[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.

[PH95VuimJjqBqy]

your thought process is all over the place.

Gen-x was more independent because they were allowed to be, the family size doesn't have a lot of bearing on that, but more than that it's a non-sequitur that somehow gen-x is a counter-example to the idea that smaller families lead to higher value placed on child safety. child safety and independence are orthogonal ideas.

[lapcat]

> Gen-x was more independent because they were allowed to be

Correct.

> the family size doesn't have a lot of bearing on that

Correct.

> child safety and independence are orthogonal ideas.

Incorrect.

[PH95VuimJjqBqy]

your last statement is only true if you believe in a binary world.

In truth, a child can grab a can of soda out of the fridge without it being a safety concern.

[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.

[lapcat]

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

No?

> That appears to be what you're claiming.

I have no idea where you're getting this crazy interpretation.

My point was that firstborn children don't have any siblings to watch over them, because they are the oldest child, and firstborn children didn't always have helicopter parents either. In other words, "watched by adults" vs "watched by sibling" was a false dichotomy.

[PH95VuimJjqBqy]

your statement

> They [firstborn children] literally have zero siblings.

strongly implies children with siblings are not firstborn children.

As I said elsewhere, your thought process is all over the place. If you meant that firstborn children don't have _older_ siblings then you chose a poor way of communicating that.

But to rebut your statement, as someone else pointed out, firstborn children would often have cousins and neighborhood kids watch them.

[lapcat]

> As I said elsewhere, your thought process is all over the place.

No, my thought process has been in exactly the same place the entire time.

> If you meant that firstborn children don't have _older_ siblings then you chose a poor way of communicating that.

My HN comments are not perfect prose, nor are they intended to be. Nonetheless, you can and in fact should assume that I'm not insane. What I meant was that firstborn have no siblings when they're born, and older siblings are the only relevant siblings as far as "watching over" is concerned.

> But to rebut your statement, as someone else pointed out, firstborn children would often have cousins and neighborhood kids watch them.

I've already addressed this in another comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39553084

To me it gives the impression of a semi-mythical tale. Other than for occasional, specific babysitting gigs (usually paid), I've personally never "watched over" other children, whether a younger sibling, a neighborhood kid, or a cousin (all of whom lived at least hundreds of miles away). It's not something that happened in general. Kids are generally busy being kids themselves, doing their own things, and playing with their own friends. Perhaps in the distant past there was little in life except one's own extended family, but that past is long gone.