The burden is heavy, let me tell you. I have been carrying the world on my shoulders for more than half a century. No rest. No respite. But you won't hear me complain.

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It's just what we do, we first born children.

Our birth certificates prove it. Eldest children are the responsible ones. The natural-born leaders. The bossy perfectionists preventing civilisation from collapsing into chaos.

It's our duty, you see. Younger siblings have their carefree lives; making things up as they go, forgetting where they put the car keys and indulging in artisanal pottery lessons. But not us. We firstborns have obligations.

When I drop family at the airport six hours before their flight I don't apologise. I shrug and tick off another box on my carefully colour-coded itinerary. When I am accused of being a compulsive obsessive control freak, I smile politely and return to the hour-long task of ensuring the dishwasher is geometrically stacked.

It's not that I need to control everything. Everything just runs more smoothly when I do. It's a heavy cross to bear, I'm telling you. But it's what we eldest were destined to do.

I'd planned this column to justify to exasperated friends why I'm constantly pointing out how their lawns require a few extra millimetres of trimming. Or how they should hang bed sheets on the clothesline (folded in half lengthwise, draped over two parallel lines to ensure airflow, pegs on the far edges to prevent unsightly creases).

The scientific literature would surely prove birth order influences personality. But to my dismay, a landmark study by psychologists of more than 20,000 people concluded that personality traits like conscientiousness and emotional stability have little impact on those born first, last or somewhere in that messy middle.

This is an absolute catastrophe. Not to mention highly questionable. If science says being born first didn't make me a bossy overachiever, the alternative is truly upsetting.

That twitch in my face when someone cuts a sandwich for me unevenly? It's not because I was first out of the womb.

My micromanaging manner? Nothing to do with being the family pioneer.

They're personal defects.

Fortunately, science hasn't stripped firstborns of all bragging rights. On average we score slightly higher on IQ tests and verbal abilities. Researchers........

© The Examiner