I remember when my younger brother was born, and this sensation of going from this scaredy hypochondriac 6 year old (who worried about poisonous spiders, house fires, earthquakes, etc), to a mindset of “Okay, but what will I DO if there is a fire. How will I get me and little brother out the window?”. There was this really sharp sensation of “Oh, I’m responsible now.” and an associated values system shift, which… I suspect is similar to what a lot of people are talking about here?
Pretty much all of my adult life, my baseline levels of “protection towards children” are pretty damn high… to the point where I stand up and move to a more protective position when I see children near ledges, (even random strangers kids).
Of course… I don’t yet have children of my own, so is hard to compare to what other people are describing with respect to having kids, but based on my own personal experience so far… yeah, I’d say younger siblings definitely CAN have a similar trigger effect.
I remember when my younger brother was born, and this sensation of going from this scaredy hypochondriac 6 year old (who worried about poisonous spiders, house fires, earthquakes, etc), to a mindset of “Okay, but what will I DO if there is a fire. How will I get me and little brother out the window?”. There was this really sharp sensation of “Oh, I’m responsible now.” and an associated values system shift, which… I suspect is similar to what a lot of people are talking about here?
Pretty much all of my adult life, my baseline levels of “protection towards children” are pretty damn high… to the point where I stand up and move to a more protective position when I see children near ledges, (even random strangers kids).
Of course… I don’t yet have children of my own, so is hard to compare to what other people are describing with respect to having kids, but based on my own personal experience so far… yeah, I’d say younger siblings definitely CAN have a similar trigger effect.