Alcoholism, birth order, and family size.

On the basis of Schachter's findings relating affiliation during anxiety to birth order it was predicted that later borns and persons from large families should be overrepresented among alcoholics and that the number of alcoholics within each family size should increase with increasing birth order. First borns were expected to have significantly more therapeutic contacts than later borns. It was pointed out that Schachter's analyses, based on Bakan's data, lacked, among other things, a correction for family size. When this correction was employed with birth order and family size data from a sample of 242 treated alcoholics, the only hypothesis supported was that relating to an overrepresentation of persons from large families. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)