I was waiting in an audience for the show to begin and casually listening to conversations around me. (Yes, I eavesdrop, I confess it. Beats watching those ads they play.) Two women behind me were loudly talking about the recent birth of a niece, and sounding upset/peeved about it because, apparently, the sister was not “supposed” to bear the first child of that generation. One of them put it as, “She’s usurped my daughter’s right!” and the other made agreement sounds and said, “It’s not like she’s even the oldest daughter of her own mother!” And then there was some more comments about arrogance and dispespect and How dare she? and so forth, and then the movie started.
Sooo? Anyone familiar with a traditional/superstition/religious rule or so forth related to this? From what I gathered, there is something important, maybe “special,” about being the first child born in a generation. And the first woman evidently had a daughter before (one of?) her sister(s) did, and therefore her child had had the ‘right’ to have the first child of the next generation. Which would get her something, I dunno, bragging rights? A bigger slice of inheritance? A special blessing from God?
It strikes me as weird – how in the world would you be able to ‘enforce’ something like that? Nobody is allowed to marry/have a baby until after the previous generation’s FIRSTEE has had one? What if the eldest is infertile, or doesn’t want to have children – do all their siblings/cousins/second cousins have to stay single/childfree for life? Hardly practical, I’d think.
Come to think of it, they were only talking about girls, maybe boys/their wives don’t count in this derby?
Unfortunately I couldn’t question them, the penalty of being an eavesdropper. All I can say is the women had pretty heavy accents, the sort I’d think was meant to show they were immigrants from Russian or a Slavic country or something if I heard them in a TV show or movie.
It used to be that daughters were “supposed” to marry off in order of age (probably because if a younger sister jumped the line, it made the older one seem to be a “rejected” candidate). Apparently, this is why my great-grandmother eloped (her parents didn’t approve of her marrying before her older sisters (who in fact never did get married)). This may have rolled into a “rule” about having children out of order.
Or the people you were listening to were weirdos.
P.S. Genesis does say “It is not our custom here to give the younger daughter in marriage before the older one.”
I’ve certainly never heard of it amongst modern Americans.
I could see something like that being a common social convention amongst villagers where everybody knows everyone’s business and everyone marries at the same age, right after they finish whatever is the last year of schooling around there then, so age 12 to 17. And with no birth control, the first baby of the next generation would usually occur pretty promptly after that. Especially if the culture is Catholic where baby-making is the only one of God’s several commandments always followed … err umm … religiously.
“Older sister marries first” was a big part of the plot of Taming of the Shrew.
In the period of Jane Austen’s books, early 19th century, the eldest daughter was styled “Miss Lastname” and all the younger sisters were addressed as their various “Miss Firstname.” So Jane Bennett was Miss Bennett, but Elizabeth was Miss Elizabeth. If Jane got married and became Mrs. Bingley, shall we say, then Elizabeth as next in line would then become Miss Bennett. And so on down the line.
There was a thing, at least during that period, of a young lady being “out” in society, i.e. a legitimate target for appropriate attention from unmarried males. A sickly shadow of this persists even today, I believe, with debutante balls. Anyway, the custom apparently (according to Lady Catherine de Burgh in Pride and Prejudice) was that younger sisters would only come “out” into society after their older sisters had married. This is part of what @Andy_L was talking about upthread.
However, I suspect the tradition discussed in the OP has or had more religious overtones. As, for example, the first baby in a generation to be born would also be the first to be christened, and as is so often the case, the older child gets more of whatever is going for every rite of passage in their life, and the ho-hum younger ones take leftovers and retreads. Going in advance of established order is probably viewed as vile a practice as cutting in line at the cinema (if there were lines at cinemas any more).
There was a definite feel that the sister who had the baby first had ‘stolen’ something, likely for her daughter, that she didn’t ‘deserve’ to have. So the first baby getting more of something would fit that. Like with first sons being the one to inherit the title and estates in general.
Not so much today, at least in America’s culture, but there’s definitely some sense that the first grandchild gets way more attention/fussing over by the grandparents than, say, the third grandchild delivered by the fourth of their children.
It also reminds me of an old Peg Bracken column, about her oldest child had a baby book that was meticulously filled in. Date he took his first step, his first word, lots of pictures mounted with cute captions. Her second child also had a book, with clumps of photos tucked into it, to be mounted and labeled “some day.” Third child had a book that was completely empty. Fourth child didn’t even have a book.
And then there’s the unforgivable offense of “stealing” a name! I’ve heard of people getting all bent out of shape because of what a cousin named their child because that moniker was claimed by another, or some such nonsense.
In Jewish families, it’s considered inappropriate to name a child with the name of any living relative. (Or close friend, for that matter.) So while I’ve never heard anyone upset about “stealing a name”, it could certainly happen, if both you and your sib want to name a child after a beloved grandmother.
My cousin has the same name as my younger brother (born within a few months of each other). No one fussed. They both annoyed me, but not because of the name.
Being the mother of a favored grandchild (not because of birth order, tho’) family gets pretty upset about it.
It often comes out when too much liquor is consumed or those sought after favors are handed out.
I’ve seen many tears over it.
I’ve tried really hard not to make favorites with my grandkids. It’s tough.
I’ve actually never heard of “stealing a name” between siblings - it’s always been one cousin accusing another or sometimes friends. That’s probably because the naming traditions in my culture guarantee that if Joseph and Stephanie have two sons, and each of them have a son and a daughter both grandsons will be named Joseph and both granddaughters will be named Stephanie. People don’t actually follow that tradition so much any more but people who grew up with it are used to having multiple cousins with the same name.
It could be just a matter of the first grandchild/ great-grandchild getting more than later ones. My cousins (who were up to 18 years younger than me) didn’t have the same experience as I did with our grandparents. Even my two youngest siblings didn’t have the same experience that my brother and I did. My cousins also didn’t have the two young ,single,childless uncles that I had. Who bought me the sort of fun gifts that parents never buy.
Also, it might just be a thing within a specific family rather than a whole culture. I could totally see my ex-sister in law flipping out if her sister had a baby before she did - ex-SIL caused a whole lot of problems when she scheduled her wedding three weeks before my sister’s (which had already been scheduled for months) because my brother “should get married before his younger sister”
It’s inappropriate in Ashkenazic Jewish families, but it’s common (or at least, it used to be) in Sephardic families, which is why we named our son after my father-in-law, who was named after his grandfather, and so on back through history. My FiL also shared the name with one of his first cousins, although as the cousin was from the distaff line they didn’t share a last name as well.
Buy there are families (including most Ashkenazic Jews) where it’s bad form to reuse names of living relatives, so i can totally see someone being upset that some other family member named a baby the name that person wanted to name their baby.
Well, in the Bible, Jacob wants to marry Rachel, so he works for 7 years for her dad; then he is allowed to marry, but the dad tricks Jacob into marrying Leah, Rachel’s older sister, for the reason you mention here: she is older and must marry first. So Jacob works another 7 years to marry Rachel too.
Don’t think I’ve heard of the concept outside of that biblical story though.
Had this problem in my mixed Ashkenazi/Sephardic family.
My father’s parents were very big on the idea of the oldest child being ‘special’. My uncle was my father’s little brother and resented this greatly. I was the second son as well and didn’t like it either.
It wasn’t a problem with us: my wife’s parents were overjoyed we named him after one of them, and my own parents were perfectly cool with it.
That said, our parents loved all their grandkids equally. Our son got a head start because he was the first on both sides, but that didn’t make him “special.”
