As a neglected middle child (like you didn't know) I can confirm this.

Within this familiar progression of family life, new research has confirmed what some parents recognize and others quietly fear: Their firstborn children get more of their time than others in the family -- on average, 3,000 extra "quality" hours from ages 4 to 13, when sisters and brothers are in the picture.

That's 25 extra minutes a day with mothers on average and 20 extra minutes a day with fathers across a nine-year span of childhood, according to a study by economist Joseph Price of Brigham Young University.

But if you subtract the 3000 hours from the 10,000 hours it takes to be a master of anything (as earlier discussed on other blog), that would imply that second and later children are almost 50% closer to mastery of everything. Or something about that.

Nobody will notice anyway...