👧 The Middle Child Is Going Extinct!

The Middle Child is becoming an endangered species. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Er and Amanda. I saw a social media post on
the weekend that said, the fact that middle children are
going extinct is the most middle child thing I've ever heard.
It's true, and this is true. Middle children are dwindling.
In the seventies, it was common to have three or
four children. Today, almost sixty five percent of women with

(00:24):
children only have one or two, So the middle child
is becoming increasingly rare.

Speaker 2 (00:30):
You're from a pair, yep.

Speaker 1 (00:32):
I've got an older brother and me, so don't. I
don't know the middle child thing. Is it true that
middle children, if you've got more, if you've got three,
factions appear.

Speaker 2 (00:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:43):
Maybe always pairings off.

Speaker 2 (00:45):
We've got three, you've got four. I've got three.

Speaker 1 (00:48):
Kids, which meant you were from a family of four.

Speaker 2 (00:51):
Well, you know, I've got three of my own kids.

Speaker 1 (00:54):
Yes, And do you find that.

Speaker 2 (00:56):
Rast thought I was the oldest. That's great. The oldest
is great, king of world, you're king of the castle.
The youngest is good as well, because you get all
the stuff where everyone moves out and the parents are
a bit more lax about things I drinking and borrowing
the car and all the stuff that they used to
crack the whip on me about my youngest got away
with more than I did?

Speaker 1 (01:16):
Well, your daughter romany? Is it? Then? The middle child?

Speaker 2 (01:20):
She's the little Marsha Brady.

Speaker 1 (01:22):
Well, that's the thing. The most famous middle child was
this one, Marcia Martia Marcia. There are common stereotypes about
middle children that they're considered to be neglected, therefore resentful,
they have no drive, they have a negative outlook, they
don't they feel like they don't belong. The middle child

(01:42):
syndrome has often been written about. Do you think your
daughter has the middle child syndrome? Actually, the needy one does.

Speaker 2 (01:49):
She sandwiched between the boys though, so there's two boys
and a girl, so I think that works out well.
So she gets a lot of.

Speaker 1 (01:55):
Attention, right, Yeah, because in popular culture, and I don't know,
because I didn't grow up in a family where there
were three and I've only got two sons myself, they
were always seen as the ones who are always winging. Yeah,
like like jan like jam Jack say, what the problem is?

Speaker 2 (02:13):
You have to wait in line for everything around here,
so it's always borrowing your things. I never have any
privacy because I've got too many brothers and sisters. I
wish I were an only child.

Speaker 1 (02:24):
Was that an episode where things went wild a child?
I'm guessing that that's where that story went.

Speaker 2 (02:31):
Bidden sheets and chains to scare people from buying the house.

Speaker 1 (02:36):
Plan one interesting social advent if middle children do disappear.
But also we're facing the end of cousins. They're talking
about the concept of changing families also includes the great
cousin decline. The family trees are no longer wide, they're

(02:59):
tall because there's less branches. People are having less children,
so you there are less cousins, less offshoots to the
family tree in the seventies, the declining cousins from the
average of seven cousins in the seventies to four or
five right now. So cousins are declining. And what they

(03:19):
think that means is that even though cousins aren't necessarily
the foremost relationship in your life, we got used to
get a lot of advice from cousins because they didn't
have the emotional pressure points that would if you got
advice or sort help from a sibling.

Speaker 2 (03:34):
So cousins were important unmuch Your Lebanese, My Lebanese mate,
he's got a million cousins, four of them are panel beaters.

Speaker 1 (03:41):
Well, aren't you lucky. The way you ride your bike,
that's very lucky.