¶ … mental health is an ever-Expanding arena. The experts continue to debate many of the issues that impact self-esteem. Self-esteem is something that can create a confident productive life, or it can be a destructive insidious problem that plagues adult life. One of the things that has been examined for many areas of mental health is the order in which one is born within his or her family. Sibling birth order has been credited for how one lives their childhood, how they develop as adults, how various things impact them including parental alcohol and drug abuse and how much money one will make in a lifetime.

This paper presents a research proposal about sibling birth order and how it impacts the development of self-esteem. The proposal explains the importance of understanding the issue, some of the literature that has already been published in the area and a suggested methodology for conduction the study. The proposal also provides a proposed outcome.

For many years mental health professionals have known that self-esteem significantly impacts life. Whether it is a child who is in school, a teen away at college, or an adult making his or her way through life, a person's self-esteem plays a role in what that person's life is going to be like.

Low self-esteem has been known to create many different problems. It can strip confidence and it can set the person on a path that is self-destructive. People who have low self-esteem often are drawn to relationships that are abusive or destructive. The drug and alcohol abuse issue is often about underlying self-esteem trouble.

When a person has low self-esteem it is not uncommon for him or her to be under employed, under educated and in poor relationships. Because of the impact that self-esteem has on overall quality of life experts in the field of mental health have studied its components extensively. It is known now that self-esteem plays an integral part in the total personality development of a person.

The next step is to determine exactly what elements contribute to the...

The order of one's birth has been examined for aspects of being an adult child of an alcoholic, how well one succeeds in life, and what type of personality one is most likely to have. Sibling birth order may also have a part to play in the development of a person's self-esteem. If birth order does have something to do with self-esteem development future work can be done on how to circumvent any negative birth order issues in the self-esteem arena. For example, if research determines that being born last sets the stage for the development of poor self-esteem issues because of being largely ignored because of the needs of the other siblings, training and education can be provided to parents to be sure to combat that possibility.
Literature Review

There have been many studies and books published about sibling birth order in the past. Birth order has emerged as an important element of total personality.

One study focused on how birth order affects education. This is an important study because the results can be extrapolated to incorporate birth order and self-esteem. Often times one's self-esteem plays a factor in how far they go in school as well. This particular study examined how first born children faired educationally compared to later born children.

First born children tend to fare much better educationally than younger siblings (BIRTH ORDER AND EDUCATION http://clearinghouse.mwsc.edu/manuscripts/17.asp).The study concluded it is because of the attention and the opportunities that are provided for the first born. This proposal addresses similar hypothesis only it is about how that attention and opportunity impacts the development of self-esteem.

Another study about sibling birth order looked at procrastination and how the order one is born impacts the ability to stay on task.

A comparison of the different characteristics of firstborn, middle born, last born, and only children. Firstborn and middle born children are more driven towards work and competition whereas lastborn children are…