[llm_nerd]

I have four children. I have never regretted it or wished for a different path. I know it isn't for everyone, but it absolutely was and is for me.

At the same time I do think articles like this should be countered with the reality that many fathers aren't overwhelmed with waves of love or "surreal magnificence". With each of my children being born the primary emotions I could point to were dread and anxiety.

The sudden overwhelming obligation to provide care, comfort and security for such a vulnerable human for decades encompasses your being.

One of the reasons birthrates have plummeted in the West, and sentiments about having children have dropped, is that we have no "village", so to speak. Having children is not only an astronomical expense -- every single element of life is dramatically more expensive, made much worse with the housing crisis occurring in many Western nations -- a couple is often entirely on their own. There are no respites or breaks.

And as children get viewed as a selfish luxury, the social norms for what a parent needs to do to be proper climb ever higher.

[crystal_revenge]

As the father of a teenager, I would also add: take parenting "wisdom" from new parents with the same grain of salt you would career advice from someone who just landed their first job.

I personally found the complexities of parenting and, even more importantly, family life, don't really start to emerge until after the first few years.

Talk to divorced parents of older children about the "Surreal Magnificence" of parenting and you'll likely get a hearty chuckle out of them.

[deanCommie]

To put a counter-point on your counter-point:

* Divorced parents aren't representative experiences for most parents. (The oft-used statistics that >50% of marriages end in divorce miss that those with one divorce often end up with N divorces. Aka most PEOPLE, and most COUPLES, do NOT end up divorced)

* The job of a parent is to raise an adult. There are certainly those that become enamored with the idea of parenting a baby/toddler/child and are unprepared for the complicated job ahead. But there are also those that seem to think their job ends as soon as the child is legally an adult. Or those that are all too happy to throw away their decade plus of investment because their teenager going through absolutely normal hormonal chaos are suddenly disrespectful to them.

* In essence, I'm trying to say that divorce parents of older children are just as much full of shit as the new parents in terms of giving someone advice.

[elijaht]

Some brief googling suggests that 41% of first marriages end in divorce (ex. https://www.wf-lawyers.com/divorce-statistics-and-facts/). Obviously not >50%, but certainly in the neighborhood

[deanCommie]

I'd be curious how much of this changes once you account for a few basic fundamental things like:

* Being over 25

* Having a college degree.

The people who worry about marriage because of these stats are typically in this category. I bet just by accounting for these 2 points, the numbers would plummet to the 20s if not teens.

[vanderZwan]

So I agree that naivety is a thing, but that doesn't mean you have to dismiss the advice. It's just that it's not wise to rely on one person's advice.

I have a two year old (well, she'll be two next week, close enough). Among my nearby friends are five couples who have have children that are one or two years older than mine. Their input has been extremely helpful in the last two years, because it's been mostly in the form of "these are the mistakes we first made and what we eventually figured out". It also helps that they are five very different couples so my partner and I can compare their experiences and figure out what applies to our situation and what doesn't.

Also, by comparison, I have friends with much older children too, and their input can essentially be reduced to "I'm sorry the first two years are a sleep-deprived haze of which my memories are limited to the photos and videos we took, so we have no advice for you."

[throwaway2037]

The best parenting advice that I hear does not humble-brag about their own (this is undercurrent of most bad advice), rather acknowledges that each child is different, weird, and special in their own way.

[selectodude]

> One of the reasons birthrates have plummeted in the West, and sentiments about having children have dropped, is that we have no "village", so to speak. Having children is not only an astronomical expense -- every single element of life is dramatically more expensive, made much worse with the housing crisis occurring in many Western nations -- a couple is often entirely on their own. There are no respites or breaks.

It’s the opportunity cost of having children. When you’re poor, it’s not changing what you can do with your life. You were never able to go to dinner or on vacation. When you’re wealthy, you can afford to bring them with you, or better, pay somebody to watch them while you’re gone. The well-off middle class needs to weigh completely changing their lives.

[stared]

And it is reflected in numbers. The fertility rate has a non-monotonous relationship with income. It is the middle-income fertility that plummets.

https://x.com/theHauer/status/1222514313723875332/photo/1

From "Population Pyramids Yield Accurate Estimates of Total Fertility Rates", https://link.springer.com/epdf/10.1007/s13524-019-00842-x?sh...

[The_Colonel]

> When you’re poor, it’s not changing what you can do with your life. You were never able to go to dinner or on vacation.

When you're poor and child-less, you can still sleep in on weekends, watch Netflix/game all day/night or whatever other (cheap) hobby you have. It's even possible to do a decent amount of travelling on a very tight budget these days (low-cost airlines, couchsurfing...). All things considered, today is not a bad time to be a poor person in terms of being able to have fun.

I think even for middle class, the main cost is actually the time rather than the monetary cost.

But I do agree that opportunity cost is the right framing.

[anthonypasq]

is just so absolutely bizarre to me as a 28 year old childless man who intends to have kids that gaming could possibly be something that you would trade vs raising a literal human child who is a genetic copy of you and the person you love most in your life

[marssaxman]

Human beings vary in all kinds of ways, more than we generally expect, right down to the nature of our most fundamental fears and desires. Not everyone wants to have children, in the way that you do, and some people clearly want not to.

I doubt that anyone would prefer gaming to children because they hold gaming in the kind of profound esteem you feel for the task of "raising a literal human child"; more likely, they simply don't feel much of anything about having kids, or perhaps they feel some aversion. It's not hard for even a comparatively trivial activity you enjoy to feel more appealing than an alternative you don't actually desire.

[JambalayaJimbo]

I agree; as someone who was _very_ into gaming at different periods of my life. Both gaming and travelling struck me as things young adults do to pass the time when they don’t have the privilege and responsibility of a family.

I understand procrastination for sure, but the idea that someone would avoid having kids to do the above is absolutely bizarre to me.

[The_Colonel]

Please don't take it as a personal attack, but you're 28 and from the way you're talking, it sounds like kids are not a priority for you right now, so apparently you want to do certain things before getting them. Many people who end up child-less are just like you - they don't actively decide "I'd rather game than have children", they just make excuses and postpone until it just doesn't work out at all.

One thing which I kind of regret about having children relatively late in my life (although I wasn't that much older when I had my first than you are now) is that I won't be there for them (and potentially grandchildren) as long as I wish I would be, esp. in good health. A depressing way to think about this is that every year I've enjoyed the freedom before them is a year I'm not going to spend with them.

[anthonypasq]

no that perfectly makes sense, and for some context i am likely to have a kid within the next 5 years if things dont go horribly in my relationship, but beyond that i really struggle to imagine that a 42nd vacation at the age of 62 is going to be more satisfying than watching my kids graduate college

[wat10000]

You’re sort of begging the question that the second thing is really desirable. You accurately describe the experience, but that doesn’t necessarily make it something people want.

[anthonypasq]

im sorry but its just bizarre to think that you need to re-litigate whether checks notes the primary biological purpose of our existence is indeed desirable

[wat10000]

“Biological purpose” is a weird phrase. Evolution has no purpose, it’s just what happens. Purpose is what we make of it.

In any case, it’s just a plain fact that some people don’t desire to raise a child. Many, probably most, do, but many don’t. Personally, I’d pick the video games. Heck, I’d pick nothing as a preferable alternative to raising children. Not everyone considers it a positive.

[throwaway2037]

How is this any different than 25/50/75 years ago? Not much being said here. What has really changed in many wealthy countries: There is less family support because many people live far from their parents. And, proportionally, housing/healthcare/education is more expensive for middle class and below compared to previous generations.

[627467]

And you don't think the destruction of the village and sharp decline in birth rate feed of each other? Individuals have outsourced so much to abstract "institutions" that they can't see alternatives whatever precarious and worsening services these institutions provide.

[IgorPartola]

No. The reason why is because we have opportunities to move up and down the social ladder.

Basically it’s not really like the whole village raised your kid before, that’s more of a romanticized version. What happened was that your extended family helped because you lived with them for your entire life. So you have a kid, your sister in law watches them along with your mother while you work. Where do you work? Well that’s wherever your family works. If you are born into a farm, you are a farmer. If your family is blacksmiths, you’ll be a smith. Or a dung sifter, etc. If you can’t do it, maybe your farmer family sends you to apprentice with the local smith. But you rarely get a choice in what you do, where you live, etc.

Moreover, if you don’t like your family/they don’t like you: tough. You might hate your sister in law but who else will watch your kid while you sift dung?

What has changed is that we have the free market. Your can move out, have your own career and hire someone to care for your kids while you work. You no longer have access to “free” childcare but you have access to the job market instead. Want to leave the farm and move to the big city to become a jewelry maker? Go for it. But you won’t have much support to start a family. You are paying for free choice.

[llm_nerd]

"The village" isn't limited to some pioneer dung sifter living seven generations to a hovel. Also absolutely bizarre how so many people so desperately want to make this an economic thing.

The village referred to the notion that children were viewed as important to the whole. The whole country, the whole province, the whole village, the whole neighbourhood, the whole family. Everyone cared about and contributed to the raising of children. In my childhood -- and at this point the village was already declining -- I had a number of friend families that were like second, third and fourth families where I could stayover for dinner whenever I wanted, they watched out for me, etc. There were many times where I spent nights at aunts with my cousins, or at grandparents.

Culturally this is far less common. We all move hundreds of kilometers apart. Sometimes for careers, more often because you're a loser if you stay near where you grew up. Many/most younger people have little relation with cousins or aunts or uncles. Grandparents now move to Arizona and ask for pictures occasionally. People have an antagonistic attitude towards other people's kids as a selfish trifle that are just a nuisance for everyone else.

No, hiring a nanny isn't equivalent and doesn't invalidate this.

[jajko]

Yes these were things we lost, but 'we' as in anytime in past 500 years. You just experienced it yourself for your line.

What was gained is meaningless to some, and next to everything to others. I don't fucking ever have to deal with anybody's crap I don't want to. It feels amazing, simple yet right way to live a life. How shitty my life would be if I had to accept and constantly tolerate people in family circle that for example aren't good people, moral ones or just an emotional vampire. Or brutally incompatible with me in any other way. I see it in peers sucking it up over and over, oh boy do they hate relative X from their or spouse's family tree, yet since they live nearby frequent meetings are unavoidable. For some blood is sacred and above else, I don't see it that way if relationships are not at least a bit mutually beneficial.

Freedom, man, to do what you want with your life, that's a wonderful thing. Freedom to form new bonds with literally anybody in this world, as you please. Great friendships trump most of blood relationships, all if you want. Also, people change over time and common ground is getting usually smaller and smaller every year. I'd gladly give it to my kids over some tighter knit family ties with people of variable quality with highly questionable views on life, who raised their own kids only so-so and it shows later on.

Just to be clear - I've experienced most if not all you wrote. It was good. All non-good easily trumps it so thus my opinion on the matters. My kids are growing in very different world than I grew up in, that one is long gone. I look at it as a package with + and -, liking current package more.

[anon291]

Simply not true. My grandparents moved from India to watch us. They didn't have to. They did live with us for a while but in my parents house

In no way did we live with them. They lived with us.

Ultimately this is cultural. JD Vance talks about this when it comes to his mother in law who did the same thing.

Cultures that value kids will have more. My parents did the same for us

[BirdieNZ]

> Cultures that value kids will have more. My parents did the same for us

Last I checked, cultures that have access to contraception and female education have fewer kids, independent of religion or tradition or practice of valuing kids.

Indian culture is no exception; total fertility rate has declined in the last ~50 years from ~6 children per woman to ~2, and continues to decline.

[adolph]

> No. The reason why is because we have opportunities to move up and down the social ladder.

Wait until people realize the ladder is a treadmill and any movement is an illusion of entropy.

Every wave of humanity is like an ocean's endless beating against a beach.

[lproven]

> Every wave of humanity is like an ocean's endless beating against a beach.

"Man hands on misery to man

It deepens like the coastal shelf

Get out as early as you can

And don't have any kids yourself."

(Philip Larkin.)

[anon291]

Part of the problem is that preferring family today is seen as nepotistic.

Witness the widespread shock that Joe Biden pardoned his son.

[llm_trw]

The shock is because he said multiple times he wouldn't do it.

You can't do better than the daily show coverage of it: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=V5BcIHPMAHw

[anon291]

No I agree. But you shouldn't be shocked. Obviously he was going to

[triceratops]

> preferring family today is seen as nepotistic

That's kinda the definition of the word so it isn't surprising.

Nepotism as a negative is a relatively new phenomenon, historically speaking. I suspect this is what you actually meant.

[anon291]

You're correct in both your criticism and in your interpretation.

[wat10000]

Nothing wrong with preferring family in your private affairs, but it has no place in government.

[baxtr]

Agree 100%.

People say it’s the cost. But what’s way worse is the effort and time you need to spend for every child.

A normal couple, most often with both having to work, will be at their limits to provide for more than 1 child - constantly.

A couple can’t replace the village unless they have tons of money.

[llm_nerd]

I am lucky that I do consulting through my own company, setting my own schedule and availability. It would be impossible otherwise.

Just as one small example, daycares/schools will call for you to pickup your kid -- blowing up your day -- at the slightest indication of illness. With four kids going to school, this means two to six+ times a month your day is going to be completely blown up at any moment. I'm not complaining (though when I was a kid if you had a bit of a stomach ache you chilled in the nurse's office for a bit and 9 times out of 10 go back to class), but the average person cannot accommodate this without quickly finding themselves unemployed. This is just one of a million cases where two working parents and few or no supports leave you in a precarious situation.

[rootusrootus]

I remember the feeling of relief when my kids left daycare for the last time (I just have two, though). Partly because the massive reduction in cost, and partly because of the ease in scheduling my day. And it's just gotten better as they've grown a bit older. Now in middle school, they get themselves going in the morning and then get home in the afternoon just before 5pm. I've pretty much forgotten all the scheduling we had to do around nap times, daycare, etc.

I got lucky in a sense, when covid came along and sent me home permanently, it makes dealing with kids so much simpler. My wife and I both work from home now, and schedules are a breeze.

[baxtr]

True that things have changed on the child side as well. I remember being by myself for long stretches on any day.

Parents today not only have lost the village but are also expected to be with their children more.

[DAGdug]

“ And as children get viewed as a selfish luxury” I never quite understood this. Who exactly will pay into social security to benefit the next crop of retirees that seem to think it’s selfish to have kids?

[nosefurhairdo]

Many people think overpopulation is a legitimate concern. I suspect the argument would be "who cares about social security if we kill the planet" (or something along those lines).

Not my view, just suggesting who might believe the "children as selfish luxury" line.

[thefz]

Social security is well failed in my country, we are paying both for the retirees and for our future selves. So if tomorrow ends up like children of men, sure, no problem.

[beAbU]

I would hope that my own current contribution to the fiscus would pay for my eventual old age pension. And my hypothetical children's future contribution would pay for their own retirement. But alas this is probably not the case.

[ndriscoll]

It couldn't possibly be the case. The only way that could make sense is if your contribution were paying for something like automation of the services you will one day need. Otherwise, at the end of the day, the services you'll need will require labor, and if there's insufficient labor available because not enough people had kids, then the amount of money you contribute today is irrelevant, and it's ultimately unfair to expect a future generation to devote most of their available resources to taking care of a previous generation.

Money is a grease to help direct resource utilization. You can't expect the big bucket of grease you saved for the future to mean much if there are no resources to flow. You cannot rely on a financial abstraction to "invest" in the future without everyone also actually concretely investing in creating a future.

[rangestransform]

Immigrants, even better that their source country paid for their natal care and education rather than us

[DAGdug]

That’s fine, but if the immigrants move from the developing to the developed world, that incurs a massive increase in their carbon footprint.

[rangestransform]

it's better than paying for natal care and education for a local-born child who will still have a high carbon footprint, and might also not be as productive as the immigrant

[DAGdug]

And one could argue that: 1. Immigrants typically have higher TFRs that within years wipes out the gains you allude to 2. Productivity depends on how skilled the immigrants are; much of Europe has a large chunk of immigrants with lower productivity than the native born. Anyway, this is a low signal discussion on both sides; this is my last comment on this matter

[apwell23]

> One of the reasons birthrates have plummeted in the West, and sentiments about having children have dropped, is that we have no "village", so to speak.

It probably true but even the well of who can afford to buy the village aren't having kids.

I think it has more to do with

1. cultural acceptance and lack of strict cultural pressure to have kids. Its unimaginable in India to not have kids by choice. Its not a choice at all unless you want to be pariah.

2. Availability of affordable widespread recreation that will keep you occupied. Affordability of lots of on demand TV, dining out, live music, internet, hobbies, travel ect.

[jebarker]

I also think we've become more self-obsessed and the idea that we might need to sacrifice time spent on ourselves scares us.

[anon291]

We don't have a village because no one has kids. The parents I know who are best supported are ones who have tons of siblings.

[WalterBright]

True. Those with large numbers of kids tend to have a family network of mutual support.

[anon291]

My parents had less kids due to circumstances (age + immigration). But they had so many siblings that they had so much help compared to my brother and I.

Luckily we both have three and we at least want more (they might be aging out... Maybe they'll have one more).

Kids are so much fine and they love each other too. It's amazing

[zemvpferreira]

I’m 40, rich, coupled, live next door to my parents and close to my inlaws, have plenty of free time. I have no kids and no desire to have kids. My girlfriend is the same and plenty of our friends too.

I’m very happy for people who have children and love them to bits, but many of just don’t want to.

[borski]

And there isn’t anything wrong with that at all. Kids are, in my opinion, literally the only life choice you can’t walk away from having made. That is extremely high stakes, and not everyone has the appetite for it or desire to engage in it.

That doesn’t make anyone who has kids or wants to have kids better or worse. Plenty of people have kids and should not have, and they end up neglecting their kids or abusing them.

Have kids if you want to. Don’t if you don’t. Just realize that if you wait too long to make a choice, those options become much more limited and lean much more toward not having them. And if you make the choice without thinking, you’re just gambling, but you’re gambling with someone’s life, not to mention your own.

If it sounds scary… good. That means you’re thinking about it. You just have to decide if you want to do this particularly scary thing, and if the potential reward outweighs the risk.

And, I think it’s important to be okay with that choice changing in either direction. My wife didn’t want kids, and that opinion has changed, through no pushing of my own.

(The proverbial you, not you specifically, since it sounds like you’ve decided)

[2OEH8eoCRo0]

I wish more of the country had tech work. I shouldn't have to move away from my village across the country to one of a handful of tech hubs.

Incentivize remote work so we can spread out into these cheaper and under served communities.

[throwaway2037]

Great post, until this:

    > And as children get viewed as a selfish luxury

What country / culture? Surely, no one is saying that in any country that I know well.

[llm_nerd]

In much of the West the ability to have children is economically or logistically (e.g. a career that would fall apart if they had kids) out of reach for many [1], leading many to perceive it as a selfish luxury. A "must be nice" kind of thing.

e.g. https://www.google.com/search?q=children+a+luxury+item

With this comes the perspective that every downside parents enjoy is earned if not poetically satisfying. It is amazing how absolutely without sympathy -- instead holding smug satisfaction -- people are if a parent faces obstacles.

[1] Obviously there are exceptions and different situations exist in different cultures and socioeconomic settings.

[throwaway2037]

Uh what? Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, the Balkans, Bulgaria, Romania, Greece: Absolutely false. Same in Japan, Korea, Taiwan.

Edit

I forgot: ALL of Latin America: False, children are treated as a blessing!

[WalterBright]

Delaying having children until ones' 30s also is a problem. After 30, fertility rates decline, and birth defects increase. You can't have a lot of children after 30, either.

[vardump]

I think steeper decline is at about 37ish years for women.

There's also some deterioration as men age, but it's less obvious.

Some say the combined age should not be over 80. Shrug.

(Should be obvious fertility varies greatly between individuals.)

[wooque]

Birth rates plummeted even in Saudi Arabia and Iran, which are polar opposite of the West, so I'd say loss of "village" is tiny part of the problem.

[llm_nerd]

It's possible for different influences to play a part in different countries and cultures. Further, there is a remarkable scale difference.

The high survivability of children now means that having large numbers of children dropped everywhere. You don't need to have "extras". The problem is when the number drops too much. It did in Iran due to literal government influence, and is quickly turning back to replacement level. Saudi Arabia is above replacement level.

That is very different than Canada (1.33) or South Korea (0.88), or Switzerland (1.39). The scale is dramatically different.

[whycome]

I’m not sure I’d consider Iran or Saudi Arabia as polar opposites to the west. Or at least not in the aspects related to kids.

[ToDougie]

> a couple is often entirely on their own.

Yeah. This has been the worst part. Neither of our parents feel the need to help with their TIME, but they will sporadically send us money after making us feel bad about asking. Meanwhile they had all kinds of help from relatives, in time, sweat, and money. Part of the problem is that you don't get your full Social Security benefits until age 70, so for the one grandparent that is still working, they literally do not have the time to help. If they wanted to retire early, they would have to forgo what they perceive as critical $. Alternatively, they could sell their multi-million dollar home and downsize, but their egos could never handle that.

[llm_trw]

Do you think this could be because you have so many children?

Anecdotally the more kids in a family the more neglected the child. I can't imagine having more than one child a decade and raising them well.

[llm_nerd]

I think you horribly misread my post. Do you think I am saying I don't love my children? I love them absolutely. The last word in the universe that applies to them is "neglected". They want for nothing.

Indeed, it's precisely that I care so much that having children wasn't some carefree social media event for me. It was an enormous commitment. The biggest commitment a human can make, in my judgment, and I was all in.

And as another poster already said, one of the greatest gifts a child can have is siblings. This isn't always true and of course there are many counterpoints, but siblings are usually the closest friends and allies in a hostile world.

[testval123]

There is IMMENSE value in having siblings, particularly later in life when you yourself have kids. Especially if they are in the same city.

[everybodyknows]

I feel having no sibling of the opposite sex as a great loss to myself, and to my parents. It seems to me a grievous deficiency in one's life-experience.

[WalterBright]

I was one of 5. I was not neglected. I am a horrible person, though, so there's that.

[llm_trw]

Your parents by definition will only be able to spend 20% of the time on you that they could on a single child if they didn't neglect the others.

Seeing children with multiple siblings with less than 8 year difference between them vs single children is shocking just how differently kids are treated.

This is the most accurate but least factual description of what it looks like from the outside when a family keeps adding kids as fast as they can https://malcolminthemiddle.fandom.com/wiki/Flashback

[llm_nerd]

I would argue that your position is the "perfectionist parenting" nonsense that many have used to avoid having children.

Do you think all of the latchkey lone children of the current generation are the most psychologically healthy individuals the world has seen? Do you think they're the most loved or coddled? The most educated? Your anecdote is actually kind of hilarious in context.

The idea that 2 children splits the love or attention is absolutely insane.

[llm_trw]

>Do you think all of the latchkey lone children of the current generation are the most psychologically healthy individuals the world has seen?

https://www.census.gov/newsroom/stories/siblings.html

80% of kids under 18 have siblings in the USA today.

>The idea that 2 children splits the love is absolutely insane.

It's also what's blindingly obvious when you spend more than 5 minutes in a playground with single kids and multiple kids.

[llm_nerd]

>80% of kids under 18 have siblings in the USA today.

I wasn't claiming that all or most kids are single children. I was observing that by your philosophy those single children would somehow have the best outcomes (in a multivariate manner). I don't think that's the case.

>It's also what's blindingly obvious

Sure.

[DAGdug]

It’s the same logic as: when I married, the time to cook each meal doubled. Ugh, no - many things scale vastly sublinearly with the number of kids one has.

[beachtaxidriver]

I see your point. But I think you may be taking it to extremes.

A parent can snuggle multiple kids at once, read to multiple kids at once, take multiple kids to the zoo at once, etc.

Moreover siblings have their own rich relationships.

Having closely spaced siblings is pretty normal.

[llm_trw]

In the west in the year of our lord 1955.

And in the year of our lord 2025 it's normal not to have kids in the west.

In most of the rest of the world neither of those things were normal.

Which is the point.

The west is weird when it comes to raising children and has been uniquely bad at it for over 80 years which happens to be living memory for pretty much everyone on here.

[navane]

Having closed spaced siblings was normal in the entire world forever until a couple decades ago. There wasn't even birth control.

[WalterBright]

80 years? Things started to go awry around 1970. That's when the Boy Scouts stopped treating scouts like young adults and instead began treating them like delicate flowers.

You can see the change in the Boy Scout manual.

[WalterBright]

> Your parents by definition will only be able to spend 20% of the time on you that they could on a single child if they didn't neglect the others.

Parents can spend time with their children as a group. Parents with lots of kids have the kids do the chores.

[anon291]

Yes the single child is usually unsociable and verging on narcissistic.

Your issue here is that you have labeled the single kids life as good and the multi sibling family as bad .

It used to be the opposite. People would pity a single child.

[navane]

I would argue the opposite. Worst are the only childs. There is just something off socially. Kids with only siblings that are 8+ years older have the same but less severe. You can pick them out from a mile away.

[tengbretson]

> Do you think this could be because you have so many children?

Four? So many? According to Churchill, four would be the bare minimum.