Being the oldest sibling of the children in your family may seem like the best birth-order placement a person could ask for upon first glance, but if you’re the oldest, you know that this just isn't the case. There are many hardships that first-born children in families face throughout their lives. If you’re the eldest sibling in your family, chances are you can relate to these ten major struggles:

1. You're the experimental subject for all things parenting.

This means that you are essentially are their dummy to learn what works and what doesn't work when it comes to raising a child. You are the one subjected to all the parenting fails that your parents then learn from and get the hang of by the time your younger siblings come along. Who doesn’t love being the experimental guinea pig, right?

2. Parents have a tendency to baby the younger siblings in families.

This, of course, means that the oldest siblings often are stuck with a lot more responsibility and are held to a higher standard. This doesn’t seem fair, does it? You bet! Does that prevent it from happening over and over again in families across the world? Of course not...

3. You get automatically dubbed the built-in babysitter.

Being the oldest truly is the worst because in your parent’s eyes, you’re the ideal candidate for a built-in babysitter. And the best bonus they could ask for, — because they put a roof over your head and food in your mouth, they see absolutely no genuine need to pay you for your time and services!

4. You don’t have any older brothers or sisters to ask for wise life advice.

As you age and go through the awkward stages of middle school and then the scary yet fascinating world of high school, you have no older siblings to ask for advice who have personally lived through these unfamiliar stages. When it comes to college and adulthood, you have to trek through these nerve-wracking foreign places by yourself without a tour guide to tell you what to do and not to do. Sorry kid... you’re all on your own.

5. When you’re the oldest, the blame for everything is somehow always traced back to you.

If your little 5-year-old brother clogs the toilet because he stupidly dumped three whole rolls of Ultra Strong Charmin in it and then repeatedly placed his sticky fingers on the flush lever and pushed, it’s clearly entirely your fault. If your 11-year-old sister puts a metal spoon in the microwave and practically blows up your kitchen while she’s heating up leftover mac n’ cheese, you’re the practical one to blame obviously. Seems fair in your parents' minds, at least.

6. You’re always supposed to be the responsible one.

Being the oldest makes you the unofficial leader of the pack and you’re always supposed to know what the right thing to do is and have no hesitation in doing it. Mistakes are not things you are supposed to just make, even by accident. So yes, you should never have even thought about missing your curfew last Wednesday night so that you could play one more round of cards with your friends. Of course, by the time your siblings grow to be your age, your parents could hardly care less if they sneak out of the house in the middle of the night to go smoke pot with a bunch of hippies and come back the next morning covered in an assortment of tattoos of various Pokemon characters.

7. Your younger siblings follow you around like lonely puppies.

The eldest children often seem to be placed on a pedestal by their younger siblings at some point in time. Your younger siblings want to do anything and everything just like you do. They want to dress like you, they want to play with your toys, and they want to take part in everything you take part in. To an extent, it’s sort of nice to be idolized a bit. However, it starts to get excruciatingly irritating very quickly to have a shadow following you around everywhere and mimicking your every move.

8. Your punishments are more harsh.

Parents tend to get less strict and more lazy as their children pass through on the family conveyor belt. So while you might have come home that one time four minutes after curfew because you feel asleep while watching the Christmas movie “Elf” at your best friend’s house and got grounded for a week, your youngest brother may only get a “good, hard talking-to” for coming home from a party at two in the morning and passing out on the front steps with “I Love Bananas” written on his forehead in Sharpie marker. As your parents raise child after child, their sense of punishable behavior seems to gradually fade. Totally makes logical sense…

9. You're on your own when it comes to important milestones in growing up.

Your parents don’t know when deadlines are and how to tackle many important milestones in your life, so you’re pretty much on your own. When you’re the eldest of your siblings, your parents haven’t had a child of theirs get a driver’s license, take the SAT/ACT test, apply to college and finish college applications, graduate high school, do the FAFSA to apply for financial aid, or experience all of the decisions that go along with college life yet. In other words, your parents are basically as inexperienced and clueless about all of this transitioning-from-adolescence-to adulthood crap as you are. Awesome... better schedule a meeting with your high school guidance counselor ASAP or buy a book about college planning for dummies.

10. You are the first one to leave the comforts of home.

When you’re the eldest of children in your family, you are most likely to be the first one to graduate high school and enter the world of adulthood all by yourself. Whether you go directly into a career or decide to attend college, you are the first one of your siblings to leave the comforting nest you’ve called home for so long. It sucks to know that your siblings still get to live in the wonderful heating and air conditioning provided by your parents free of cost, not to mention the free laundry!

Overall, it’s clear to see that the position of being first-born child in a family is certainly not without it’s downsides. That being said, there are possibly a few benefits that can along with being the oldest sibling in your family, too. A 2007 Norwegian research study published in the journal called Science found that the older siblings in families are more likely to have higher IQs. Another benefit, according to New York University professor and psychologist, Dr. Ben Dattner, is that first-born children are significantly more likely to be self-sufficient and successful in leadership roles in their lives. Additionally, research results from a study conducted in 2015 and published in the Journal of Research in Personality exhibit that the eldest sibling tends to be more conscientious, less neurotic, and more agreeable in personality than other siblings. Finally, the oldest sibling in a family is more likely to be responsible, while the younger sibling(s) in a family are more likely to be rebellious, two Belgian psychologists divulged in a research paper printed in the 2003 journal Personality and Individual Differences. So I guess it might not be that bad to be the eldest sibling after all — well, at least in some ways...