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The Middle Child Is Going Extinct

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Re: The Middle Child Is Going Extinct

#131

Post by hawski »

EADGBE wrote: post #128
icebraining wrote: post #105

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…

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".

> 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.

Re: The Middle Child Is Going Extinct

#132

Post by 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-...

Re: The Middle Child Is Going Extinct

#133

Post by TangoTrotFox »

wool_gather wrote: post #130
TangoTrotFox wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

Well pointed; it's a thing that needs to be considered, but it's a tough position to take and hold. It's an unfortunately short hop from a fact-based "we need to figure out how to create better outcomes" to a really nasty sort of proto-eugenics that says something like "poor people shouldn't be allowed to breed". And proponents of the latter may act like (short-term) allies of the former.

Indeed. And the issues immediately start to touch on topics that are going to hit close to traditional partisan divides, making any sort of public discussion impossible in today's deeply polarized political climate. So I think it's mostly best for people to just think about the issues themselves, rather than actually trying to publicly solve the problem. And in fact, one of the most practical points is one that's quite private. It's just considering that how it really is extremely selfish, in terms of societal impact, for those in a pleasant place in life to indefinitely defer on having children.

Re: The Middle Child Is Going Extinct

#134

Post by souprock »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #121
sarnu wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> I could not bear to raise a single child. That must be really hard. Can you go into this a bit more? I have a single child, and just thinking of trying to raise another one makes me feel like my lungs are deflating. (If this isn't a good venue for this conversation, you can email me - my email is in my profile.)

I have 11 kids.

The first is the worst, because now your life is restricted by a child. The second has a small impact, because now it takes two parents to chase the kids. The third has a small impact, because now they can run in 3 different directions.

After that though, it is no big deal. The only thing you notice is when you have to upgrade to a larger vehicle. For me this is now a van with 5 rows of seats.

Everything gets more efficient as the family gets larger. If your vehicle choice drops from 30 MPG to 15 MPG as you go from 4 to 10 people, the per-person numbers have gone from 120 to 150. It's like that for lots of things: cost of a house, time spent shopping, etc. You get a bulk discount. Things purchased for the first kid can be used for the next. The tax situation improves too. With enough kids, you probably won't have to pay any income tax.

With just one, you have already lost your ability to wander freely and be left in peace. You mostly can't lose that more. At this point, you might as well enjoy the benefits of having a huge family.

Re: The Middle Child Is Going Extinct

#135

Post by HumanDrivenDev »

greglindahl wrote: post #58
HumanDrivenDev wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never advised anyone to do anything. I just described some things I've noticed.

Ah. I'm having a hard time understanding what you mean, then, thanks for attempting to clarify, but I'm still completely confused. Altruistic people are generally altruistic because they want to be altruistic for their own personal pleasure, not because they expect anyone else to be like them. So how does "grossly over estimate other human beings" come into play? If anything, most altruistic people underestimate othe…

My altruism was eroded by life experience. I can't quite bring myself to actively screw others over, but I'm definitely not the 'good person' I once was.

Maybe true altruists are more resilient - but they're also much more susceptible to abuse.

Re: The Middle Child Is Going Extinct

#136

Post by danieltillett »

watwut wrote: post #99
danieltillett wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes they are (on average anyway). Their parents sacrifice greater income to have them and even their education is more expensive in that living in areas with good schools cost more. Of course you are right that provided identical environments smart and average children cost the same, but since smart parents tend to earn more, smart children cost more.

Parents who choose good schools choose them regardless of whether kids are smart. High income parents don't want the children in bad schools even if kids are not smart (whether it means stupid or just normal). Non-smart child of smart parent costs even more - on tutors and such to raise the kid. That is not smart children costs more. That is ambitious/smart parents spend more on children. The cost of smart child here…

You are assuming that smart kids are randomly distributed through the population. High income parents have disproportionally more smart kids than average income parents and disproportionally live in above average cost locations.

The reason for the correlation between child raising cost and intelligence is there is a strong correlation between intelligence and income and between the intelligence of parents and their children. Smart kids tend to have smart parents who tend to have high incomes. Of course there are many exceptions, but we are talking about group averages not individuals.

Re: The Middle Child Is Going Extinct

#137

Post by watwut »

danieltillett wrote: post #136
watwut wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parents who choose good schools choose them regardless of whether kids are smart. High income parents don't want the children in bad schools even if kids are not smart (whether it means stupid or just normal). Non-smart child of smart parent costs even more - on tutors and such to raise the kid. That is not smart children costs more. That is ambitious/smart parents spend more on children. The cost of smart child here…

You are assuming that smart kids are randomly distributed through the population. High income parents have disproportionally more smart kids than average income parents and disproportionally live in above average cost locations. The reason for the correlation between child raising cost and intelligence is there is a strong correlation between intelligence and income and between the intelligence of parents and their c…

It started with "Another major factor contributing is children are very expensive and smart children are much more expensive to raise than the average child."

In that context, my response that "The cost of smart child here is merely function of correlation with parent." is valid.

Re: The Middle Child Is Going Extinct

#138

Post by robocat »

TangoTrotFox wrote: post #103
robocat wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Our lovely residents of Binary Town keep their average birth rate at 2 through enlightened and fair methods.

Then Professor Gemini discovers a cure for cancer, which doubles their lifespan.

Unfortunately very soon they are having an unexpected housing shortage.

How did that happen?

Re: The Middle Child Is Going Extinct

#139

Post by shermanyo »

icebraining wrote: post #105

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…

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.

Re: The Middle Child Is Going Extinct

#140

Post by TangoTrotFox »

robocat wrote: post #138
TangoTrotFox wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Our lovely residents of Binary Town keep their average birth rate at 2 through enlightened and fair methods. Then Professor Gemini discovers a cure for cancer, which doubles their lifespan. Unfortunately very soon they are having an unexpected housing shortage. How did that happen?

Sure if you create an absurd example of suddenly doubling every single person's life expectancy you can start to see some impact from changes in such, but in reality this does not happen. Life expectancy changes extremely slowly, and it also goes in both directions on a worldwide scale further mitigating any effect on population levels.

It's like Big O in a way. Adding some stuff to O(1) doesn't really matter compared to something that's O(n^2) except when start adding some really really unreasonably huge things, though even there n^2 tends to catch up really fast. In either case it's not a practical issue in code or population.

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