[aylmao]

Adding two notes onto this hypothesis:

- I can only assume that if a kid doesn't have an older sibling "to keep an eye on them" the parents take this role, and parents tend to be more risk-adverse and responsible caretakers than siblings.

- I've never lived in the American suburbs, but they don't seem very dense. I know that, growing up in Mexico, the kid density was great. Some of it probably has to do with the fact everyone had siblings. Matching ages with nearby neighbors is more likely when there's more kids too. We were outside all the time, older siblings introduced younger ones to the crowd. Friendships were made, broken and fixed. Adventures were had. More than once we got into situations that I knew my mom wouldn't be happy about too.

[lapcat]

> I can only assume that if a kid doesn't have an older sibling "to keep an eye on them" the parents take this role, and parents tend to be more risk-adverse and responsible caretakers than siblings.

This hypothesis doesn't make sense, because all children were treated differently many decades ago, and by pure math the most common type of child is the first born. Every family no matter the size has a firstborn child, who by definition has no older sibling to keep an eye on them. The fact is that parents were just less hovering helicopters in the past. I can attest to this as firstborn myself.

[PH95VuimJjqBqy]

> by pure math the most common type of child is the first born.

I understand the sentiment you're trying to convey but I have to point out that's only true if the average family size is less than 2. The second it hits a full 3 that's very obviously untrue and most cultures in the past definitely had averages above 3.

[lapcat]

> that's very obviously untrue

Only under a very uncharitable misunderstanding of what I said. If the categories are simply "first born" and "not first born", then first born ceases to be the most common as family size increases. But if the categories are "first born", "second born", "third born", etc., then first born never ceases to be the most common. And as I said, "Every family no matter the size has a firstborn child, who by definition has no older sibling to keep an eye on them", so it hasn't been explained why parents were less risk-adverse in the past toward firstborn children (who have no older silbings to keep an eye on them). Every parent past and present had to deal with a firstborn.

[peteradio]

Yours is the uncharitable understanding. The premise is "watched by adults" vs "watched by sibling". If family size is 3 then you have 1 who was watched by adults and 2 who were watched by a sibling.

[bombcar]

And as family sizes increase, the family increases as well, so even the first born may not be treated as such, because they were always watched by cousins. Very quickly you can have a completely extant sub-culture in the children that is unaffected much by the adults.

[lapcat]

People want to tell stories about the past, but they completely ignore the more recent past, specifically, Generation X, the notorious "latchkey kids", who also tended to belong to very small families, because the entire generation was the smallest in population of the recent generations.

US birth rates dropped dramatically between the late 1950s and the late 1970s, resulting in this small generation. (I attribute the drop to the increasing financial independence of women and the widespread adoption of birth control.) GenX family sizes were small, with few siblings. Yet GenX kids "enjoyed" (or suffered from, depending on your perspective) the absence of supervision for large parts of their days. Helicopter parenting didn't exist at that time. GenX is the glaring counterexample to the family size theory.

The past with extended families all living together — grandparents, cousins, et al. — is more distant than people are acknowledging.

[lapcat]

My comments were talking about firstborn children. They literally have zero siblings.

[PH95VuimJjqBqy]

is your claim that the firstborn child stops being the firstborn child when another child is born?

That appears to be what you're claiming.

[imp0cat]

There is a wonderful Bluey episode about this - Fairytale - where the dad tells a real life fairytale about living in the 80's.

[Yhippa]

To your second point: I grew up in the American suburbs and had that. Probably not to the degree you did. I've noticed in the suburbs today that there are such few kids and it's just really quiet all the time. It's really sad to walk around the neighborhood or be outside and you don't hear kids playing.

People also seem to have fewer kids if they have them. That implies fewer cousin interactions like I had and also all those things you mentioned never happen. It's unbelievably sad.