The Middle Child Is Going Extinct

[alex_young]

Exceptionally poor attempt to lie with statistics. Three or more is not an avg of 4 or more, and comparing women in their 40s to all mothers isn't equivalent.

There may be something to this, but the math is so intentionally misleading as to murder the credibility of the author.

[JohnnyConatus]

Going extinct? Typical middle-child attention getting stunt.

[1123581321]

I’m an oldest child, but my mother was a middle child and growing up loved Jane the Middle Moffat by Eleanor Estes (and all the other Moffat books.) I still think it is a peculiarly good insight into the mind, and the value, of a child with older and younger siblings in a poor family.

https://www.amazon.com/Middle-Moffat-Eleanor-Estes/dp/015202...

[NDizzle]

Ha, funny they ask about August 12th. I'll be running a four team friendly tournament for my middle daughter's fast pitch softball team.

Three kids here. It's tough, sure. Not for everyone? You can say that too. Rewarding? The most rewarding thing I've yet to experience.

As others mentioned, I didn't really plan all these kids out. Life happens, I guess.

[icebraining]

It's interesting that the article doesn't have a comment to make about other familial arrangements brought about by shorter marriages and relationships.

For example, I'm older than my brothers, yet the oldest of them is not a middle child, because he's not a brother of my other brothers.

When families start spreading like this, a kid can be both a middle-child and a firstborn simultaneously - it becomes relative. And the attention that their position supposedly gives them becomes harder to measure.

[EADGBE]

Agreed, especially as normal as it is now.

I've had conversations with our daughter about friends and their families. Nuclear families are uncommon now. It's just what it is. And seeing enough unhealthy marriages; it's probably a lot better that way than the old adage to "stay together for the kids".

[shermanyo]

I lived as both the youngest (older brother and sister from my mother) for the first half of my childhood, and then the oldest (younger brother and stepsister from my father) for the latter half. I never once lived with both older and younger siblings, they were essentially different families.

[dqpb]

Technically, isn't it the youngest child going extinct and the middle child left to take on the role of the youngest?

[wccrawford]

Whenever a couple has any kids at all, there is always a youngest child and an oldest child. Sometimes, they are the same child.

There is not always a "middle child" because that requires at least 2 other children to exist.

You're trying to say that the "third child" is going extinct, which matches what the article is saying in a different way.

[derefr]

Right. A lot clearer if we use absolute cardinals here: the second child is now the youngest, whereas before they were the middle child.

There are both cultural/traditional and [epi]genetic implications of birth order, so this might imply a better or worse suitedness of the role of youngest-child given differing birth orders of the title-holder.

[dazzer]

Well no... the middle child only comes into existence upon the introduction of the younger child.

[sxv]

can't tell if trolling or ingenious..

[cncrnd]

What a shame, back in the day people used to have odd numbers of children.

[greglindahl]

Amusingly, both my mom and her sister had 3 children because their parents had 2. They were annoyed because one of them was "daddy's child" and one was "mommy's child" and they figured that having 3 each would prevent that. Numerology matters.

They both did end up having 3 kids, and I can report that I think the problem they thought they were preventing didn't happen. Win!

[craftyguy]

Interestingly enough, both of my parents came from families with even numbers of children, and it was a lot.

BTW, 1 is also odd, so I'm not sure if you're just trying to say "used to have 3 children" or literally an odd number (1, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 23, etc)

[AltVanilla]

As nice of a theory it is, birth order has not been shown to affect personality at all.

> "Contemporary empirical research shows that birth order does not influence the Big Five personality traits."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birth_order

The fact that such a big environmental factor doesn't effect personality at all, to me suggests that personality is mostly genetic. Anecdotally, It sure seems like kids have very distinct personalities from a very start.

Another anecdote (that personality is more nature rather than nurture), is the stories of identical twins adopted to different families. When reunited as adults, they seem to have the same personality. One such story:

> "It's not just our taste in music or books; it goes beyond that. In her, I see the same basic personality. And yet, eventually we had to realize that we're different people with different life histories."

https://www.npr.org/2007/10/25/15629096/identical-strangers-...

[Illniyar]

You go raise three children. I can barely handle two.

[drfuchs]

“When you get to three kids, parents have to switch from one-on-one to zone defense.”

[sarnu]

The dynamic totally changes with three kids. I have three kids, and when one of them is not at home (doesn't matter which one) the atmosphere changes completely, hard to describe how. What I want to say: Having three is different from having two, but not necessarily harder. They have more things to handle between themselves. I could not bear to raise a single child. That must be really hard.

[RhysU]

I knew the older and younger ones always had it in for us!

[bhouston]

Population shrinkage is not healthy for a society.

[xboxnolifes]

Eating chocolate is bad for dogs.

[curun1r]

Breeding under the replacement rate does not imply population shrinkage. It's a better strategy for a rich nation state to have lower birth rates and poach the best and brightest from other countries. That increases the wealth of native-born citizens as well as improving the lives of those who immigrate whereas overbreeding disperses accumulated inherited wealth.

[HaoZeke]

Right because we should all emulate over populated India and China.

Keeping the population down allows for a better standard of living for those who are alive already, and allows for sustainable growth.

A population explosion is just not possible to deal with. Imagine more people trying to get into the top schools, thereby killing your chances.

[paulcole]

It might be the human race’s best longterm chance to survive the damage we’ve done to the environment.

[fjsolwmv]

In our automation age, it is if you are labor seller and not capital owner.

[throwawaymath]

Why?

[polarix]

I see the number of children a couple has as a vote on how many people should exist on earth. If you have 0 or 1 child as a couple, you are voting that there should be fewer people. If you have 2 children, you're voting that there should be about the same number of people. If you have more than 2 children as a couple, you're voting that there should be more people on earth.

With that context, I can clearly see why nobody in a city would want to have more than 2 children.

[pesfandiar]

You're grossly overestimating how much an average person cares about anything outside of their family. The decision to have one or more children depends on many other factors (parents' character, their economic status, social safety, ...) before it even gets to any idealistic activism.

[greglindahl]

As someone with 0 children, I disagree with you. I'm voting that I personally don't want to raise children, and think that people who don't want to have children should not have them. My brother and sister like raising children, and have 3 each. Doesn't that affinity play a large role in people's choices?

[codingdave]

Are you under the impression that all families exactly hit their target number of children? Some people cannot have any children, but desperately want them. Some have one or two, but want more. Some people... well, not everything is planned. I know a woman who wanted one more child, and had triplets. And that isn't even getting into people who foster and adopt children.

In short, while I can see the logic in your stance... it has little bearing on the reality of creating a family.

[learc83]

Beyond that fact that the Earth's future population isn't the number one factor in the decision for most couples, 2 children is still below the replacement rate.

[crooked-v]

You're completely overlooking people who would want more children but don't feel they could afford them.

[Robotbeat]

Disagree. There’s so many people who cannot have biological children (for many reasons), so practically speaking a large percentage of those who can should have at least 3 or the population will decline.

[danieltillett]

No it is natural selection in action. Those that have children are of the future, those that don't are of the past.

There is a huge shortage of smart people on the planet to solve the many problems that exist. The best way we know to create more smart people is to encourage smart people to have more children. Unfortunately we seem especially good as a society at identifying smart people and discouraging them from having children.

[Apocryphon]

You could also adopt one or more children. How does that affect this calculus?

[notadoc]

Interesting way to look at it, I have never met anyone with that particular way of thinking about children.

Most people I know made decisions about having children in terms of resources. Mainly, about available time and/or money.

[kaycebasques]

A lot of responses disagreeing with this idea. I’ll lend some balance and mention that I’ve had the exact same reasoning in my own plans for the future. I won’t pretend to argue that I’m normal or abnormal, though. Haven’t done any research on the topic.

[dsnuh]

How many votes have you cast?