family ties

Many psychologists believe birth order have profound effects on one's personality. It is part of the age-old question of nature vs. nurture. Being one of three, I sometimes understand how parents raise children differently based on birth order and gender. While I had heard about the three men from a mutual friend, I disagree with his assessment of the Calegaro brothers after spending individual time with them.

The older brother, who was supposed to be groomed to take over the family business, was a loner of sorts. Hair in a ponytail, traveling the city center via bicycle, he was rumored to be a Peter Pan. However, he seemed to me to be very much like the burners I have met lately, even having been many years before during one of the original Burning Man before it became so commercialized. He has tried many different types of drugs including growing his own marijuana in the countryside.

He did not want to be a part of the family business, much preferring the digital software world where he could work alone and in a more flexible schedule. In his rebellion, the responsibility then fell to the second-born, who had to forgo university to go straight into the business. My understanding of the Italian elite comprise of a combination of old money and/or education. While the family business has been doing well since 1921, it is considered more new money, and his lack of university seems to be a deterrent in being part of the elite social circles of Italy although the family is well-known in their home town.

For a brief period of time, the youngest was able to explore his passions of living abroad, chasing risks and writing as his creative outlet (for whom the bell tolls). Yet he was called back to the family business. Having published a few books, he also works as a freelance editor and has a side business training dogs. 

In a case for nature, the oldest and youngest brothers have more of their mother's disposition while the middle child is more like their father. The parents, while traveling and dining together, have chosen to live apart to maintain their relationship with the extroverted and social father living in the city center and the introverted mother tending to her countryside garden in a big house on a hill away from the hubbub of city life.

While the oldest is known as the 'failure' in the family, he is the one to break free to follow his authentic self. While our mutual friend felt sorry for the middle child who could not go to university which the friend claims is what is holding the middle brother from being part of the social elite, I think the friend is just projecting his need to be successful as defined by money and the social ladder. In their own ways, each brother is trapped in either the family obligation and/or the stigma of not aligning with the family expectation, when nature and nurture are at odds and cause conflicts in one's self, finding their own individual escape in drugs, running or writing.