“Like Seriously?”: 65 Entitled Sibling Moments That Range From Mildly To Seriously Infuriating (New Pics)

Entitled siblings come in all shapes and sizes, and this list makes that pretty clear. Age, birth order, or gender don’t really decide who turns out entitled and who doesn’t.

You’ll find a story about the younger brother who broke his older sibling’s gaming controller and didn’t even apologize. Also, an older sister who leaves her mess lying around, knowing someone else will eventually clean it up. Different ages, different positions in the family, but the same underlying assumption that it’s someone else’s problem.

For decades, we’ve leaned on birth order to explain sibling behavior — the responsible oldest child, the overlooked middle, and the free-wheeling baby.

These stereotypes can and do end up shaping personalities, simply because some families start to believe in them and treat children accordingly. But most families are far more complicated than a one-size-fits-all theory.

The idea that birth order shapes a child’s personality has been around for a long time. You can see it in how societies have treated firstborns for centuries. In many cultures, the first child marked a shift in family status, with hierarchy and inheritance expectations attached.

For example, ceremonies like the ‘pidyon haben’ in Judaism, where a firstborn son is “redeemed,” or traditions in parts of Micronesia that celebrate first-time mothers.

For generations, being born first literally meant getting more power, more land, and more responsibility. You can see this most clearly in monarchies like the British royal family, where the whole system was built around producing an heir and a “spare.”

In the early 20th century, Austrian psychologist Alfred Adler theorized that birth order influenced not just social status, but a kid’s development and personality. “The position in the family leaves an indelible stamp upon the individual’s lifestyle,” Adler wrote in 1931.

Since then, people have been trying to prove or disprove his theory.

Different studies have linked birth order to academic and career success, risk-taking, and even whether you’re more likely to play sports or become an artist.

You’ll often hear that firstborns are more likely to end up in leadership roles, that middle children are better at navigating group dynamics, or that younger siblings are more rebellious.

Some of these patterns do show up. But not because of the order a child was born in, rather because of how they’re treated because of it.

Researchers have found that firstborns sometimes score slightly higher, on average, in measures of intelligence. But the explanation for that is simple: most of them get more one-on-one attention early on in their childhood.

And by the time the younger siblings come along, parents are more stretched and a bit more relaxed. They get less intense because they feel they have already raised one baby, so the next should be easier to manage. That changes the environment, but not necessarily the child’s core personality.

And experts themselves stress that the difference in IQ levels is quite modest and heavily shaped by environmental factors.

Growing up, not everyone in the same family is treated the same. One child might get stricter rules, another more freedom. One might be expected to help out and be responsible, while another is allowed to mess up or be “the baby.”

For example, the eldest, who had a curfew at the age of 16, watches their younger sibling reach home at midnight with barely a question. Or the child who had to share everything growing up now sees a younger sibling with their own room and their own gadgets.

Birth order, in a way, influences what you get used to, like what’s expected of you, and what you’re allowed to expect from others.

These differences aren’t always intentional, but they add up as children grow older.

For example, the older sibling who used to split pocket money or share their toys might later be expected to help with rent or sort out family bills.

At the same time, the younger sibling who was always excused from chores might grow up still relying on others to fix things, like asking for financial help or expecting someone else to handle complicated paperwork.

To understand these entitled siblings, we need to understand where this entitlement comes from.

At the center of it is what psychologists call “parental differential treatment” (PDT). It’s when parents subconsciously treat children differently within the same household.

A study found that when kids feel like their parents favor one sibling or treat them unfairly, it usually increases hostility between them.

It also leads to more conflict, resentment, and long-term imbalance in siblings’ relationships.

Research shows that parental favoritism is surprisingly common. And that most parents, even unintentionally, show some level of preference depending on things like a child’s temperament, behavior, birth order, or even how easy they are to parent.

But this feeling can be quite subjective.

“It is the experience that people have that a parent prefers another child to them. This could be by devoting more time, attention, praise, or affection. Possibly asserting less control, so that they may enjoy fewer restrictions, be subject to less discipline or even punishment,” says Laurie Kramer, a professor of applied psychology at Northeastern University in the US.

“This may not be the same observation that the other sibling encounters and may be different again for what the parent believes they have engaged in,” she adds.

This gap in perception matters. Because it’s not just the behavior itself, but how it’s experienced and interpreted by the child that decides its long-term influence.

Basically, what feels like favoritism to one sibling may not even register to the other.

So, while one sibling might be sharing stories online of their entitled brother or sister, the other sibling might not even realize they’re being seen that way. In many cases, they’re simply operating within the role they’ve always known.