Family size and income levels

[bitterhope]

Hmm. Looking at that chart collected from census data, then you aren’t really getting the full economic picture of large families. You only get a slice in time of the economic picture for those who currently have children living at home. Knowing the number of children living at home doesn’t tell the family size–it tells the household size. That’s different.

As mentioned already large families start small, but at the other end of their child raising years, the children leave home. The census data looks at people living in the house, yet parents can have spreads of 20+ years between their oldest and their youngest child. Learning that a family has only one child living at home doesn’t tell us if that child is an only child or not. That child may be the youngest of 20 who have already moved out or the first of 12 more who have yet to be born. You really don’t know. If you looked at census collection across 40 years, you might get a better idea of the size of that child’s family of origin, but that would be really hard to do as people move and still wouldn’t be accurate as children aren’t born only every ten years when the census is taken. Large families may have very little time when all the children living in our household simultaneously.

Looking at the data is interesting, but it doesn’t really tell an accurate picture of family size because household size and family size are two different things.

This is exactly right. Go into any Army post in the family housing units and you will find entire streets (think 15-40 duplexes in a row) with families of 6+ kids living in them. Before we bought our house and moved off post, we were not the largest family on our street. Sixty families living on our cul de sac, smallest family was 4 kids and still growing, largest family was 10 in the home, 3 kids grown. We at the time had 7. Our attached neighbor had 6 at home, one in basic training, one in college. On posts with older housing units it’s easy because they grouped families in areas with similar sized families so all of us needing 5 bedrooms were in the same neighborhood. The Army is moving away from that as they build new homes (much needed and good) in neighborhoods that are set up like outside communities (not so good for many reasons). Now that we live off post we aren’t all stuck in a row, but I run into moms of 8 kids all the time. A cashier at our Walmart has 8 grown children and loves seeing our family come through. It brings back memories for her. In our Cathic parish, there are six moms of 8, four moms of 9, seven moms of 10, and three with more than 10. These are all families with young children. If we added the moms that have teen and/or grown children only, there is easily another 30 families to add to the mix. The majority of large families I run into are not Catholic but most do homeschool at least some of their children. Most families have some at home and others grown, so household size does not match family size in many cases. My parents had 16 children but there was never a time that all 16 lived at home at the same time. I have more memories of many of my foster siblings growing up than I do my real siblings. This is why charts, statistics, studies and such really don’t impress me. Most of the time they take a small sample and try to cover the entire picture to match it, or they start with an answer and set out to prove it, or as in the case of census data, incomplete information and misidentifying terms (household/family size) so false conclusions are drawn. Yes, there are many more small/average/medium families, and that is the case throughout the world. That doesn’t mean that moms of 8+ don’t exist or that we make up a microscopic portion of society either.

 

[Xantippe]

Hmm. Looking at that chart collected from census data, then you aren’t really getting the full economic picture of large families. You only get a slice in time of the economic picture for those who currently have children living at home. Knowing the number of children living at home doesn’t tell the family size–it tells the household size. That’s different.

As mentioned already large families start small, but at the other end of their child raising years, the children leave home. The census data looks at people living in the house, yet parents can have spreads of 20+ years between their oldest and their youngest child. Learning that a family has only one child living at home doesn’t tell us if that child is an only child or not. That child may be the youngest of 20 who have already moved out or the first of 12 more who have yet to be born. You really don’t know. If you looked at census collection across 40 years, you might get a better idea of the size of that child’s family of origin, but that would be really hard to do as people move and still wouldn’t be accurate as children aren’t born only every ten years when the census is taken. Large families may have very little time when all the children living in our household simultaneously.

Looking at the data is interesting, but it doesn’t really tell an accurate picture of family size because household size and family size are two different things.

That’s an interesting point, but the census figure does still tell you how many parents have how many kids at home right now, which is worth knowing.

You’d have to look elsewhere for stats on how many children people have over their lifetimes. One place to start is the total fertility rate, which is how many children the average woman gives birth to–it has been hovering around 2 for the past 40+ years. (Google says it’s currently around 1.88 births per woman for the US.)

 

[pensmama87]

That’s an interesting point, but the census figure does still tell you how many parents have how many kids at home right now, which is worth knowing.

You’d have to look elsewhere for stats on how many children people have over their lifetimes. One place to start is the total fertility rate, which is how many children the average woman gives birth to–it has been hovering around 2 for the past 40+ years. (Google says it’s currently around 1.88 births per woman for the US.)

I used to know more about how TFR was calculated, but it’s always bugged me since it seems that the people I know who have kids, tend to have 2 or 3, but then there’s lots of people who don’t have kids, and the rate is putting the two together. Only children are still kind of seen as socially weird (so, 0, 2, or 3 is fine, but 1 or 4+ is weird, unless you’re Catholic.)

Does TFR include all living women or just women of childbearing age?

 

[Xantippe]

I used to know more about how TFR was calculated, but it’s always bugged me since it seems that the people I know who have kids, tend to have 2 or 3, but then there’s lots of people who don’t have kids, and the rate is putting the two together. Only children are still kind of seen as socially weird (so, 0, 2, or 3 is fine, but 1 or 4+ is weird, unless you’re Catholic.)

Does TFR include all living women or just women of childbearing age?

I think you’re right about social norms, but you’d need to add in pretty much all theologically exotic conservative groups–Orthodox Jews, Amish, Mormons, quiverfull Protestant, etc.

TFR is a somewhat weirdly calculated/semi-imaginary number, but it does give you a feel for what the social norms are in different places.

heatherjacobs.hubpages.com/hub/totalfertilityrate

My eyes started to cross from all the math.

 

[Convert_in_99]

I used to know more about how TFR was calculated, but it’s always bugged me since it seems that the people I know who have kids, tend to have 2 or 3, but then there’s lots of people who don’t have kids, and the rate is putting the two together. Only children are still kind of seen as socially weird (so, 0, 2, or 3 is fine, but 1 or 4+ is weird, unless you’re Catholic.)

Does TFR include all living women or just women of childbearing age?

Well less than 3 is usually looked down upon by many practicing Catholics, so there’s that extreme too. I feel more comfortable around secular persons because of it.

Though I have seen many Not-That-Religious or non believers having larger families of like 4-6 these days. I think that Hollywood making pregnancy and childbearing look like the glamorous or “in” thing to do (though of course these babies are often not conceived in the best of circumstances) might be helping. All you have to do is glance at the magazine headlines at the grocery store to see this. I think that this trend might actually help (or at least im hoping it will) other women choose life instead of abortion, and encourage families even have an extra child or two than they normally would. It seems like it is trending that way…at least I’m hoping what I’m seeing is really happening!

 

[ThePCWife]

This is exactly right. Go into any Army post in the family housing units and you will find entire streets (think 15-40 duplexes in a row) with families of 6+ kids living in them. Before we bought our house and moved off post, we were not the largest family on our street. Sixty families living on our cul de sac, smallest family was 4 kids and still growing, largest family was 10 in the home, 3 kids grown. We at the time had 7. Our attached neighbor had 6 at home, one in basic training, one in college. On posts with older housing units it’s easy because they grouped families in areas with similar sized families so all of us needing 5 bedrooms were in the same neighborhood. The Army is moving away from that as they build new homes (much needed and good) in neighborhoods that are set up like outside communities (not so good for many reasons). Now that we live off post we aren’t all stuck in a row, but I run into moms of 8 kids all the time. A cashier at our Walmart has 8 grown children and loves seeing our family come through. It brings back memories for her. In our Cathic parish, there are six moms of 8, four moms of 9, seven moms of 10, and three with more than 10. These are all families with young children. If we added the moms that have teen and/or grown children only, there is easily another 30 families to add to the mix. The majority of large families I run into are not Catholic but most do homeschool at least some of their children. Most families have some at home and others grown, so household size does not match family size in many cases. My parents had 16 children but there was never a time that all 16 lived at home at the same time. I have more memories of many of my foster siblings growing up than I do my real siblings. This is why charts, statistics, studies and such really don’t impress me. Most of the time they take a small sample and try to cover the entire picture to match it, or they start with an answer and set out to prove it, or as in the case of census data, incomplete information and misidentifying terms (household/family size) so false conclusions are drawn. Yes, there are many more small/average/medium families, and that is the case throughout the world. That doesn’t mean that moms of 8+ don’t exist or that we make up a microscopic portion of society either.

They do make up a microscopic portion of society even when you pull cohort data and track births through time. There is also something called “children ever born” that tracks how many children a woman has through her lifetime, and the numbers are extremely low for 8+, even among older cohorts. These drops happened decades ago, before internet, and to a lesser but still quite real extent even before tv and women’s mass entry into the workforce.

I’ll trust the data, it’s the accumulation of anecdotes and monitoring across decades, not just one nor two people’s anecdotal remarks about their personal friend circle.

 

[ThePCWife]

Well less than 3 is usually looked down upon by many practicing Catholics, so there’s that extreme too. I feel more comfortable around secular persons because of it.

Though I have seen many Not-That-Religious or non believers having larger families of like 4-6 these days. I think that Hollywood making pregnancy and childbearing look like the glamorous or “in” thing to do (though of course these babies are often not conceived in the best of circumstances) might be helping. All you have to do is glance at the magazine headlines at the grocery store to see this. I think that this trend might actually help (or at least im hoping it will) other women choose life instead of abortion, and encourage families even have an extra child or two than they normally would. It seems like it is trending that way…at least I’m hoping what I’m seeing is really happening!

There has been an increase in having a third child in the last decade. I am not sure about 4-6 right now though, it has a lot of flux. Exactly seven is about half of all “large” families, going by children ever born. Which makes sense, women can’t have kids forever and with the vagaries of miscarriage and spacing, it’s hard to get much over 8 even marrying pretty young if mom isn’t pregnant every year…

 

[bitterhope]

I think you’re right about social norms, but you’d need to add in pretty much all theologically exotic conservative groups–Orthodox Jews, Amish, Mormons, quiverfull Protestant, etc.

TFR is a somewhat weirdly calculated/semi-imaginary number, but it does give you a feel for what the social norms are in different places.

heatherjacobs.hubpages.com/hub/totalfertilityrate

My eyes started to cross from all the math.

It’s actually pretty straight forward. It’s just the average of the age specific fertility rates.

Both statistics aren’t really a clear picture of individuals either. People aren’t numbers on a chart and don’t behave in the ways it appears on paper. Basically it shows that at any given age a specific number of women are giving live birth to living babies, but it does not show how many other babies each specific lady already has. So ladies with many kids bring the average up and those with 0 bring it down until you arrive at the current rate of 1.88.

 

[Usige]

I used to know more about how TFR was calculated, but it’s always bugged me since it seems that the people I know who have kids, tend to have 2 or 3, but then there’s lots of people who don’t have kids, and the rate is putting the two together. Only children are still kind of seen as socially weird (so, 0, 2, or 3 is fine, but 1 or 4+ is weird, unless you’re Catholic.)

Does TFR include all living women or just women of childbearing age?

It just includes women of child bearing age. It takes the number of births to women in different age ranges (generally 7 5 year ranges between 15 and 49) and then divides each range by the number of women in each range. The rate for each range is then multiplied by the width of the age range (to cover the assumption that the fertility rate is constant across the time period) and then the those numbers summed.

So it includes all women who are in the age range, but does not take into account those who purposely will not have children. Given that it treats a nun or childfree woman as having the same number of theoretical children as other women. In essence my wife makes up for 2 or 3 women that I work with the decided to be childfree.

Drops in TFR does not really translate into smaller families, but likely reflects fewer women who marry or those who marry, but chose not to have children. While TFR doesn’t care about marital status, I seem to remember that unmarried women tend to have fewer children.

This is always the problem of statistics. A study is done for a specific purpose, but those statistics are then used to explain a different situation they might not really apply to.

 

[pianistclare]

Well less than 3 is usually looked down upon by many practicing Catholics, so there’s that extreme too. I feel more comfortable around secular persons because of it.

Though I have seen many Not-That-Religious or non believers having larger families of like 4-6 these days. I think that Hollywood making pregnancy and childbearing look like the glamorous or “in” thing to do (though of course these babies are often not conceived in the best of circumstances) might be helping. All you have to do is glance at the magazine headlines at the grocery store to see this. I think that this trend might actually help (or at least im hoping it will) other women choose life instead of abortion, and encourage families even have an extra child or two than they normally would. It seems like it is trending that way…at least I’m hoping what I’m seeing is really happening!

I continue to be amazed that you all live around so many people who feel free to comment on family size. It’s just not done around here…never had had anyone in church or out of church comment on why I “only” had 2 children. Also, I kept children in my home for years, and at one time I had 5 kids under 5. The people in the grocery line always thought they were adorable.
I could care less what people think…Catholic or not.
And the few families that have tons of kids in our parish are never gossiped about.
The ones who only have one child are never spoke of either. Y’all hang out with some crazy pants people, LOL!

 

[UbiCaritas]

I continue to be amazed that you all live around so many people who feel free to comment on family size. It’s just not done around here…never had had anyone in church or out of church comment on why I “only” had 2 children. Also, I kept children in my home for years, and at one time I had 5 kids under 5. The people in the grocery line always thought they were adorable.
I could care less what people think…Catholic or not.
And the few families that have tons of kids in our parish are never gossiped about.
The ones who only have one child are never spoke of either. Y’all hang out with some crazy pants people, LOL!

I seem to remember that you’re in the south, like I am, and wonder if that’s part of it.

Here, at least, there still seems to be a certain Southern reserve about making personal remarks or asking personal questions. I do get the occasional “are you going to give DD a sibling” question, but it’s rare, usually from someone I know at least moderately well, and they’re perfectly content with a “we’ll see what happens” sort of answer. While I’ve heard horror stories of random people walking up to new moms and asking totally inappropriate questions, I had that happen exactly once, and she wasn’t from around hear, judging by the accent.

 

[Xantippe]

There has been an increase in having a third child in the last decade. I am not sure about 4-6 right now though, it has a lot of flux. Exactly seven is about half of all “large” families, going by children ever born. Which makes sense, women can’t have kids forever and with the vagaries of miscarriage and spacing, it’s hard to get much over 8 even marrying pretty young if mom isn’t pregnant every year…

I have a theory on the third child. What if it’s caused by an increase in twin births because of fertility treatments?

A lot of people doing fertility treatments wind up getting a “freebie” twin.

 

[Xantippe]

I continue to be amazed that you all live around so many people who feel free to comment on family size. It’s just not done around here…never had had anyone in church or out of church comment on why I “only” had 2 children. Also, I kept children in my home for years, and at one time I had 5 kids under 5. The people in the grocery line always thought they were adorable.
I could care less what people think…Catholic or not.
And the few families that have tons of kids in our parish are never gossiped about.
The ones who only have one child are never spoke of either. Y’all hang out with some crazy pants people, LOL!

I did have a nice older lady (a Catholic mother of 4) recently wondering out loud when I’d have a 4th, 5th or 6th kid.

I didn’t have the presence of mind to say, “You must think that I’m a lot younger than I actually am.”

 

[bitterhope]

They do make up a microscopic portion of society even when you pull cohort data and track births through time. There is also something called “children ever born” that tracks how many children a woman has through her lifetime, and the numbers are extremely low for 8+, even among older cohorts. These drops happened decades ago, before internet, and to a lesser but still quite real extent even before tv and women’s mass entry into the workforce.

I’ll trust the data, it’s the accumulation of anecdotes and monitoring across decades, not just one nor two people’s anecdotal remarks about their personal friend circle.

I do agree that most women are not able to have 8+ kids regardless of how hard they try. That is why we that so feel incredibly blessed. Even if no family planning is used at all, most will never have large families. It’s just how it works biologically. My inlaws tried for 10 years to have their first and another 8 to have their second. Some never conceive or have one and never another. Some of us are blessed with increased fertility. My parents had 16 children without ever trying to conceive. They just let nature take it’s course. I tried unsuccessfully to prevent babies and still have had 8. That is also why I don’t feel like it is accurate that so many think the majority of us judge them or even care that they have fewer kids. I’m sure some do. It’s human nature apparently to be rude like that. But it’s not how good people striving to be holy behave. We are blessed even though at times throughout my life it has felt like a curse–another reason I can’t see people being so hung up on family size. Plus, we all started out with 0 kids. Some of us go on to have 1, some of us keep going after that.

As for being a microscopic portion, I still don’t believe we are. We are few but there are enough of us that most people aren’t surprised I have eight children until they find out they are so close in age and they all have the same dad. But that’s a totally different topic.

 

[ThePCWife]

I have a theory on the third child. What if it’s caused by an increase in twin births because of fertility treatments?

A lot of people doing fertility treatments wind up getting a “freebie” twin.

The increase in twin births due to fertility treatments has pretty much disappeared, this has been commented upon by the people who gather all this information for us. IVF is in fact mostly like Catholics claim it to be, a mirage rather than a guarantee.

 

[Convert_in_99]

I seem to remember that you’re in the south, like I am, and wonder if that’s part of it.

Here, at least, there still seems to be a certain Southern reserve about making personal remarks or asking personal questions. I do get the occasional “are you going to give DD a sibling” question, but it’s rare, usually from someone I know at least moderately well, and they’re perfectly content with a “we’ll see what happens” sort of answer. While I’ve heard horror stories of random people walking up to new moms and asking totally inappropriate questions, I had that happen exactly once, and she wasn’t from around hear, judging by the accent.

Nope. That’s not it. I live in the South and get unwanted comments all the time about children (or our lack thereof.)

Surprisingly enough though, I don’t get any negative remarks about being Catholic in the South, but got them often up north.

Although the Catholics at my church do love to make nasty comments about my husband being a Protestant. Like they can’t believe I did such a thing! Then when they hear I married him as a Protestant (in other words I did it on purpose) they will think it their place to ask “why?”

Needless to say I don’t have many Church friends. And why I have such a bad taste in my mouth about Catholics in general.

 

[Xantippe]

Nope. That’s not it. I live in the South and get unwanted comments all the time about children (or our lack thereof.)

Surprisingly enough though, I don’t get any negative remarks about being Catholic in the South, but got them often up north.

Although the Catholics at my church do love to make nasty comments about my husband being a Protestant. Like they can’t believe I did such a thing! Then when they hear I married him as a Protestant (in other words I did it on purpose) they will think it their place to ask “why?”

Needless to say I don’t have many Church friends. And why I have such a bad taste in my mouth about Catholics in general.

Oh dear.

 

[Convert_in_99]

Oh dear.

That’s life unfortunately.

 

[pianistclare]

That’s life unfortunately.

Move further south.

 

[Convert_in_99]

Move further south.

Lol! Yeah but my husband doesn’t want to live in Mississippi! . It’s only like six miles south lol!