As a generation of Americans and Europeans with fewer siblings than their predecessors in turn has fewer children than previous generations, the result is that today’s children often have no cousins, or very few. Timothy Carney comments on the results:

Historically, in the West and elsewhere, cousins, along with aunts and uncles, have played crucial roles in family life. . . . “It takes a village,” as a wise woman once said, “to raise a child.” That’s an old African proverb. Historically, the “village” was extended family, capacious both vertically (spanning generations) and horizontally. In other words, the village is largely cousins.

Ask a modern parent which days involve the least supervision of his or her children, and it’s those holidays when little Bobby and Sue are too busy playing with their cousins to ask for anything. If we want happier children and less anxious parents, we need to save the cousin.

The decline of the cousin connects to another phenomenon Carney remarked upon a few weeks earlier: “a rising tide” of claims in advice columns, magazine articles, and so forth that “being expected to care for other people is traumatic or even harmful.” In particular, the argument has been made that it’s “vaguely sexist” to ask an older daughter to care for a younger sibling.

Yesterday, the Iranian foreign minister flew to Geneva to meet with European diplomats. President Trump, meanwhile, indicated that cease-fire negotiations might soon begin with Iran, which would presumably involve Tehran agreeing to make concessions regarding its nuclear program, while Washington pressures Israel to halt its military activities. According to Israeli media, Iran already began putting out feelers to the U.S. earlier this week. Aviram Bellaishe considers the purpose of these overtures:

The regime’s request to return to negotiations stems from the principle of deception and delay that has guided it for decades. Iran wants to extricate itself from a situation of total destruction of its nuclear facilities. It understands that to save the nuclear program, it must stop at a point that would allow it to return to it in the shortest possible time. So long as the negotiation process leads to halting strikes on its military capabilities and preventing the destruction of the nuclear program, and enables the transfer of enriched uranium to a safe location, it can simultaneously create the two tracks in which it specializes—a false facade of negotiations alongside a hidden nuclear race.