["Let Inga Tell You," La Jolla Light, published May 19, 2025] 2025
I'm a middle child so I m always interested in studies about birth order, and particularly, middle child syndrome. And yes, there apparently is one.
Middle children in general are thought to be the peace makers but also the forgotten children, hence needing to develop resilience, independence and social skills so they can be seen and heard.
Obviously, much depends on how many children are in a family, something that is known in scientific circles as "sibship size." In a family of eight, there's a lot of middle kids.
But in my case, I was the true middle child. My Protestant mother had to agree to raise us as Catholics when she married my Catholic father, but after three kids in three and a half years, she underwent a profound spiritual conversion and became one of the world's foremost proponents of birth control. She was watching her sisters-in-law have a child a year (one had nine before her female parts gave out) and Mom was already feeling that three might be two too many in such a short period of time.
I was a blue-eyed blond in a family of brown-eyed brunettes, the creamy blond filling in the family Oreo. (OK, so we may be mixing some metaphors here.) My mother endured a lot of milk man jokes but if she could be getting it on with the milk man with an infant at home, then more power to her.
I not only didn't look like anybody else in the family (people always assumed I was my sister s visiting friend given our proximity in ages) but my skill sets were vastly different than my siblings as well. They were very quick learners; I was a plodder. I, however, had natural social skills that they struggled with.
My parents met in an Honors Shakespeare class at Brown University and I think had expectations of at least moderately intelligent children.
While my siblings tested into the stratosphere on IQ tests, the school s guidance counselor informed my mother that "two out of three ain't bad." Mom was advised to (waaay) lower her expectations where I was concerned. Vocational school could be a good fit, or perhaps one of the less demanding state schools.
My parents, being educationally aspirational, refused to believe I was as dumb as I tested. But I think there may have been some unstated concern that babies had been switched at birth. Somewhere out there was a family of blond dumdums who inexplicably ended up with a brunette genius.
There were always at least three trips a week to the Pleasantville Public Library where my mother and sibs stocked up on new reading material. I did too, but I read one book to their five.
Somehow the family speed reading gene seemed to have missed me. I liked reading but I read slowly and with my lips.
As the blond sheep of the family, I was sometimes the target of my siblings touting their superior reading-acquired vocabulary. (And yes, you do acquire an amazing vocabulary if you read a lot.) Our dog, Josephine Bonaparte, was misbehaving one day, and I announced, "Josephine, you are a recalcitrant animal!" ( Recalcitrant being one of the vocabulary words in English class that week.)
Everyone looked up from their books. "Whoa! Inga said a big word!" (Then they went right back to reading.)
Reading a recent article on middle child syndrome, I was interested to learn that the three qualifiers include feeling overlooked, struggling to find their place (i.e. finding it harder to figure out what is unique or special about them) and feeling like they aren't getting enough attention (although the first and third seem kind of the same to me.)
I knew what was unique or special about me: I was the family idiot. I think my parents, who loved me and supported me in everything I did, would be horrified to think I saw myself that way but my siblings were truly human encyclopedias.
Of course, I wasn't an idiot. But in my family I was a relative idiot. It's a thing.
Ironically, I was always a much better student than either of my siblings, grade-wise. It s amazing what dogged determination will do for you. In fact, it was my signature pathological persistence (my husband's term) that finally got our streetlight fixed last year after more than 100 hours and a year of effort. Do not try to outlast me. I never give up.
So was that the upside in my personal journey as a middle child? Like the old Avis slogan, "We try harder," did I have to put in more effort to achieve the same results as my brilliant sibs?
As a postscript, I confess I was secretly relieved when both my sister and I signed up for 23andme and matched as siblings. I would never have thought my mother really got it on with the milk man. But that switched baby thing could really happen. Probably especially after the Second World War when a billion people were having babies (like me) in way-overcrowded maternity wards.
Interestingly, one of my sons is very much like me: blue-eyed, blond, very creative. The hazel-eyed brunette son bears no resemblance to me in appearance, talents, or personality.
The one who's like me is adopted.
