Second born children tend to be more rebellious than their older sibling, a new study has claimed.

The research, which focused on families from Denmark and Florida, found that there is some truth to the idea of the wayward middle child.

In families with two or more children, the second child is 20-40% more likely than the first born to get in trouble at school or even get arrested.

It's thought this could be down to the middle child getting less attention than the eldest child, who has their parents to themselves for at least a while.

The study reads: "Despite large differences in environments across the two areas, we found remarkably consistent results: in families with two or more children, second-born boys are on the order of 20 to 40 percent more likely to be disciplined in school and enter the criminal justice system compared to first-born boys even when we compare siblings."

We do find that parental time investment measured by time out of the labor force is higher for first-borns at ages 2-4, suggesting that the arrival of a second-born child extends early-childhood parental investments for first-borns."