Smaller families and the disappearing normie

A demographic case

Native speakers tend to understand their language intuitively, advanced foreign learners understand the various grammar rules and syntaxes better from an academic perspective. So it is, I believe, with ‘normalcy’. As somebody who had to leap from his screen to the street I believe I understand the mechanics of normality in a more holistic way. I have spent hundreds of hours pondering why some people are considered ‘normal’ and some are not, a reasonable percentage of which were spent in ecstatic spasms of self-hatred. After two decades of life - I’ve cracked it - the reason why individuals are becoming less normal, measured in the missed life milestones; the rise of the green license, the delayed first home, but also in metrics like friendships and dating.

But before that, a disclaimer; J’accuse does not endorse being ‘normal’. Genuine normality in a society which disparages intellectualism and demands you support a football team as a precondition for simmering in the Savile soup is an indication of mental disfigurement. It is for that reason that we condemn either ironic or unironic worship of Thomas Skinner. Unlike many of the nepo-children who now glorify that individual I actually had the misfortune of spending my childhood in Deanoville, I had to suffer through the McDonald’s birthday parties and the suffocation therewithin.

I have met a thousand Thomas Skinners. He is the barber who loudly questioned my sexuality when I said I didn’t ‘have a team’; the publican who shook my tender body in the air when England drew nil-nil with Algeria and the Stella Artois addled lout who drove off-road motorbikes in the local park, thus disturbing my communion with Ian Kershaw. He is the living celebration of pig ignorance; ketchup on oven chips in front of Sky TV.

Any political project that the Essex minstrel involves himself in will inevitably become similarly vulgar - “control our bawders maaate, caaam on caaam on lets fund yer Nan’s pension, up the Hammers”. That Cummings has alighted upon him as a political avatar after cycling through JK Rowling, Lisa Nandy and Lawrence Newport is likely the final kiss of death, but the broader point is important - if there is any hope it does not lie with the proles. ‘Saving the country’ will require breaking taboos that go beyond saying ‘London has fallen’. We don’t have time to convince Thomas Skinner that genetic engineering is a ‘belter muaate’. If the revolution is to be democratic you will need the cattle, but drawing political inspiration from them is a mistake.

The only case I will make in favour of normality is that most young men and women with a sensitive mind and soul will materially benefit from the ability to appear conventional in certain social situations - the obvious examples being in regard to careers and romance - where there are gatekeepers who hold genuine individuality against you. I admire those who reject this compromise on a point of principle, my personal view is that the physiological impact of having neither money nor romance is too great a cross to bear; so I have spent years honing the tatemae to mask what lays beneath. A tip - you are better off posing as a self-aware ‘eccentric’ than mimicking normalcy in it’s totality. Give yourself some breathing space. Margin for the inevitable errors.

Of course, if I had been born with half of the IQ, no such construction would be necessary. Born into the context that I was, I would have happily danced the Savile Samba and played Fifa with my ‘muaaattes’ from Sunday League. Pretending to find Women’s tennis titillating in an era of internet pornography. An invisible wall, however, presented by my literacy and interest in the Big Ideas, led me to slip from the social mainstream of that time and place. A lack of socialisation compounds itself over time, what begins not fingerpainting with the other children leads to a misspent adolescence in the bedroom - without course correction a ‘non-normal’ person will reach their early 20s having life experiences and cultural reference points which are completely divergent from their peers.

The early life that I am describing in brief is becoming more widespread year on year, there are countless metrics which demonstrate this, most of which any Daily Mail dad will be familiar with - Gen Zedders aren’t drinking alcohol anymore, Gen Zedders aren’t dating, they haven’t got any mates, etc etc. The demographic for these articles (men in their 50s) often has an unhealthy interest in the social lives of teenagers but the trend it describes align with what I have heard (anecdotally) from parents with children in school, that adolescents are notably less socially engaged with one and other, that dating in mixed gender schools has become the exception as opposed to the expectation.

Why is this happening? Dismiss the usual explanations; the internet and demographic change - American research shows that people’s social networks were already in precipitous decline by the mid 20^th century. I believe that the primary Factor in socialisation going awry is linked to smaller family sizes meaning that children have fewer and fewer siblings over time. The positive personal benefits of sibling socialisation are well documented academically, there has long been a cultural belief that only children are strange - but unlike in China (little Emperors) the social implications of family shrinkage seems curiously unexplored in the context of Western society.

Up until the mid 19^th century, the average number of children born per woman was six, meaning that even with higher rates of infant mortality the average person grew up with at least one brother and one sister. This had, according to the 1921 census, fallen to an average family size of 4.1 by the early 20^th century. For women born in 1973, roughly speaking Generation Z’s parents, the average family size is two. The 2023 ONS data also shows that 45% of UK families today have one child. The various extensively documented advantages of sibling socialisation are structurally disappearing.