A recent blog entry that I read discussing hand-me-downs made me wonder about what it must be like to a younger sibling who receives the bulk of their clothes and/or toys as hand-me-downs, recycled from the older siblings.
As the blog points out, just because a child is the oldest doesn't necessarily mean that they won't get clothing or toys passed down to them from older children (cousins and neighbors were mentioned as being good potential sources), but in a family dedicated to saving and passing on lessons of the importance of recycling and reusing, it seems very likely that the youngest children will get far fewer "new" things.
The larger the family, the more this would seem to be an issue.
Do younger children tend to get frustrated by the idea that the majority of their belongings once belonged to an older sibling? If so, what can we, as parents, do to mitigate this potential source of frustration and/or resentment?