daily words

primogeniture

What is the duty of the first born child? It seems that there is some importance for the first child for some cultures, and more specifically the first born son often, but I'm not really sure how that would have come about exactly.

I guess there's something to be said for the idea that it stems from some deep rooted patriarchy and that people under such a regime would then put a premium on having sons, and so simply because it's easier or because there may only be a single son among a group of siblings, that the first of them would get preferential treatment.

So given that there were or are rights given to the first born, what then are the duties that come with them? It seems that often the benefit of extra rights comes also with some duty or obligation, be it filial or otherwise. In our modern and enlightened society have we done away with this preferential treatment of firstborn children?

Speaking from the position of a first born I think there are certainly a lot of things that I find I have in common with other first born children from families with more than one child however they are not typically connections of similar rights and obligations. Instead they are stories in which we are treated differently from our younger siblings in similar ways.

These commonalities are something I find among most people I know who grew up in Western cultures, a term I use to mean mainly places that are not Asia or Africa. This I think is more a consequence of not having met nearly so many people who are the oldest of many children from any of those places than it is of those places cultural differences.

This remains a boring stream of consciousness with no real coherent theme much less anything to hold interest for another few hundred words. Neither informative in an interesting way or compelling as a piece of fiction what then is the point of me writing this drivel?

It's just navel gazing. The previous entry is marked by a number of paragraphs that all start with "I" while this one is only a shade better, and not appreciably because it's still boring. Me sitting and typing through my random thoughts is not a very good way to achieve the goals I've set for myself in this project.

Actually a story where this figured very prominently in the narrative was _The Chosen_, which was a pretty good read. The Malter kid befriends the other one and the other one who is the eldest son ends up giving up his duty as the first born child (he was the first born child but would this have applied to his sister had she been the first instead? I am not sure) and it hurts his father.

I feel lucky that there is not so much of this pressure on me, there is no specific and well defined role that I am aware of that I will need to fill to live up to my family's expectations. That's not to say that I am without expectation on me, simply that it is not so strictly defined in any one particular direction.

I wonder in cases where such a heavy responsibility is laid on the first child what steps the parents then take to prepare the child. I can only imagine that the larger the... inheritance, for lack of a better word, is, then the more the parents would be concerned that they need to prepare their heir. In cases like these it seems rather silly that they'd go by birth order alone, as presumably if there were multiple children and one of them displayed an interest of aptitude greater than the others, it would make sense to put the responsibility on them.

Continuing though, what kinds of things can you do to ready a child to have this kind of life dumped onto them? And when would that transition come? Of course in the event of some unforeseen catastrophe it would be a double burden of the surprise of having this new obligation and to grapple with the absence of the parents.

But assuming this grim situation isn't the case, how then would things proceed? Would it make sense for the parent to start at some point to transition responsibility to the child? What if the child had little or no interest? I can only guess that the parent would want to put the burden of work onto the child so as to be able to enjoy support from the child and a leisurely retirement from whatever it is that was passed onto the first born.

The practice of assigning any elevated privilege to a person based on whether or not they were born first among their siblings strikes me as a silly thing to do. It may make sense in a case where there is some sort of age restriction which they would then naturally reach first, but even then I would probably be suspicious of the age restriction and its basis. Presumably a sufficiently developed or mature child even if below the arbitrary age limit would be able to do whatever it is that has the restriction, even if they're not the eldest child.

As much as I'd like to think myself more important for having been the first of my siblings to be born, there isn't really a compelling argument that I can think of in support of that. And with that said, I am going to bring today's attempt to a close, such that I might even try and get ahead a little on tomorrow's.