Safety in Numbers

by Maria on July 29, 2009

I’m struck by the number of people amongst Capitol Hill’s 2009 50 most beautiful who are from big families, i.e. of 6 or more kids.

A Brussels friend once said the Irish are so numerous in the European Commission because so many of the first wave of them were from big families and were therefore natural masters of deal-making and compromise. Until the last decade or two, probably most of the Irish population were middle children of large-ish families. We do seem to have a disproportionate number of countrymen in the European and other international institutions, and some of them have done remarkably well. (Alternative theories may include mass emigration in the 1970s and 80s and a bit of path dependence since whatever other qualities the Irish abroad may have, we love to give a leg up to our compatriots. Also, there are more people from big families because, well, there are more of them.)

More Hill staffers than I would have expected come from big families. (Alternative theories: lots are from recently immigrated families, or maybe the profile writers draw more attention to the big families because they’re unusual, or maybe beautiful people are inexplicably more likely to have many siblings…) Intuitively, people who’ve grown up in a large family will have been doing power-plays, coalition-building and breaking, and all sorts of tactical shenanigans since before they could talk. Perhaps the early practice gives them an edge?

I’ve never rated the emphasis placed in popular psychology on the roles of the Eldest Child, Middle Child and Youngest Child. I’m one of the 60% of my siblings who are middle children and I never noticed a particular bent towards peace-making amongst us. But maybe there’s something to it.

In any case, check out the Wyoming cowboy on page 2. I wouldn’t mind building a coalition with him.

{ 29 comments }

1

alex 07.29.09 at 6:13 pm

Did you correct for party affiliation, and the ‘traditional values’ type of republicanism…?

2

Maria 07.29.09 at 6:39 pm

To be honest, I didn’t even count them…

Though you might expect the likely stereotypes to cancel each other out, e.g. big family conservative christian republicans versus big family recent immigrant democrats.

3

Bloix 07.29.09 at 6:57 pm

Don’t make me laugh. The most beautiful person on Capitol Hill, of either sex, bar none, hands down, flat out and going away, not even close, is MY CONGRESSPERSON, Donna Edwards. Not to mention the member of congress with the most progressive politics. She looks great in photos but she’s ten times prettier in person. Gorgeous, poised, elegant, charming. And she’s got this little gap between her two front teeth that just KILLS me.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/powervote/3320872380/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/stoller/2261812681/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/stoller/2265267840/in/photostream/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/7491409@N05/3370621097/

4

JM 07.29.09 at 7:24 pm

In any case, check out the Wyoming cowboy on page 2. I wouldn’t mind building a coalition with him.

Deary, you need to get out more.

5

Maria 07.29.09 at 7:48 pm

too right!

6

P O'Neill 07.29.09 at 8:13 pm

I think this topic merits an article in an economics journal looking at how acquired experience in non-market allocative mechanisms (i.e. the large family dinner table) leads to a propensity to end up working for the government.

7

Anderson 07.29.09 at 8:17 pm

Only wealthy people can afford large families, and wealthy people are more likely to attract beautiful partners and to pay for orthodontics, etc. for their children.

8

Ciarán 07.29.09 at 8:23 pm

Anderson, any theory based on good teeth cannot be applied to the Irish.

9

david 07.29.09 at 9:05 pm

or maybe beautiful people are inexplicably more likely to have many siblings…

I don’t see why this is inexplicable. Beautiful parents plausibly have beautiful children. Beautiful parents plausibly also get busy more often, what with being beautiful and all that… hence such children get more siblings? Or something?

/speculation

10

tom s. 07.29.09 at 10:23 pm

The evolution of beautiful people, or at least women, has been completely explained by Markus Joleka and Satoshi Kanazawa, as reported in the Sunday Times here.

(Unfortunately Andrew Gelman insists on bringing to light boring and inconvenient facts that contradict our Finnish/Japanese heroes here)

11

Timothy Scriven 07.29.09 at 10:56 pm

To be honest I can’t say the cowboy did anything for me, and this is coming from a major fan of cowboys. Disappointed Maria.

12

grackle 07.29.09 at 11:59 pm

If these are the most beautiful of Washingtonia, it must be a homely lot overall.

Having browsed most of the entries I saw no figures about family size. Where did you get that?

13

Delicious Pundit 07.30.09 at 5:05 am

If these are the most beautiful of Washingtonia, it must be a homely lot overall.

I believe the line is, “Politics is show business for ugly people.”

When I used to visit D.C. it would strike me that, since it is merely the political capital and not the artistic or financial one, people don’t care how they look. Here in L.A., god knows there are people who you just want to point at, mouth agape (especially on the Westside) but, to paraphrase Walter Sobchak, at least it’s a style.

Finally, off of Maria’s last line, a friend of mine was dating a French woman during the Iraq War and referred to it as The Coalition of the Willing.

14

Ray 07.30.09 at 7:48 am

“most of the Irish population were middle children of large-ish families”

how did that work? Did they use their superior diplomatic skills to incite their older and younger sibs to kill each other off?

15

garymar 07.30.09 at 7:49 am

Hollywood is high school with money.

Washington is Hollywood for ugly people.

QED, Washington is high school for ugly people with money.

16

derek 07.30.09 at 9:24 am

Makes sense to me:

1) Tall men (and tall women) get married earlier, get paid more, get promoted faster, and top out their promotion at a higher level (Sally MacIntyre, “Social Correlates of Human Height”, probably also more recent references I don’t know about).

2) Beautiful people probably have similar advantages (I’ve heard of a “beauty effect” but wasn’t paying attention to references).

3) Especially as height seems to be an important part of beauty (stated preference among women who use dating services for height in a male partner, probably other bits of evidence elsewhere, including male preference for taller women, subject to their not being taller than themselves?).

4) Also, people of the same class help each other out, and a family of siblings is the ultimate “class”, in terms of class loyalty.

So, beautiful people are richer and get more power, can afford to raise, educate and advance more of their children, who also help each other stay rich and powerful. Ergo, you would expect a list of people who are beautiful in a center of power to be from larger-than-average families.

17

ajay 07.30.09 at 9:43 am

Also, there are more people from big families because, well, there are more of them.

Aaargh! By the same logic, most people in Ireland are from Dublin, because Dublin’s bigger than any other city or town in Ireland…

13: no, that actually makes sense – if all the families have five or more kids, then most children will be middle children (ie not the eldest or the youngest).
But I’m not sure that was the case. In 1970 the average Irish family with children had 3.8 children.
It might, however, be the case that the eldest child tended to stay in Ireland and the younger siblings would be more likely to seek work elsewhere? That would certainly fit the pattern in other countries.

I’d speculate that there are another couple of reasons: if you’re Irish, the Irish are noticeable, especially as you know that Ireland’s a small country so you aren’t really expecting to see many of them at all. I’m sure that a Marseillaise visiting Brussels might think to herself “Gosh [or rather, parbleu], there are a lot of Marseillais here.”
Second, because Ireland is a small country, and fairly committed politically to the whole European project, it may be seen as a good thing to be Irish in the Commission bureaucracy – you’re less likely to come up against a conflict between country and Union than you would if you were British or French. (And, of course, you can speak good English, which helps in negotiations.)

As for the big families on the Hill: Hill staffers are from rich families; having lots of kids is a form of conspicuous consumption among the American upper classes.

18

ajay 07.30.09 at 9:46 am

So, beautiful people are richer and get more power, can afford to raise, educate and advance more of their children, who also help each other stay rich and powerful. Ergo, you would expect a list of people who are beautiful in a center of power to be from larger-than-average families.

Hmm – actually, that doesn’t quite follow. What it predicts is that the members of a list of people who are powerful should be beautiful and also from larger-than-average families.

Which is easy to disprove by looking at a picture of the US Senate. I refuse to believe that, even in their youth, they were models of loveliness. Maybe their left shoulderblades were.

19

Ray 07.30.09 at 10:01 am

ajay, it makes sense if you have 5 kids and you say 3 of them are ‘middle children’. But I don’t think that makes sense.
I was the oldest of four kids, but I don’t think we broke down into ‘oldest – middle two – youngest’. It was more ‘older two – younger two’ (and ‘boys – girls’)
Both my parents (and my father-in-law) come from large families, at least 7 kids in each. Again, my sense of it is that they didn’t divide themselves into one = ‘oldest’, one = ‘youngest’, everyone else = ‘middle’. Their ages were unevenly distributed and they weren’t all at home at the same time, so there’d be an older group, a younger group, maybe a middle group, and the memberships of those groups would be in flux.

(And even if we assume that all of those kids with older and younger sibs are ‘middle’, I don’t think it adds up. If every family had four kids, ‘middle kids’ would be half the population, but that’s a high average to maintain. )

20

ajay 07.30.09 at 12:47 pm

I agree that it doesn’t add up – sorry if I wasn’t clear. I rather doubt that any European country has recently had a majority of middle children, however defined – I think it’s the existing (inaccurate) cliche of Irish families being huge, reinforced by every Irish family of four or more kids one encounters, but not weakened by meeting an Irish family with one or two.

21

Maria 07.30.09 at 1:49 pm

Thanks Ajay and Ray – sensible as always and more so than this post deserves!

I think of myself as belonging to the last (or at least most recent) Irish generation where 4+ child families were the norm – I’m in my thirties – but I’ve never checked the numbers to verify. Although we’ve had an immigration-led baby boom the last few years, I suspect it’s due to greater numbers of parents rather than of children. Anecdotally, my generation seems to be producing about 2 kids per family.

Strictly speaking, a family should have 5+ kids to have more middle ones than eldest and youngest. But the Farrell experience mirrors Ray’s. There’s no ‘middle’ amongst us 6, just different and shifting alliances and ways to splice.

Which goes back to my original, slightly tongue in cheek assertion; that kids who grow up with several siblings might thrive more in institutional or political settings. I don’t think there’s much to it, other than an easily falsified but enjoyably discussed theory.

22

Maria 07.30.09 at 1:52 pm

Hello Delicious!

As to DC-ites not caring how they look, I think it’s more that they don’t want to stand out fashion-wise. They just want to ‘get it right’. The women seem only to shop in Ann Taylor Loft. Which is not a bad place to buy work clothes but it does lack flair if you don’t mix it up.

23

ajay 07.30.09 at 1:58 pm

Thanks – and, out of curiosity, do you think that, of your generation (or indeed earlier ones) it was the younger siblings who tended to find work outside Ireland? This was certainly the case in my (non-Irish) parents’ generation; the eldest got the farm or the business, the younger ones were expected to strike out for themselves, just as in all the best fairy stories.

sensible as always and more so than this post deserves

Careful, this site apparently has a major problem with people being dismissive of posts by female contributors. :)

24

Maria 07.30.09 at 2:23 pm

We do indeed have that problem, though sometimes I think I invite that by being so recklessly trivial.

Funnily enough, in my limited circle of extended family and friends, I’d say it’s more often the eldest who goes abroad to forge a path, rather than the youngest and non-inheriting. Probably because there’s nothing much to inherit. In my family, it’s siblings 1, 2 and 4 who live abroad more or less permanently. Numbers 5 and 6 have spent extended periods (a year or so) abroad, but still live in Ireland. And number 3 is an incorrigible homebird.

25

Tim Wilkinson 07.30.09 at 3:08 pm

‘How the Tolerably Ungrotesque Wonk got its Siblings’

Salient: I hereby deny that Brandon del Pozo’s thread has the right to exist, thus offsetting this comment.

26

Laura 07.30.09 at 4:21 pm

Since this whole thread is running on antecdata anyway, here’s my two cents on which siblings emigrate – my family was like Maria’s.

My mother was one of eleven in Ireland, and it was actually the older ones (born in the 1940s and early ’50s) who mostly left. As Ireland and, more importantly, the family, got more prosperous, the younger ones didn’t have to leave: the money the older daughters sent home helped the younger boys go to university.

And there was a very strong expectation that no matter what, the youngest daughter would stay nearby to care for her parents in their old age (as she did).

27

Salient 07.30.09 at 4:25 pm

Salient: I hereby deny that Brandon del Pozo’s thread has the right to exist, thus offsetting this comment.

(grin)

My large and general point that people should think twice any time they consider issuing a comment that a post ought not exist, has been abducted by my small and ancillary point that such posts seemed to occur disproportionately on female authors’ OPs.

I’m, uh, still engaging in hostage negotiations to recover my original point, and will issue a notification when successful. :-)

28

GaryMar Is Right 07.31.09 at 3:59 am

Those are some of the fugliest “beautiful people” I’ve ever seen.

I mean if that’s what passes for good-looking in DC, I’d hate to see what ugly is.

“Washington is Hollywood for ugly people” for sure.

29

nona 07.31.09 at 4:34 am

I tried playing a game of guessing who was a Republican and who was a democrat before checking out party affiliation. For a few people it was obvious (or seemed so) but I think this challenged some of my stereotypes on the matter of personal appearance.

I’m from a largish family for the states (4) and it seems like the personality types were less related to family size and intensely related to birth order. It’s kind of nuts how perfectly we reflect the birth order stereotypes. My husband’s family is much the same in that way.

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