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.
Read more on Washington Examiner: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/the-shrinking-village-has-no-cousins