Middle child day memes6/22/2023 ![]() Three kids - which a generation ago was considered a slightly smaller brood than ideal - now seems aspirational, even decadent. The common argument for two kids is a reasonable one: You have an oldest, a youngest, and a sibling for both. As a fairly recent new parent (of one, so far), I know that, observationally speaking, two kids has become the default norm. While dramatic, this shift won’t be surprising if you haunt the playgrounds of New York. Middle children, the most populous birth-order demographic throughout most of human history, will soon be the tiniest. This holds true not just in space-and-time-and-money-crunched New York, but all across the country: Families with two or fewer kids have become the norm for every demographic group. Nearly two-thirds of women with children now have two or one - i.e., an oldest, a youngest, but no middle. Today, those numbers have essentially reversed. Twenty-five percent had three kids 24 percent had two and 11 percent had one. Back then, 40 percent of mothers between 40 and 44 had four or more children. ![]() According to a study by the Pew Research Center in 1976, “the average mother at the end of her childbearing years had given birth to more than three children.” Read that again: In the ’70s, four kids (or more) was the most common family unit. As the ideal number of children per family has shrunk to two - that’s not me speaking, it’s demographics - the middle child, in a very real sense, is disappearing. Because, like the mountain gorilla and the hawksbill turtle, the American Middle Child is now an endangered species. So here’s a suggestion as to how you can spend the next National Middle Child Day: contemplating the extinction of the middle child. Excluded, forgotten, shoved into the role of de facto peacemaker among squabbling kinfolk, stripped rudely at an early age of the privileged status as the youngest and taught instead to accept benign indifference from siblings, parents, and the world. No, the middle child is just that - the middle. Of course, to middle children, this exact brand of ambient neglect is what defines being a middle: Not the lionized firstborn, adored and groomed to succeed, and not the coddled lastborn, the baby of the family, who benefits from inexhaustible attention and experienced parents. I am a middle child, and until very recently, I had no idea. Or, more likely, you’re doing none of these things, because you had no idea that August 12 is National Middle Child Day. (It’s a real product, created for “middle sisters everywhere.”) ![]() You’re no doubt planning to attend your local Middle Child Day parade, or take in a lecture on Famous Middle Children Throughout History (Abraham Lincoln, Anne Hathaway, Jan Brady), or perhaps treat your own middle child (or middle children - after all, every child born after the first and before the last is technically a middle) to a special Middle Child’s dinner, then come home and cut your Happy Middle Child Day cake into several perfectly equal pieces, then crack open a bottle of Middle Sister wine to celebrate. I don’t need to ask you what you’re doing on August 12, 2018. ![]()
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