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Sex Differences in Birth Order of Alcoholics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2018

Howard T. Blane ,
Herbert Barry III  and
Herbert Barry Jr.
Howard T. Blane
Affiliation:
University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213
Herbert Barry III
Affiliation:
University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Herbert Barry Jr.
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts 02114
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Extract

Studies of birth order of male alcoholics, reviewed by Chen and Cobb (1960), Sampson (1965), and Barry, Barry, and Blane (1969), generally showed more last-born than first-born cases. This difference was found in samples of more than 500 cases hospitalized in Denmark (Martensen-Larsen, 1957); Austria (Navratil, 1959); Canada (de Lint, 1964b), and Norway (Steén, 1966). Most samples in the United States have shown the same trend but with smaller numbers of cases, so that the difference was short of statistical significance. Ambiguous results have been obtained from the few studies of birth order of female alcoholics, generally based on small samples. The present paper reports on the birth-order distributions of a relatively large sample of male and female out-patient alcoholics in the United States.

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal of Psychiatry , Volume 119 , Issue 553 , December 1971 , pp. 657 - 661
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1971 

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