With props to **Markxxx **for starting the Optimal Age Spacing For Children - Parent’s Viewpoint thread.
So, a corollary. From the viewpoint of the children, what is the optimal spacing for siblings? Do you think your parents got it right? Did your sibling spacing influence your choice of spacing your own children?
My siblings and I - well, the first four of us - are all about two years apart. We had a lot of fun growing up, since we were all so close in age it was like having instant playmates.
I don’t think my parents had much say in the spacing of kids, this was back before birth control, yanno?
I don’t think it influenced my choice of spacing my kids, no. After the first surprise pregnancy, I planned the second one according to my college graduation, so that I’d have both kids before getting my Master’s.
I’m the second of 4 girls, all about 2 years apart. We had a great time playing and had a lot in common. I don’t think it is a coincidence that I have 4 children, who are all about 2 years apart.
I was the one and only child of my dad’s second marriage, and my mom’s only child. I have two very much older siblings (over 10 years). I… I’m conflicted.
I have no kids on my own right now, but I want to have kids right away, if I could. I do not want to have kids when my mom had me (34), I do still consider that “old”. I don’t want to be like my parents, so much older than other parents of my classmates. I don’t want to be nearing retirement and thinking that I still have a kid to possibly support.
That said, the pros of my older siblings are/were: I’m still the “baby”, hence if we go out, generally they’ll pay before I have a chance to produce money. We’re so far apart, we don’t get into fights and rarely argue. They were awesome babysitters.
The cons: Because I’m “the baby”, it took them (especially my sister) quite a long while to realize I was already an adult, just like them. It was a bit weird for a while, but now sister came around and we’re back to being friends on an equal, or almost equal, level. Because of the space in ages, stuff that my mom didn’t teach me, but a sister would’ve, got lost. Silly things like fashionable clothes and how to put make up on. I’m now slowly making up for that loss.
My parents had two children, eleven years apart, which is too much of a gap for a normal sibling bond, instead of a pseudo parent/child role.
If I were to have kids, I’d want them to be spaced no more than four years apart.
I’m the oldest, Bluth #2 and I are 4 years and 9 days apart and the Littlest Bluth is 8 years and 5 weeks older than me. Littlest Bluth was a surprise.
I love the age separation; they do too. Littlest Bluth and I have a good relationship, it borders on aunt/cousin rather than sibling, but we get along marvelously. He’s close to my parents (he got a cold on a cruise with a friend’s family; when asked how, he hung his head and said “I kissed a girl who’d just had one. How dumb am I?”) and even closer to me, which I really treasure.
4 years allows for the kids never to be in the same school at the same time; high school and middle school you’re not sharing the spotlight with the other sibling. While it makes shuttling kids to and from school a hassle, we all hugely benefited from not sharing the spotlight in our individual schools. The teachers still remembered me for Bluth #2 and remembered me and Bluth #2 for the Littlest Bluth, so that was nice.
I was a built in babysitter when I reached high school on weekend nights. That was nice for my parents.
I probably won’t have 3 kids, but I’m thrilled I have two siblings. It’s hard to distinguish siblings that are 1-2 years apart for me; you have to sometimes invite the younger one, and that’s a PITA. Plus you can’t grow as much socially if you have your younger sibling hanging around.
If I have more than 1 kid, they’ll be spaced 3 1/2-5 years apart.
I’m the oldest of two–and my brother is twenty-two months younger than I am. Also, I 'm an October baby, he’s an August baby, and because of when the cut-off date for kindergarden was in our state when we were born, mom told him before he ever left the hospital, that he wasn’t going to kindergarden when he thought he was–she was going to hold him back.
Which I think was absolutely the right choice–he fought hard enough to do everything I could do as it was. We got matching ten speed bikes --mine for a girl, his for a boy the same day, and later matching except for color mountain bikes.
In fact, because boy/girl thing and our ages (and coloring) we were frequently mistaken for twins, and I grew up hearing that I’d always have a younger brother, but I wouldn’t always have a little brother.
It is, of course, much more fun to refer to one’s younger brother as a little brother even if he is eight inches taller.
I lack experience with other age spacings, so it’s hard for me to judge optimal, but I think it worked pretty well for us.
Three siblings:
My two younger brothers and I are all within five years of each other. I think this was too closely spaced. None of us was old enough to really understand why there was now a new person in our lives taking away Mom’s attention, and as such there was a good deal of sibling rivalry. A spacing of four years between kids probably would have been better. At that time, we’d be in school and our peers would probably also have siblings, and we’d be excited about it instead of feeling angry and betrayed. (As in, I wasn’t good enough for you?!) I understand why my parents made the choice they did, though; they were previously told they were infertile after many years of trying and it not working and therefore were approaching the age where it might not be safe to be having kids - Downs Syndrome/autism concerns, etc.
I didn’t post in the parents’ perspective thread because I’m not a parent (thankfully! it’d be really hard to be a full-time undergrad and a mom at the same time) but one corollary to this is that even with the small spacing of the three of us, that really stretches out the amount of time all of us will be spending in schools, assuming we all go to college, which is pretty safe to assume considering my brothers are freaking geniuses. And therefore it also stretches out how long my parents will have to work to support us, as long as none of us get full rides or anything.
Both of my parents were married before. My brothers are 13 and 15 years older than me and my sister is 19 years older. I hated it. We never been at all close. They’re more like uncles & an aunt than siblings. I never see them except at family gatherings. My nieces were more like cousins. My oldest niece is 9 months older than me, we were in the same grade at the same schools. :eek: Fortunatly we have differant last names and everybody just assumed we were cousins (neither of us bothered to correct anyone).
They all share a bunch of memories and experiances that I don’t. Like family vacations; I haven’t been on with any of them since I was a toddler (which I don’t remember). The 13+ brother is the only one I have the vaugest memory of living with and he moved out the year I started kindergarden. For all practical purposes I was an only child, & in retrospect I had a really lonely childhood compared to my classmates. Still I can’t blame my mother for not having another kid after me. She could very well have died trying. Between my brother and I she had 3 miscarriages; 2 of which resulted in her being given the Last Rites. Just because I turned out to be a “model pregnancy” (to the surprise of all) doesn’t mean her next one would be.
4 siblings, sister 4 years older, brother 2 years older, brother 5 years younger, sister 7 years younger.
Us three older siblings kinda formed a group then the 2 others were the ‘little kids’ I also had a cousin that was 6 years younger live with us for a while he too was a ‘little kid’
I formed much better relationships with my older brother and sister then my younger ones. Being closer in age to my older brother made him an instant friend.
My mother didn’t work so lack of attention due to other children wasn’t a overwhelming fear.
My parents had softened and were better off economically by the time they had my younger siblings, this created a bit of bitterness from my older group, us feeling that the younger ones could get away with and do much more then we’d been accustomed to. We have very different recollections of our childhood parents, things like my older siblings and I had fear of my father literally beaten into us, while my younger siblings never suffered any physical abuse.
Taking into account birth order and spacing from the perspective of children, understand parents and the world around them changes too the larger the gaps the more different things will be for each child.
Ideally I would think I’d plan children as close together as possible so they would be suitable playmates for one another, but I feel that requires a parent with much more free time then is found in modern families, so spacing them out at least couple years might be better for many.
Goot point. My siblings were all born late '60s/early '70s; I was born smack bad in the middle of the '80s. Among other things this meant I was the only one of his kids my father was actually in the room for the birth. My mother was awake for my birth, but my brother’s birth was the old-style “dope her up out of her mind and pull the kid out with forceps” kind. Granted that was unsual even then, but obstetrician was old and a traditionalist and that was what both her & my grandmother advised. I can just barely remember not having the internet, but can’t remember not having a personal computer in the house at all.
I have two sisters. One 18 months younger than me, one six years. I’m close to my youngest sister now that we’re adults, but as children we barely had a relationship at all. I was extremely close to my other sister, and she was only a grade below me, we shared a lot of the same experiences outside of the home. We also have a lot of shared childhood memories, which is not something I have with youngest sis.
I’d say 18-24 months is ideal.
“Siblings?” says the only child in a quizzical manner.
My sisters are two years younger and six years younger. The one six years younger is more like a cousin than a sibling - we really didn’t grow up together. She was a baby, I was a kid. She was a kid, I was a teenager. She was a teenager, I was gone to college. We never were even in the same school - when she started kindergarten, I was already out of elementary school.
The one two years younger than I am I “grew up with” and am close to. She is close to the baby - four years was not “too much” separation for them to have shared experiences.
But my middle sister is a “uniter” - when we are 60 and our parents are dead, she’ll be the one getting the family together and insisting the cousins see each other. That won’t be me or the baby.
According to my child, ten years is very much NOT optimal. Although, to be fair, anything that doesn’t have her as an only child again will never be optimal.
My brother is 15 months younger than I, and my sister is nearly 5 years younger. My brother and I were very close as children and even as teenagers. We also lived together as young adults in college and we’re still close, thank goodness. My brother rocks.
And so does my sister. We were not as close as kids, but once she hit late teens we became much better friends. We were also roommates as adults and have a great relationship.
The spacing was accidental; all of us were born despite varying birth control methods but I’m so grateful that things happened as they did.
My brother is 10 years older than me. For the first couple of years - say, until I was about 5 - things were great. He had a lot of patience towards me and liked playing with me. Then he became a teenager with a life, and when he went off to university at 18 I was rather traumatized. After that, we weren’t very close at all until he moved back to our hometown when we were 15/25 respectively. We got along great then, but it had transitioned to that point where you and siblings are adults and maybe call once a week and go out for supper once in a while. So I’d say we’re close, but we’re missing just some vital aspect I can’t put my finger on that comes from siblings closer in age that live together. In fact, he actually tried to get my parents to change their will when he was around 20 so that he’d get legal custody of me if something happened to them. That’s just a weird situation for siblings.
But at least we agree on what to do with our parents when they get old (Dad is turning 70 this year!) and how to divide the incidentals of their estate! 
Three years, three days was perfect for my sister and me. We were close enough to play with each other, but far enough apart that we could also be separate without the other wanting to intrude.
My mom, on the other hand, was born 10 years before her brother. She would up essentially being a second mom, and, now that the first mom has died, they don’t get along too well.
My dad is somewhere in the middle, with each brother or sister being 5 or 6 years apart. He said he never really thought about it, but he did enjoy being old enough to defend his gay younger brother when people in his class picked on him. His older brother did the same for him, as my dad was a bit of a nerd and had a hearing problem. And the nerdy older sister took care of the brother, as he wasn’t too bright in his school days (and still is a bit odd to this day.)
I haven’t had children and probably won’t. If I do, I’ll try to have or get them pretty close to each other, simply by reason of biology: if they are bio-kids, my Give Birth By… date is approaching (I’ve got about 12 years left, based on family history); whether they are bio- or adopted, I’d like to have them in high school while my teeth still sleep inside my mouth.
My parents’ spacing was completely accidental. Mom was officially sterile but I suspect the one with the low sperm count was Dad, given that I was conceived after they’d been apart for two months; damage due to the fact that the MD attending my delivery would be kicked out of the butcher’s guild on account of sloppiness accounts for Middlebro arriving 6 years later, with Littlebro proving 2 years later that Mom’s reproductive organs had definitely healed up. Spacing between my cousins ranges from 14 months to 3 years, which is much more normal and I think works well.