Quote:
Originally posted by viet_mom
Because the current sociological thinking is against "adopting out of birth order" (i.e., you only adopt a child younger than your existing kid) that would mean I'd have to wait for Vietbabe to be at least 4-9 years old.
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Just out of curiosity, why? Is it an alpha-dog thing, and an older kid upsets the pecking order?
Regarding spacing, my nearest sibling and I are about 21 months apart. We had (and have) deeply incompatible personalities, and fought and tormented each other from the first week the sibling came home (when I decided to wake the baby up every hour all night long in an attempt to get my parents to return it) until I turned 18 (and moved across the country for college). We get along much better now that we live 3000 miles apart. But, as a general matter, my guess is that all the spacing advice has more to do with parental convenience and piece of mind. I'd wager that it is easier for parents to deal with multiple kids that are at roughly similar stages at the same time, or otherwise to have the older kids old enough to be more self sufficient (or actually helpful). In terms of benefit to the kids themselves, I'd wager having less pissed off, cranky, distracted and hassled parents is better for them. But the idea of having one kid needing night feedings or having diapers changed 5x per day while at the same time dealing with a toddler saying "why? why? But, but, I wanna ... NO!" all the time would drive me to heroin.
