So there I was, minding my own business doing my annual pre-Middle Child’s Day update of the I.M.C.U. Middle Child historical database, when I was once again faced with a problem that has been haunting me for years. Despite my best efforts, it seems there are varying levels of confusion regarding who qualifies for Middle Child status. Even though I’ve said it before, it appears I need to say it again: if you’re not the first born or the last born, you are in the middle. Still, I continue to be shocked by the fake news and misinformation that’s being spread about who is and isn’t a Middle Child, and what’s required to be a member of our club.
I first noticed there were some irregularities about how a Middle Child was defined in 2016, when it was being widely reported that 52% of U.S. Presidents were firstborns. I discovered that number only counted the firstborn
male as the firstborn, even though many were actually Middle Children, and totally disregarded any
female sibs born before them. WTF!? When you adjust to remove the clearly objectionable gender and anti-Middle Child bias, a
majority of U.S. Presidents were actually Middle Children.
Please don’t think this is just oldest and youngest siblings spreading this garbage. Believe it or not, there are actually Middle Children who either don’t know they’re Middle Children, or just haven’t accepted it. Case in point: when I contacted Sarah Jessica Parker’s publicist to gauge her interest in a Middle Child project I was working on, I received the following response:
I’m sorry, but with three older siblings and four younger,
SJP’s a Middle Child – like it or not.
Then there’s the radio host who told me there were
no Middle Children in his family of four. Huh? When I informed him there were actually two -- and that he was one of them -- it was a revelation! Good lord.
Even alleged reputable reference sources are perpetuating the outdated thinking that there’s a quota; only one Middle Child per family. Look at what Google AI is saying:
Yes, I realize in a family of nine, the fifth born is the Middle Middle Child, so what is the fourth of nine then? But it gets even worse:
It says right there she had two older sisters and two younger brothers. How could that not be a Middle Child!? (Forget that she married both her brothers and was responsible for killing her three surviving siblings. If anything that only bolsters her Middle Child credentials.) Well, I say balderdash! THIS HAS TO STOP!
That’s why today, as the founder of the International Middle Child Union, I am calling for a reorganization of the birth order hierarchy.
Look, I get it. I’m the 2nd of 3, the purest form of Middle Child. I used to think that was the only way you could be a Middle Child. But even my thinking has evolved to the point I recognize we’re all in this together. (Even though being the 2nd of 3 is still the worst.) If you’re not a Middle Middle Child/Smack Dab Middle Child, then what are you?
We know what to call the oldest and youngest (INSERT DEROGATORY NAMES HERE), but what do you call all the ones in the middle?
I tried a few years ago to group Middle Children across what I called
The Middle Child Spectrum, but I guess that hasn’t caught on.
A
recent HuffPost piece referred to
Donald Trump’s “Middle-late” birth order (he was the 4th of 5). Could that be the new classification? “Late Middle” for any Middle Child born after the “Middle Middle,” “Early Middle” for any Middle Child born before? But that still doesn’t tell you how close or far from the middle they are. I think that matters.
What if we borrowed from genealogical lingo? How about “Middle Child once removed,” or twice removed as you move further from the middle? Or what if we combine the two!? “Late Middle Child once removed.” “Early Middle Child twice removed.” (In a family of four, there'd be one “Early Middle Child” and one “Late Middle Child.”) That could work!
Now every Middle Child, from first to
last, can have a birth order designation they can call their very own. Because the last thing we need is another hand-me-down.
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