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The Middle Child Is Going Extinct

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Re: The Middle Child Is Going Extinct

#101

Post by Fnoord »

EGreg wrote: post #91
greglindahl wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

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.

> 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.

Re: The Middle Child Is Going Extinct

#102

Post by Fnoord »

HumanDrivenDev wrote: post #12
pesfandiar wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So much this. Altruistic, considerate people who hem and haw over how their decisions effect others grossly over estimate other human beings. Take a walk along the side of a high speed road and look at all the garbage thrown there. People don't give a shit.

When I was in California some good 12 years ago littering was $1000 fine as the signs said. And yes, I saw cops on the road. And no, I saw no garbage on the sides.

Re: The Middle Child Is Going Extinct

#103

Post by TangoTrotFox »

robocat wrote: post #48
learc83 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Strangely enough 2 is not the replacement rate. One birth per death is the replacement rate. The world population can be increased by everyone having children earlier, or dieing later. Puzzle: Every couple in Binary Town has twins (boy and girl) at age 32. Then half the population stops reproducing, but the other half change to reproducing at age 16. What happens to the population?

This is the wrong way of looking at things. 2 is always the replacement rate except in the case of an immortal population. You're not considering that you reach an equilibrium between deaths and births after one generational cycle. Imagine for simplicity that everybody gives birth at 1 and dies at 4. Let's look at when people have two children, starting with a genesis population of 10.

----------------

Year 1:

age 1 = 10

births = 10

deaths = 0

----------------

Year 2:

age 1 = 10

age 2 = 10

births = 10

deaths = 0

----------------

Year 3:

age 1 = 10

age 2 = 10

age 3 = 10

births = 10

deaths = 0

----------------

Year 4:

age 1 = 10

age 2 = 10

age 3 = 10

age 4 = 10

births = 10

deaths = 10

----------------

Year 5:

age 1 = 10

age 2 = 10

age 3 = 10

age 4 = 10

births = 10

deaths = 10

----------------

Etc. The only way to see a longterm increase in population is with a birth rate > 2, and similarly the only way to see a longterm decline is a birth rate of However, this also makes the assumption that everybody makes it to the age of fertility and that everybody is fertile. Both assumptions are incorrect so, in reality, the equilibrium point for population stability is even greater than 2. In reality we would expect to see a decline in population if each couple had exactly two children.

Re: The Middle Child Is Going Extinct

#104

Post by Fnoord »

danieltillett wrote: post #19
polarix wrote: post #3

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 no…

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 hav…

How about we educate those who are not smart to become smarter?

Re: The Middle Child Is Going Extinct

#105

Post by 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.

Re: The Middle Child Is Going Extinct

#106

Post by Fnoord »

greglindahl wrote: post #50
kaycebasques wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, got it. Yes, I was just countering the anecdotes against this idea with my own anecdote for it. Thanks for clearing up the confusion.

Excellent. Thanks. I totally agree that I have a few friends who are like you: they're very concerned about the planet and that affects their childbearing plans. Me, that affects what I eat, but it didn't change my childbearing plans.

Having a child is the #1 thing one can do which is bad for the environment (impact), worse than driving a car, using airplane, or becoming a vegetarian.

However by dietary choice you can reduce the damage, and you can also reduce the damage by educating your child with good manners concerning the environment.

Re: The Middle Child Is Going Extinct

#107

Post by Fnoord »

kaycebasques wrote: post #22
notadoc wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don’t see these two ideas as at odds with each other. Maybe people aren’t explicitly calculating that they should reduce the population, but deciding not to have children because of lack of resources seems like a subconscious vote to reduce the population, in my view.

There's another option besides "not having children": "having less children."

Re: The Middle Child Is Going Extinct

#108

Post by Fnoord »

HaoZeke wrote: post #84
bhouston wrote: post #78

Population shrinkage is not healthy for a society.

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.

Hong Kong's density is an excellent example of how it could look. For America though, there's enough room but for certain metropoles throughout the world as well as The Netherlands... no, they're pretty much full.

Re: The Middle Child Is Going Extinct

#109

Post by derefr »

dqpb wrote: post #76

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

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.

Re: The Middle Child Is Going Extinct

#110

Post by TangoTrotFox »

squarefoot wrote: post #46
wool_gather wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a bit of a problem inasmuch as core values/ideas are often (not always, but often) transmitted by family connections. So paradoxically, concern for the planet leading you to not have children could reduce the relative number of people who share your concern. Then again, there are other memes that lead not just to lack of reproduction, but directly to the death of the memeholder, so maybe it's not such a big dea…

Interesting point. Also culture could play a role here; it is possible that concerns about overpopulation are primarily shared among those people who are less responsible for it (living in "western" industrialized countries), so that by having less children they rather reduce the number of people sensitive to the problem than limiting overpopulation in significant figures.

It's not just concern on this one issue. In general fertility tends to be strongly correlated with low education, low income, and high religiosity. This is true both inter and intra nationally. Think about what this means. Currently each day about 353,000 babies are born. As people who are educated, wealthy, and secular choose to not reproduce to the point of replacement - it is in a way condemning the demographics of those 353,000 children.

I tend to be aligned with you in the view that Earth having fewer people would is not a problem, but at the same time demographic collapse is very much a real issue. As the only people considering these things would likely be the people that ideally should be pumping out babies left and right if we want to create a better planet not only for humanity but even for the planet itself.

And as an aside this is of course not to say that no great things will come of those 353,000 born into less than desirable situations. But on average people's outcomes tend to be very strongly linked to those of their parents.

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