Sibling Units
Somewhere in his adolescence my oldest started referring to his sister and brothers as Sibling Units. Perhaps he preferred to think of them as having been created in a high-tech factory rather than in the regular way. Anyway over the course of a long career as a pediatrician, father and grandfather I’ve developed certain generalizations about the birth order of children. I believe it was Mark Twain who said “All generalizations are false including this one”, so this is far from a scientific tract.
Sibling Unit #1 tends to be the most successful, most pleasing to adults, most neurotic, and most cautious. I am an oldest child. If I ever get around to writing my long-planned book its title will be “Children Are Like Pancakes – You Should Be Able to Throw the First One Away.” New parents get their on-the-job training with Numero Uno, hovering over him or her, taking pictures all day and boring their friends with minute-by-minute play-by-play of every hiccup and poop. The first child’s universe is dominated by insecure, overprotective parents whose efforts at discipline are often inconsistent if not downright silly. When I’m on call at night I can usually guess within the first 30 seconds if the parent on the phone is new or not.
Sibling Unit #2’s very existence may be determined by #1. The first child who turns his or her parents into a puddle of tears may wind up an only child, a subspecies of human not always thought of as admirable. But for sake of this exposition let’s assume there is a second. Typically this bundle of joy will arrive when #1 is about two-and-a-half, the worst possible interval in terms of sibling rivalry. Just when Mom and Dad figure they’ve got this parent job down they learn that #2 is from another planet. This child’s universe is much different, being less controlled by parents but more by this irksome larger humanoid who has all the toys, all the privileges, and way too much attention and therefore must be challenged. Sibling Unit #2 tends to be independent, fearless, impulsive and rather indifferent to grownups. #1’s weapon of choice is passive-aggressiveness; #2 is far less subtle. Everything is “Mine!”. This child will spend much more time in the Emergency Room and much less posing for pictures.
Sibling Unit #3 is less often seen these days, what with $40,000 tuition bills (and that’s just for private kindergarten) and older parents, but the old saw tends to be true; #3 is a charm, and why not? This child’s universe is full of excitement and love from a family that’s survived the learning curve. On the other hand, #3 has turned #2’s world upside down, creating the dreaded middle child and sometimes causing regression to infantile behavior. It does have its advantages though, and they do get over it. Parents need to be aware that each child’s growing-up experience has its ups and downs, and giving up the treasured baby position in the family can be a major trauma.
After #3 subsequent children tend to be like #3 although each is unique. My S.U. #4 is probably my sweetest and least complicated even though he was just 13 when his parents divorced and by all odds should have become a drug-addicted criminal. Now he’s a father of two and a great one. I’ve cared for two families of ten each, plus a few fives and sixes, and it seems such children are exceptionally well-behaved and responsible. Perhaps you’ve seen the Duggers on cable TV with their 17 or 18 kids and marveled as I have at how happy and youthful they all are, including Mom and Dad.
Children often get a bad rap in our modern world. In earlier agricultural societies they were an economic asset, and a vulnerable one. People had many children because some died. Now we’ve come all the way to becoming the first culture in human history to have an entire class of young people whose major economic impact is to spend money buying gadgets and hanging out at the mall, or to spend years soaking up higher education (and lots of alcohol) at universities which are charging a lot and teaching less of relevance.
From the time of Malthus in the 18th century, experts have warned that the world’s population is too large. As recently as the 1970’s Ehrlich predicted that we’d run out of food and natural resources by the 80’s. He continues to ply his message of fear and doom despite the progress being made in agriculture and medicine. In truth the USA is one of the few developed countries having enough children. The “sustainability factor” is 2.1 children per woman, which is just where we are in our country. Other modern nations are far below that; even largely Catholic Italy’s rate is 1.1 and as people live longer there will be too few young people to work and sustain programs like social security. In China, years of forced abortions have created labor shortages in parts of that enormous country, and there are far more young men than women, a sure formula for more crime and social unrest.
So let’s hear it for our children, our future. And Steve, I was just kidding about the pancake thing.