Is there a way to set row position when creating a new data field?

I have roughly 30 feature classes that have stored dates as strings in multiple columns of data (e.g. "4/12/11")
I'm going to begin converting the strings to date data types, but I have another script that relies on the row positions the current data is in.

For example, a certain data field might be in position row[3] or row[10]
My fear is when I create a new field and copy over the old data to the new field, that it will lose it's row position.
Is there a way to set the row position when we call on arcpy.AddField_management()?

Or is this nothing to be concerned about?
I don't know because I haven't tried it yet, but I figure I'd ask the community first.