There are many factors to consider, I think. Of course there are personalities and dynamics between siblings and parents and siblings with their parents, etc..., and there are lifestyle choices too.
For us, being free-learners, a longer spacing wouldn't mean more one-on-one time with each child before each one goes off to school, because we're all around doing our things anyway, at home or together if we go out. And longer spacing would mean having babies around longer, making our life-plans/goals timed much differently as well.
Our spacing is 14 months, 16 months, 23 months and soon to be 32 months. I won't have experience with long spacing since this is our last baby, but I think that having the first three especially close together was really beneficial for our family. Of course, had it been different, I'd likely think that about that spacing too. I guess I just adapted to whatever the needs of the family were at whatever point.
Our ds2 is five and very dramatic- like diva-esque and enormously sensitive. Had ds3 after him come later, I don't think I would have been able to handle things as well as I did. Ds3 was a very relaxed baby (ime with two degrees of very high needs with our first two babies), and if ds2 had been older and more able to do more things on his own, it would have been a disaster for us with another baby. It was very helpful to me (and him!) that he required my help to the degree that he did at that age when I was caring for a newborn/young infant. It would have been hard to keep him safe at a later stage of development (unless it was at least five years of space) while caring for a young infant. As it was, he learned to wait, as well as he can anyway, and that isn't the worst thing ever.
I think if you have specific goals in mind that can be better accomplished with certain spacing, then have at it, but generally, I think that you won't really know what worked and why until it's a retrospective look at your life. Things change so much with children and in life in general that it's bound to be a gamble of sorts any way you attempt to organise it.
This next spacing is the only one I am actually worried about because ds4 is so far into his development that I am concerned that he won't as readily accept his new baby sibling. His brothers were all so young when they had the next younger one arrive and they were all completely not jealous; they accepted one another as fact and didn't have any sibling rivalry at all of any sort. This was not through any training either; it was completely natural to them all from their first glance at the new baby. But this time, I am beginning to consider how I'll assist ds4 with feelings of jealousy and potentially rivalry with a new baby; he is the only one who shows those behaviours, and he does so toward his older brothers, so it'll be interesting to see what happens.
It may be that there's an optimum time for each child for accepting a new baby. It seems that it may be either really early or significantly later, like under two years and over four or five, with individual differences making the exceptions.
It would be interesting to see a large-scale survey of this though- to see if there is a correlation overall or if mdc tends to select for the sorts of families for whom this is incidentally the case moreso than in the gen. pop.
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