Oh, the gender, yes. Being the oldest daughter (two years younger than my older brother, but seven and eight years older than my sister and younger brother), I got a lot of expectation dumped on me. First, my grandmother, who looked after us while my dad was being treated out of state for cancer, and then my mother, who was, well, a widow with four kids. My older brother was, and is, charming and charismatic and nice to pretty much everyone but me, but responsibility was pretty much not a thing in his world until his mid-20's and his second attempt at college. I got told a LOT that I was responsible for stuff basically because I was responsible, something I've resented since even then, but it only occurred to me very recently to wonder: if I had been the charming, charismatic teenager/young adult going out drinking every weekend, flunking out of school, holding parties while mom and the two younger kids were away (situations in which my mother explicitly told me that the condition of the house when she arrived home was my responsibility), basically being Older Brother with a bra, if I'd have been let off the hook as easily. As it was, I babysat (including coming home from college on spring breaks and long weekends to stay with one younger kid while mom took the older one to soccer tournaments), did chores, cleaned the damn kitchen floor of the watermelon dropped during one of his parties...

Ahem. There may be some current bitterness happening.

Point being: I wonder if a second child who was an oldest son would have been held to the same expectations I was. I wonder a lot.