. J. Psychiat., 115, 647–57.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hare, E. H., and Price, J. S. (1970). ‘Birth rank and schizophrenia.’ Nature, 228, 1223–4.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
de Lint, J. E. E. (1964a). ‘Alcoholism, birth order, and socializing agents.’ J. abn. soc. Psychol., 69, 457–8.Google Scholar
de Lint, J. E. E. (1964b). ‘Alcoholism, birth rank and parental deprivation.’ Amer. J. Psychiat., 120, 1062–5.Google Scholar
Martensen-Larsen, O. (1957). ‘The family constellation analysis and alcoholism.’ Acta Genet., 7, 441–4.Google Scholar
Navratil, L. (1959). ‘On the etiology of alcoholism.’ Quart. J. Shut. Alcohol., 20, 236–44.Google Scholar
Rathod, N. H., and Thomson, I. G. (1971). ‘Women alcoholics. A clinical study.’ Quart. J. Stud. Alcohol., 32, 45–52.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sampson, E. E. (1965). ‘The study of ordinal position; antecedents and outcomes.’ In Progress in Experimental Personality Research, ed. Maher, B. A., Vol. 2, New York: Academic Press, 175–228.Google Scholar
Slater, E. (1962). ‘Birth order and maternal age of homosexuals.’ Lancet, i, 69–71.Google Scholar
Steén, A. G. (1966). ‘Alkoholmissbrukares placering i syskonskaren.’ Social-Medicinsk Tidskrift, 43, 318–23.Google Scholar
Wallgren, H., and Barry, H. III (1970). Actions of Alcohol, Vol. 2, Chronic and Clinical Aspects. Amsterdam, Elsevier.Google Scholar
Submit a response

eLetters

No eLetters have been published for this article.