
The Middle Child Is Going Extinct - ALee
https://www.thecut.com/2018/07/the-middle-child-is-going-extinct.html
======
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...](https://www.amazon.com/Middle-Moffat-Eleanor-
Estes/dp/0152025294)

------
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".

~~~
hawski
> Non-nuclear families are not "not normal" at all now.

Too much negations. Let me compile this for myself and others:

Nuclear families are not normal at all now.

------
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.

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

Technically, that's an _only child_ and that has articles all its own...

------
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!

~~~
EGreg
Can you describe the dynamics that _did_ occur? Were the kids happier overall
when there were 3 of them than 2? I know it’s tough to reduce everything to
that one factor but still curious.

~~~
Fnoord
> I know it’s tough to reduce everything to that one factor

Yes, that's the whole problem with this discusion. It isn't scientific, lots
of anecdata, and correlation does not imply causation.

------
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](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-...](https://www.npr.org/2007/10/25/15629096/identical-strangers-
explore-nature-vs-nurture)

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

~~~
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.

~~~
moises_silva
Me and my wife decided for a second child (he's 2 months old now). I'm curious
what you feel is hard about raising a single child? before deciding for the
second, we were close to staying with one. If anything we feared it'd be hard
for our first son growing all alone. Is that what you meant? hard for the kid
not for the parents?

~~~
sarnu
Both for the kid and for the parents. For example, with single childs, you
have to arrange play dates. If you have more than one, chances are, they play
together. Another thing: with a single child, this one child has to fulfill
all of the expectations of the parents. So it is quite a burden for the child.
And another thing is, with more than one child you see that your education has
a limited effect on the character of a child. Assuming that you treat your
kids in a similar way, you can notice a big variety in character between them.

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

------
bhouston
Population shrinkage is not healthy for a society.

~~~
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.

~~~
kypro
But I thought we need immigrants to do the low paid jobs we don't want to do,
not the hard well paid ones? /s

~~~
ido
it can indeed be both (no sarcasm intended - the menial jobs nobody else wants
and the high-skill ones not enough people are capable of doing).

------
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.

~~~
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.

~~~
smt88
Children per couple goes down as quality of life goes up. All developed
countries see birthrates decrease. No one is actively discouraging smart
people from reproducing -- they're just better off and don't need children as
a safety net for retirement, and they can access good birth control.

The idea that smart people are only produced by other smart people is
nonsense. Genes regress to the mean, so most smart people won't have mostly
smart children. And intelligence is significantly affected by nurture, not
just nature.

And beyond all that, smart people aren't the end-all, be-all of humanity. They
make useful things, but are of course capable of great evil (or mental illness
or any other issue that limits their contribution to society).

~~~
danieltillett
Yes nobody is activily discouraging smart people directly from having children
(this is why it natural and not artificial selection), but it is still
selection.

Where did I say smart people having children is the only way to create smart
people or that intelligence is only affected by genes? Please read what I
actually wrote, not what you think I wrote.

Smart people are the people that have the ability to solve the hard problems
we face. We have a huge number of very hard problems in the world and not
enough smart people to solve them all. We need more smart people.

~~~
smt88
You didn't say it was the only way. You said:

> _" The best way we know to create more smart people is to encourage smart
> people to have more children"_

...which is also unsupported by current intelligence research and still
relevant to my counterargument.

~~~
danieltillett
Actually we know that intelligence is mostly genetic (especially at the high
end), but even if it isn’t, the family environment provided by (most)
intelligent parents is very conducive to raising intelligent children.

It doesn’t matter the means (environment or genetic) as both will contribute
to smart parents raising smart children (provided they have children).

~~~
smt88
Socioeconomic status is far, far more important than genes[1]. If you want
more smart people, give people more money.

1\. [https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/under-the-
influence/...](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/under-the-
influence/201204/intelligence-is-not-just-genetic)

~~~
danieltillett
That is not what the article says, nor what the science on this topic says
either [0]. Read the section on Heritability and socioeconomic status.

0\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ)

