Family size and income levels

[HouseArrest]

I had lots of thoughts about this from when you shared it on the other thread. It makes perfect sense to me.

We generally start out motherhood/parenthood with one child. My husband and I were younger when we had one child, and our careers we’re relatively young. We put our first child full time daycare, which took a huge amount of the second paycheck, but we still came our financially ahead with two incomes.

By the time child #2 came along, I’d cut back to part time work. Daycare took a bigger piece of that second paycheck.

By the time child #3 came along, I stopped working altogether. The result was what this report showed–from child #1 to child #3, our income dropped. We lived on one income for many years.

Fast forward several years to child #7. We’re older. For the parent who worked outside the home, that translates to seniority and experience at work–and experience often brings more $. (If a child comes every 2 years, that would be 12 more years of experience that a working parent has by the time the seventh child comes along.) Plus, our oldest children are older. They don’t need daycare and may even help watch younger siblings. If one parent has been staying home, circumstances may make it desirable and possible for that parent to go back to work at least part time, which then increases the family income. The incentive for a parent who previously stayed home with the children to go back to work increases steadily as the children get older.

So quick summary: 1-2 children, more double incomes in this mix of parents. 3-7 children, more affordable for one parent to stay home than to pay for daycare. 7+ children, parents are older. At least some of the children are older, so between job experience for the parents who stayed in the work place and the opportunity/incentive for stay home parents to go back to work, the family income goes up for those with 7+ children.

I’m sure there’s more to it than just that, but that’s how I explain the income difference as it relates to family size.

Seven kids here, and this describes us to a “T”.

I would add that our older kids work as well. When they reach the age of 12 or so, they babysit, deliver papers, mow lawns, etc. I know that kids in families of smaller numbers of kids do this too, but I would say probably not to the extent our kids do. At least that is my experience with the families around us. And our kids aren’t abused, either. They participate in activities. They aren’t in the mines full time at age 10.

I also think that if you have a smaller number of kids right now and just aren’t envisioning how your current life could accommodate 8 or more kids, that is because it wouldn’t. Everything would be different. There are small, little differences in how a larger family operates as opposed to a smaller one. If you have a small family you are not living as a large family does. Why would you?

 

[ThePCWife]

To get back on topic in a non-ranty way, I would just note you can’t even post most census data about where families of 8+ are (except in Amish counties) because even at the county level there are so few you need special permission to even look at them because with so few records it’s basically like a map of people’s houses, so they don’t make them publicly available by default.

I think that is suggestive of a lot.

 

[Xantippe]

Some also feel they need to work to justify their college student loans. My wife has friends that have been paying off student loans for the last 15 years despite the fact that they haven’t worked the last 10 years. They envy my wife for leaving college after the first semester since they “earn” the same, but she didn’t pay to acquire the same skills.

I have a friend that resembles that description of the student-loan burdened SAHM–$60k in debt and it makes life much harder for her than it would otherwise. However, when she mentioned her regret over her debt and degree to her husband, he pointed out to her (correctly) that if she hadn’t done the degree, they would never have met and got married. Many people can tell the same story–unfortunately, these days the BA tends to be a prereq for the MRS. I never even would have met my husband if I hadn’t gone all the way to graduate school.

Also, I do have to question the idea that it’s all the same what education a mother has (particularly if she is going to be having heavy home education responsibilities). Education, work and life experience form the person, so they unavoidably affect what kind of mother a particular woman winds up being and what she has to offer her children. I grant that a bad education, bad work, or bad life experience could negatively affect a woman’s ability to be a good mother, but by the same token, a good education, good work, and good life experience can have an extremely positive effect. For instance, my mom has an art degree and painted professionally (in a small way) when I was a child. Now, that is very impractical, but it did contribute to my having very happy experiences as a child–my mom had very interesting stuff at home (I loved her ink pot and her charcoal!) and we always had excellent art supplies at home when I was little. Little things like that affect the texture of one’s childhood. Mothers aren’t 100% interchangeable widgets.

 

[Xantippe]

To get back on topic in a non-ranty way, I would just note you can’t even post most census data about where families of 8+ are (except in Amish counties) because even at the county level there are so few you need special permission to even look at them because with so few records it’s basically like a map of people’s houses, so they don’t make them publicly available by default.

I think that is suggestive of a lot.

Right.

 

[pensmama87]

I have a friend that resembles that description of the student-loan burdened SAHM–$60k in debt and it makes life much harder for her than it would otherwise. However, when she mentioned her regret over her debt and degree to her husband, he pointed out to her (correctly) that if she hadn’t done the degree, they would never have met and got married. Many people can tell the same story–unfortunately, these days the BA tends to be a prereq for the MRS. I never even would have met my husband if I hadn’t gone all the way to graduate school.

Also, I do have to question the idea that it’s all the same what education a mother has (particularly if she is going to be having heavy home education responsibilities). Education, work and life experience form the person, so they unavoidably affect what kind of mother a particular woman winds up being and what she has to offer her children. I grant that a bad education, bad work, or bad life experience could negatively affect a woman’s ability to be a good mother, but by the same token, a good education, good work, and good life experience can have an extremely positive effect. For instance, my mom has an art degree and painted professionally (in a small way) when I was a child. Now, that is very impractical, but it did contribute to my having very happy experiences as a child–my mom had very interesting stuff at home (I loved her ink pot and her charcoal!) and we always had excellent art supplies at home when I was little. Little things like that affect the texture of one’s childhood. Mothers aren’t 100% interchangeable widgets.

Right. My mom has a computer science degree, and so we got very acclimated to computers when most people didn’t have one in their homes. Not many five year olds knew their way around DOS, but I did.

Although I think a large part of my education was a waste (I had a second major in Women’s Studies ), I know I’ve used it with my kids. Even my Master’s degree has come in handy, although I don’t think at all that it was worth what I paid for it. Except for the financial knowledge I had to gain afterwards…

 

[ThePCWife]

Being a self-driven autodidact is self-selecting. Households who have one or two of those as parents will not really understand that it’s extremely uncommon and not typical of even highly intelligent people.

It’s kind of like having your first baby at 40+. It can sometimes seem more common than it really is because it’s not surprising that a woman who managed it is very likely to broadcast it.

This relates to family size and income because the kind of people who can, I don’t know, build a house out of duct tape and pez and married at 17 might very well have a huge, happy family. But in the current environment this is massively self-selecting and unusual. It’s not about better or worse, but more, what can regular, not wildly autodidactically accomplished people expect when trying to figure out how to be God-focused in their family planning?

 

[HouseArrest]

I have a friend that resembles that description of the student-loan burdened SAHM–$60k in debt and it makes life much harder for her than it would otherwise. However, when she mentioned her regret over her debt and degree to her husband, he pointed out to her (correctly) that if she hadn’t done the degree, they would never have met and got married. Many people can tell the same story–unfortunately, these days the BA tends to be a prereq for the MRS. I never even would have met my husband if I hadn’t gone all the way to graduate school.

Also, I do have to question the idea that it’s all the same what education a mother has (particularly if she is going to be having heavy home education responsibilities). Education, work and life experience form the person, so they unavoidably affect what kind of mother a particular woman winds up being and what she has to offer her children. I grant that a bad education, bad work, or bad life experience could negatively affect a woman’s ability to be a good mother, but by the same token, a good education, good work, and good life experience can have an extremely positive effect. For instance, my mom has an art degree and painted professionally (in a small way) when I was a child. Now, that is very impractical, but it did contribute to my having very happy experiences as a child–my mom had very interesting stuff at home (I loved her ink pot and her charcoal!) and we always had excellent art supplies at home when I was little. Little things like that affect the texture of one’s childhood. Mothers aren’t 100% interchangeable widgets.

I agree with this completely. People tend to lament about what decision in the past is causing them trouble at present. They assume if they could roll back the hands of time, a different decision would erase the suffering, but wouldn’t have any drawbacks. That just isn’t the case.

 

[Usige]

Ok, see, this kind of little tag-end is why those of us without 12 kids end up getting gnawed at by the demon of scrupulosity. “Opportunity costs” are not a typical reason many people don’t have 12 kids, or 8, or whatever. Why, yes, I do resent the implication that I’ve failed to put God centrally enough in the conversation because I don’t have 12 kids. This sort of attitude is what puts performance pressure on women to keep trying for one more child (even if it would kill them or leave them unable to care for themselves or their children including the new infant for years on end) just to stop feeling like they aren’t trusting God enough because their family is “too small, clearly only people with more kids than fingers are trusting sufficiently!”

/vent.

I never said that those with small families do not put God in the equation. Assuming you are the original author you implied you do not know many large families. I happen to know several dozen because many large families tend to be religious and disproportionately homeschool.

If I took a sample of 20 families I know with 6 or more kids, I’d say at least 90-95% are highly religious (normally Catholic or Mormon). Actually of all the large families I know, only one is not highly religious. Now contrast that to the families I know with one or two kids and it’s a crapshoot on how they came to decide how many children to have.

My point is that people with large families overwhelmingly integrate God in their lives as the prime motivator. Being this is a Catholic board, we are to discern through prayer if we are called to have more children on an on going basis. That should be the first question. Most large families start from are we called, and then move to how can we do it. Some with smaller families do the same while others don’t, but statistically large families that i know are much more likely to mention God in the equation. Rarely is economics the first or even second or third question. Friends with zero to three kids are much more likely to mention costs or simply not liking kids,. This is despite the fact that many have high incomes. I can only think of one or two that have mentioned age when married, health concerns, etc. Really as far as I’m concerned I really don’t care how people come to decide, but simply sharing my observations that large families often start from a similar mindset.

Let’s put it this way; most people that see a family with 5+ little ones could likely take two guesses and figure out religious affiliation 95% or better of the time.

We must run in very different groups. I personally know of noone that pressure women to have 12+ kids in spite of health of other concerns. Now it some decide to have more after learning that large families are not impossible that is their choice, but we accept friends with one kid as readily as 12.

 

[Usige]

I have a friend that resembles that description of the student-loan burdened SAHM–$60k in debt and it makes life much harder for her than it would otherwise. However, when she mentioned her regret over her debt and degree to her husband, he pointed out to her (correctly) that if she hadn’t done the degree, they would never have met and got married. Many people can tell the same story–unfortunately, these days the BA tends to be a prereq for the MRS. I never even would have met my husband if I hadn’t gone all the way to graduate school.

That might be, but the majority of married couples I know did not meet through college or work related interactions. Most seemed to be a friend of a friend of a friend situation, but your experiences are obviously different. I suspect those that spend a good deal of time in academia are more likely to know those that share similar experiences.

Also, I do have to question the idea that it’s all the same what education a mother has (particularly if she is going to be having heavy home education responsibilities)… Mothers aren’t 100% interchangeable widgets.

While I would agree that mothers aren’t interchangeable the majority of a child’s education does not require the parent to have a college education. It also really depends on what you consider education. My wife skated through highschool and left a History degree during her first semester. Despite the lack of a college education she has gotten our two oldest through highschool in spite of the fact that they both have learning and developmental disabilities. She basically stayed two years ahead of them. On the otherhand our friends with degrees in chemical engineering and marine biology say that the majority of their degrees really can’t be applied to their kids education. That doesn’t mean that the degree can’t add value, but rather a person with a highschool education can often teach just as well as someone with a BS in a specialty. Despite my degrees my wife likely has a much more balanced knowledge from homeschooling for 14 years. I have much greater depth in math and comp sci, but she knows english, history and the humanities much better than I do. We were talking with one couple that are both engineers and they said in many ways we were better of because they don’t have the breadth of knowledge that my wife and I do together so they can’t load share subject the way we do.

 

[ThePCWife]

I never said that those with small families do not put God in the equation. Assuming you are the original author you implied you do not know many large families. I happen to know several dozen because many large families tend to be religious and disproportionately homeschool.

If I took a sample of 20 families I know with 6 or more kids, I’d say at least 90-95% are highly religious (normally Catholic or Mormon). Actually of all the large families I know, only one is not highly religious. Now contrast that to the families I know with one or two kids and it’s a crapshoot on how they came to decide how many children to have.

My point is that people with large families overwhelmingly integrate God in their lives as the prime motivator. Being this is a Catholic board, we are to discern through prayer if we are called to have more children on an on going basis. That should be the first question. Most large families start from are we called, and then move to how can we do it. Some with smaller families do the same while others don’t, but statistically large families that i know are much more likely to mention God in the equation. Rarely is economics the first or even second or third question. Friends with zero to three kids are much more likely to mention costs or simply not liking kids,. This is despite the fact that many have high incomes. I can only think of one or two that have mentioned age when married, health concerns, etc. Really as far as I’m concerned I really don’t care how people come to decide, but simply sharing my observations that large families often start from a similar mindset.

Let’s put it this way; most people that see a family with 5+ little ones could likely take two guesses and figure out religious affiliation 95% or better of the time.

We must run in very different groups. I personally know of noone that pressure women to have 12+ kids in spite of health of other concerns. Now it some decide to have more after learning that large families are not impossible that is their choice, but we accept friends with one kid as readily as 12.

It’s not pressure to have 12 kids, it’s pressure to have more kids at all than the number they presently have because of the judging and belief that it’s “more religious” to have kid after kid after kid because God (read: everyone else around you) will provide hot and cold running childcare, transportation and ready cash.

I can assure you I know twenty large families where religion did not really enter into the baby-having at all, but rather living in a rural setting and not really having trouble with pregnancy symptoms and having very little hesitation about asking the relatives with “only” two or three or four kids to pony up because not doing so was “so selfish, you only have 2/3/4 kids!”. But which twenty large families are more representative? My twenty or your twenty?

Both are.

I think it’s great to have lots of kids if the support is there and willing, but it’s not more holy by default, there are plenty of people in large-family land who just have them to be having them and there are plenty of people with smaller families who put God at the forefront of their child-having choices before any other consideration.

 

[Xantippe]

I
We must run in very different groups. I personally know of noone that pressure women to have 12+ kids in spite of health of other concerns. Now it some decide to have more after learning that large families are not impossible that is their choice, but we accept friends with one kid as readily as 12.

Some of our Protestant brethren take a pretty hard line on trusting God and/or having as many children as possible, no matter what.

It’s easy to overestimate the ideological similarities between Catholics with large families and Protestants with large families. Some of the more out-there Protestants have beliefs about childbearing and family size that resemble Catholic ones–but with the humanity and common sense largely removed.

 

[Xantippe]

That might be, but the majority of married couples I know did not meet through college or work related interactions. Most seemed to be a friend of a friend of a friend situation, but your experiences are obviously different. I suspect those that spend a good deal of time in academia are more likely to know those that share similar experiences.

While I would agree that mothers aren’t interchangeable the majority of a child’s education does not require the parent to have a college education. It also really depends on what you consider education. My wife skated through highschool and left a History degree during her first semester. Despite the lack of a college education she has gotten our two oldest through highschool in spite of the fact that they both have learning and developmental disabilities. She basically stayed two years ahead of them. On the otherhand our friends with degrees in chemical engineering and marine biology say that the majority of their degrees really can’t be applied to their kids education. That doesn’t mean that the degree can’t add value, but rather a person with a highschool education can often teach just as well as someone with a BS in a specialty. Despite my degrees my wife likely has a much more balanced knowledge from homeschooling for 14 years. I have much greater depth in math and comp sci, but she knows english, history and the humanities much better than I do. We were talking with one couple that are both engineers and they said in many ways we were better of because they don’t have the breadth of knowledge that my wife and I do together so they can’t load share subject the way we do.

1. I do know a lot of people that met spouses through school and work or because of school and work. I’d also argue that “friends of friends” isn’t actually that distinct from school and work, as lots of people have school friends and work friends.
2. I think we as parents eventually wind up using pretty much everything we have. We don’t homeschool our older kids (13 and 10), but we have a strong ongoing home education program, and my husband does stuff like read Platonic dialogues or Descartes with the kids and he’s also been starting to teach them some computer programming.

 

[MomaMary8]

my husband does stuff like read Platonic dialogues or Descartes with the kids and he’s also been starting to teach them some computer programming.

Why Descartes? Your kids would be better off reading Aristotle and St Thomas Aquinas…just saying

Off topic, I know …back to the regular program…

 

[Xantippe]

Why Descartes? Your kids would be better off reading Aristotle and St Thomas Aquinas…just saying

Off topic, I know …back to the regular program…

Middle Kid was interested in something with good arguments. They were reading The Meditations–it’s appealing to use with kids because it has many short chapters, each with a point. Middle Kid liked the argument for the reliability of the senses from God’s creation. The big kids’ previous reading with their dad was C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity (skipping the sex chapter).

Husband thinks the style of Aristotle and St. Thomas is too difficult for the kids at the moment.

 

[ThePCWife]

Middle Kid was interested in something with good arguments. They were reading The Meditations–it’s appealing to use with kids because it has many short chapters, each with a point. Middle Kid liked the argument for the reliability of the senses from God’s creation. The big kids’ previous reading with their dad was C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity (skipping the sex chapter).

Husband thinks the style of Aristotle and St. Thomas is too difficult for the kids at the moment.

Mere Christianity should be Christian parenting canon, although perhaps I’m just too much of a Lewis fangirl there.

 

[MamaJewel]

Being a self-driven autodidact is self-selecting. Households who have one or two of those as parents will not really understand that it’s extremely uncommon and not typical of even highly intelligent people.

It’s kind of like having your first baby at 40+. It can sometimes seem more common than it really is because it’s not surprising that a woman who managed it is very likely to broadcast it.

This relates to family size and income because the kind of people who can, I don’t know, build a house out of duct tape and pez and married at 17 might very well have a huge, happy family. But in the current environment this is massively self-selecting and unusual. It’s not about better or worse, but more, what can regular, not wildly autodidactically accomplished people expect when trying to figure out how to be God-focused in their family planning?

Hi PCWife,

I’ll throw my self-driven, autodidactically guided, newly divorced, mother of 8 living children, convert to the Catholic Faith, humble opinion out there.

When discerning God’s Will in family planning, look at the situation as realistically as possible. Kids are a lot of work. They cost money and use resources. While, yes, God provides for needs, it’s a parent’s job to provide for offspring. Few species of birds use nests already built by other birds. The majority of time, birds are busy, busy, busy building their nests and gathering resources. For humans, it’s the same way.

We can rely on God’s providence, but we have to do our part in providing for our children. God expects us to be realistic about ourselves and our circumstances when planning a family. We need to look at our health, temperament, financial and mental states before rushing to conclusions. Financial planning should be addressed. Housing should be addressed. Education and child care and opportunity costs should be considered. Consideration of our partner should be done, too.

For most of my marriage, I was a SAHM parent who homeschooled 6 of our 8 children. We were very poor at times, but I still trusted God to carry me through. My knowledge of NFP had come through CCL back twenty years ago. As an outsider to catholicsm, I didn’t realize that so much of what I was learning was based on the opinion of lay people. I thought so many of the nuances like breastfeeding and attachment parenting were the Gospel truth. I ended up taking on dogmas that weren’t dogmas at all.

Now I am in a very precarious position since I have been out of the workforce for over 20 years. I don’t get alimony, but I do have exclusive use of the (marital) home until the last kid turns 18. The house is in major disrepair and ex says he doesn’t have the funds to repair it. I am feeling trapped to no end.

I wish I had taken a better balanced view when planning my family. I definitely went against the grain, even with the Catholics in my area. And no, we weren’t hand-out types of people who expected others to pay for us. In fact, we paid for ourselves when others in our community didn’t pay for themselves and still judged us harshly for the number of kids we had.

So my advice is to be realistic when it comes to family planning, know yourself, your spouse, your environment, and genuinely pray to God for discernment when weighing whether or not to have another child. While it’s ok to listen to the opinions of others, you don’t have to apply their lifestyle choices to your life. You and your spouse are accountable to God and each other when it comes to your family. God gave you and your husband unique gifts to live out your marriage vocation. Marriage isn’t a one-size-fits-all situation. God calls us to work with what He has given us. Don’t let others convince you otherwise.

I hope this perspective helps.

Peace,

MamaJewel

 

[Xantippe]

Hi PCWife,

I’ll throw my self-driven, autodidactically guided, newly divorced, mother of 8 living children, convert to the Catholic Faith, humble opinion out there.

When discerning God’s Will in family planning, look at the situation as realistically as possible. Kids are a lot of work. They cost money and use resources. While, yes, God provides for needs, it’s a parent’s job to provide for offspring. Few species of birds use nests already built by other birds. The majority of time, birds are busy, busy, busy building their nests and gathering resources. For humans, it’s the same way.

We can rely on God’s providence, but we have to do our part in providing for our children. God expects us to be realistic about ourselves and our circumstances when planning a family. We need to look at our health, temperament, financial and mental states before rushing to conclusions. Financial planning should be addressed. Housing should be addressed. Education and child care and opportunity costs should be considered. Consideration of our partner should be done, too.

For most of my marriage, I was a SAHM parent who homeschooled 6 of our 8 children. We were very poor at times, but I still trusted God to carry me through. My knowledge of NFP had come through CCL back twenty years ago. As an outsider to catholicsm, I didn’t realize that so much of what I was learning was based on the opinion of lay people. I thought so many of the nuances like breastfeeding and attachment parenting were the Gospel truth. I ended up taking on dogmas that weren’t dogmas at all.

Now I am in a very precarious position since I have been out of the workforce for over 20 years. I don’t get alimony, but I do have exclusive use of the (marital) home until the last kid turns 18. The house is in major disrepair and ex says he doesn’t have the funds to repair it. I am feeling trapped to no end.

I wish I had taken a better balanced view when planning my family. I definitely went against the grain, even with the Catholics in my area. And no, we weren’t hand-out types of people who expected others to pay for us. In fact, we paid for ourselves when others in our community didn’t pay for themselves and still judged us harshly for the number of kids we had.

So my advice is to be realistic when it comes to family planning, know yourself, your spouse, your environment, and genuinely pray to God for discernment when weighing whether or not to have another child. While it’s ok to listen to the opinions of others, you don’t have to apply their lifestyle choices to your life. You and your spouse are accountable to God and each other when it comes to your family. God gave you and your husband unique gifts to live out your marriage vocation. Marriage isn’t a one-size-fits-all situation. God calls us to work with what He has given us. Don’t let others convince you otherwise.

I hope this perspective helps.

Peace,

MamaJewel

That was very sensible and inspiring.

 

[gardenswithkids]

I love it when you guys post. You, lifeisbeautiful, bitterhope, and I think it’s mary8 (or similar, I can’t remember her name) are the posters I see as my adult in the room.

I look at your posts and see hope and great advice.

I have two very close Church friends that are my real life adults in the room. One has 7 kids and the other has 8.

I don’t know how they do it…but they do it with grace and style. When I feel like I’m absolutely drowning…I see them and I smile and I keep going.

I love big families…I really do. I wanted one but I just know I can’t mentally handle anything more then I have.

I feel the same way about those CAF members. I feel like I pore over every detail of their posts, savoring the wisdom and peace found therein.

You both are so sweet for writing that!

People often forget that large families were once smaller. In some ways when I write here, I feel like I’m not just writing to other posters on the internet, but like I’m talking to my “younger self.” I felt overwhelmed at times too! But I made it through. Ladies, you’re on the right path; you just keep going like you’re doing and eventually you get through it. And then one day, perhaps you’ll be chatting with some other moms, and they’ll be struggling and looking at you like you have it all together. (In fact, I bet there are people already looking at you both and thinking that.)

 

[gardenswithkids]

To get back on topic in a non-ranty way, I would just note you can’t even post most census data about where families of 8+ are (except in Amish counties) because even at the county level there are so few you need special permission to even look at them because with so few records it’s basically like a map of people’s houses, so they don’t make them publicly available by default.

I think that is suggestive of a lot.

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.

 

[MomaMary8]

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.

:bighanky:

Your making this hormonal pregnant woman cry! My two oldest will be out of the house when baby #11 is born But they have both told me to give them a call as soon as labor begins. They’re planning on being here to see their new sibling