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.
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.
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.
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.
Correct.
> the family size doesn't have a lot of bearing on that
Correct.
> child safety and independence are orthogonal ideas.
Incorrect.
In truth, a child can grab a can of soda out of the fridge without it being a safety concern.
That's basically a nonsensical reply.
> In truth, a child can grab a can of soda out of the fridge without it being a safety concern.
Nobody is talking about children grabbing cans of soda. That's a non sequitur. The submitted article: "Children need risk, fear, and excitement in play".
we're done here.
That appears to be what you're claiming.
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.
> 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.
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.
Oh well, I guess if it can't be perfect then no one has a license to tell you the reasonable reading of your words is completely different from what you meant. Improvement is only for those who don't think in binary terms.
I will say, growing up most of us have encountered that 1 kid who is just a bit weird due to the way his or her parents were raising them. I say this because that linked comment and your last paragraph display a belief of normalness that isn't normal. I'm sure it's your lived experience but I'm just as sure that's part of the problem with having parents who don't understand safety vs independence.
And as I said in the other comment, we're done here. Your thought process is all over the place and I think most of it is a difficulty to communicate and I'm not in the mood to even try.
"is your claim that the firstborn child stops being the firstborn child when another child is born?" is not a reasonable reading of my words in any way, shape, or form. It's an absolutely absurd reading.
> I will say, growing up most of us have encountered that 1 kid who is just a bit weird due to the way his or her parents were raising them.
How is this relevant? I'm not denying it, just wondering what exactly it's supposed to prove, if anything. My only claim is that the family-size psychological theory proposed by the OP is not true.
> I'm not in the mood to even try.
That much is obvious, given your aforementioned absurd interpretation.
which is why I asked for clarification. Just because what you said is ridiculous doesn't mean I should know what you meant.
your communication sucks, get better at it. or don't, but the feedback has been given.