Following the election, many people have told your correspondent "don't take it personally." Take it personally? Why would I take it personally, when I never made it personal in the first place? It's not about me. But being somewhat saddened nonetheless, your correspondent thought "of course it's not about me; it's never about me: I'm a middle child."
Immediately your correspondent was hit with a blinding flash of the obvious: society's going down the drain because there are too few middle children.
Consider the following. Your correspondent despises individualism and the idea that anything is about "you" in any way. Your job? Not about you: it's about getting work done. Politics? Definitely not about you: it's about moving money hither and yon without doing work. Your kids? Least of all about you. Your friends? Please. It's always about them, isn't it? Your relationship with God, supposing you have any? It's supposed to be about fearing the Lord and loving your neighbour, not yourself.
It's not about you. It's not ever about you. Society, despite bizarre messages to the contrary all over Facebook, does not seriously give a damn about you. You'd know this if you were a middle child.
It's not just a cliche. If you're the first child, everything you do is new and wonderful, and your parents are fascinated. If you're the last child, everything you do is the last time your parents will live it, and it's pricelessly nostalgic. Anywhere else in the family, you're only doing what's been done already. That's why it's never about you. Which is why the middle child is more naturally adapted to the fact that society doesn't give a damn than the end-point children, let alone the dreaded only-child.
Now consider this: if the average family has 4.1 or more children, there are more middle children than end-point children in society, therefore more than half of all people are naturally inclined to think it's not all about them. But as the birth rate falls, so does the percentage of middle children in society. Measuring it is somewhat complicated. The fertility rate of 1.7 is obviously not a good approximation of the number of middle children. A different metric, available from the 2006 census, tabulates the number of children living at home in four categories: none, one, two, or more than two; thusly:
Ok. So the number of end-point children is one per one-child family, plus two per more-than-one-child family = 1 x 2,429,695 + 2 x (2,132,830 + 913,465) = 8,522,285 and therefore there are 9,733,770 - 8,522,285 = 1,211,485 children living at home as of 2006 who were for sure neither the eldest nor the youngest in their families; but some of them had siblings who already moved out, and some had siblings who weren't born yet. Therefore we know that at least 12% of children are middle children.
I wonder if I could lobby Statistics Canada to include birth order in the 2016 long form. (You know what else is weird? Female lone-parent households had the most average kids at home of any family structure. What's the moral here?)
Anyway, your correspondent is suddenly convinced that the breakdown of society has everything to do with the gradual disappearance of the middle child. So you see, fellow middle children, we do matter. Booya!
Immediately your correspondent was hit with a blinding flash of the obvious: society's going down the drain because there are too few middle children.
Consider the following. Your correspondent despises individualism and the idea that anything is about "you" in any way. Your job? Not about you: it's about getting work done. Politics? Definitely not about you: it's about moving money hither and yon without doing work. Your kids? Least of all about you. Your friends? Please. It's always about them, isn't it? Your relationship with God, supposing you have any? It's supposed to be about fearing the Lord and loving your neighbour, not yourself.
It's not about you. It's not ever about you. Society, despite bizarre messages to the contrary all over Facebook, does not seriously give a damn about you. You'd know this if you were a middle child.
It's not just a cliche. If you're the first child, everything you do is new and wonderful, and your parents are fascinated. If you're the last child, everything you do is the last time your parents will live it, and it's pricelessly nostalgic. Anywhere else in the family, you're only doing what's been done already. That's why it's never about you. Which is why the middle child is more naturally adapted to the fact that society doesn't give a damn than the end-point children, let alone the dreaded only-child.
Now consider this: if the average family has 4.1 or more children, there are more middle children than end-point children in society, therefore more than half of all people are naturally inclined to think it's not all about them. But as the birth rate falls, so does the percentage of middle children in society. Measuring it is somewhat complicated. The fertility rate of 1.7 is obviously not a good approximation of the number of middle children. A different metric, available from the 2006 census, tabulates the number of children living at home in four categories: none, one, two, or more than two; thusly:
| All families | 8,896,840 |
| Families without children | 3,420,850 |
| One child | 2,429,695 |
| Two children | 2,132,830 |
| Three or more children | 913,465 |
| Total children | 9,733,770 |
Ok. So the number of end-point children is one per one-child family, plus two per more-than-one-child family = 1 x 2,429,695 + 2 x (2,132,830 + 913,465) = 8,522,285 and therefore there are 9,733,770 - 8,522,285 = 1,211,485 children living at home as of 2006 who were for sure neither the eldest nor the youngest in their families; but some of them had siblings who already moved out, and some had siblings who weren't born yet. Therefore we know that at least 12% of children are middle children.
I wonder if I could lobby Statistics Canada to include birth order in the 2016 long form. (You know what else is weird? Female lone-parent households had the most average kids at home of any family structure. What's the moral here?)
Anyway, your correspondent is suddenly convinced that the breakdown of society has everything to do with the gradual disappearance of the middle child. So you see, fellow middle children, we do matter. Booya!
No comments:
Post a Comment