Tim Carney in the Post: The Ideal Number of Kids is Four (at a minimum)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Mom of five here. It is 100 percent easier to have 5 kids than 3. I found 3 the absolute hardest. Now my older kids entertain and help with the younger kids. The year my third was born was the least happy year of my life. I am now the happiest I have ever been since becoming a mom with my fifth almost turning one. I am way more relaxed and it is 100 percent true that older kids help so much. For example on Saturday mornings I will wake up and my 12 year old has changed my toddler's diaper, turned on his cartoon, and gotten him a bowl of cheerios while I lounge in bed with DH.

What I am looking forward to is parents of 2-3 kids trying to explain why those of us with 4+ don't actually know what we are talking about when we say it's easier and we are happier than you all.

It’s definitely easier to “parent” when you’re exploiting your older kids.

+1

It’s funny to read this pair because my mom was the oldest of 4 and had a mom who had a really successful career, which came at the expense of my mom taking on a heavy load of raising her 3 younger siblings. I imagine it is great for the parents to have a built in babysitter so you can have a fire career and lounge in bed on Saturday mornings while your tween changes diapers.

Instead I stopped at 3 because that is the number I can parent in the manner in which I want to parent, which does not rely upon any of them acting as a caregiver to one another. I am very happy with my family and 3 feels like the perfect number for us. Maybe the mom of 5 is “happier” like she claims, but she is also smugger and downplaying the effects of a 12 year old (who was presumably in school M-F) spending their weekend morning taking care of a baby instead of meeting up with friends, heading to a soccer game, relaxing in front of their own cartoons, reading in bed, etc.

[Anonymous]

I'm one of four kids raised in a Catholic family from very educated parents. My parents put other parents today in shame. And no, my older siblings did not raise me. We were all close in age.

The difference is that we all worked together. My brothers mowed the lawn and my sisters and I made dinner. We all had chores. Of course this all seems silly now with electronics. I'm so glad I grew up when we did.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m the eldest girl in a big family (5 kids) and I think my parents tried hard not to force me to raise my younger siblings. I loved having a younger sister in particular and enjoyed taking care of her. What I did not enjoy was never ever getting any focused attention from my dad and very little from my mom. One sibling had significant issues and any bandwidth went to dealing with him (and it wasn’t enough). I wanted a different experience for my own kids, which is why I only have 2.

This was my experience in a big family. I was one of the kids kind of lost in the middle -- not the youngest or the oldest, a "good" kid who got good grades and didn't complain. I had several experiences early on where it was made clear to me that needing any extra attention -- to deal with recurrent nightmares, to help with social adjustment to school, etc. -- would be seen as an annoying distraction from all the other kids. So I learned to have no problems. Ever. In some ways this did make me resilient and independent, just like Carney suggest. It also means that as an adult, I am allergic to asking for help or even just telling someone when something is going on. I apologize for myself compulsively and have very low self esteem, something that has made both relationships and my career difficult. A few years ago I realized that I just carry around this longing to be seen and hear and understood, and I don't think anyone will ever be able to satisfy it because what I really want is to be a child and to be loved and seen in the way kids all want to be loved and seen. But I'm not a child and I'll never be one again so I just have to live with that feeling of absence.

I don't think all kids from big families feel that way, but I do. And I happen to know that another of my siblings feels the same. So I'm skeptical that large families can really meet the needs of every single kid. And it might seem like no big deal if 1 out of 6, or 2 out of 8, have this feeling of loss. But if you are the one experiencing it, it's deeply painful, a wound that will never heal.

I am from a big family too and feel the same way you do (that I just want to be loved and seen and known and understood bc I never was as a child). I have low self esteem also and never ask for help due to being a kid who needed to be ok and have no needs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think up to a point it's fine and good to have older kids help with younger ones, provided the older boys have to help, too. Those are good life skills to learn.

I suspect the reason moms with four or more are happier is that most American don't have four kids unless they are some weird religion OR they LOVE having kids. So if you're choosing to have four kids, you probably dig being a mom. I don't think it's that having four kids makes you happier.

I am the youngest of three and I think it's a bad number. Too much two on one triangulations happen. And my somewhat parentified older sister is still bossy and annoying even though we are all adults now. She still expects to be in charge.

Tim Carney sure as heck didn't carry four kids and give birth to them himself. Ugh.

My mom goes around telling people to have even numbers of kids. She had three girls.

I have 2 of the same gender close in age and then a large age gap followed by a child of the opposite gender. My older 2 play together and are close due to age/interest similarities. And the baby of the family is so much younger and into her own things that we just don’t get the 2:1 dynamics some posters are talking about. I could see how 3 close together could lead to infighting, but I think 3 with a gap is great. I know several other families with a similar breakdown who are really happy with it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:But how does the 12 yr old feel about it?

great - she's happy as a clam and is often offering to help even when I don't need it.

You won't know she is happy as a clam until she grows up. She might be an extreme people pleaser.

I am 100 percent certain she's happy, because I somehow miraculously still parent despite having 5 kids. She's an A+ student with a blossoming social life and extracurriculars and even went on a solo trip with just DH and myself for her birthday. Often in the evenings with sit alone with just her and chat about life. Because again, it's a myth you can't find time to parent despite having many kids. Right now she's laughing in the front yard playing with 2 of her 4 siblings.

But I am not surprised, again, that the people with 1 or 2 kids think they know better than those of us with big families.

NP. I was your twelve-year-old, including the straight As, the doing the work of the parents, and the offering to help. Don’t delude yourself.

FWIW, I grew up in a community filled with large families. I know almost nobody from that community who has had a large family. I know literally no eldest daughters (like me) who have. Not a single eldest daughter of a large family that I know has had more than two kids.

Eldest daughter of five kids here chiming in to agree this poster is delusional. I stopped at 2 kids for a reason. I love my parents but they definitely were not able to give me the attention I needed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The whole article and 6 pages of comments and still no discussion of the cost of raising 6 kids. In dc? That’s at least $24k/year for daycare. No.

I pay more than that for preschool for just 1 toddler.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:But how does the 12 yr old feel about it?

great - she's happy as a clam and is often offering to help even when I don't need it.

You won't know she is happy as a clam until she grows up. She might be an extreme people pleaser.

Agree. That's how she gets your attention - by being the perfect little parent helper.

I’m the youngest of four. My oldest siblings didn’t have to “raise” me but my sister, who’s the oldest, was desperate for a baby sister and in so many pictures when I was a baby, she’s holding me with a huge grin. We’re still super close today and she has three kids of her own. She loved being a big sister - I think you’re projecting a lot of your own defensiveness onto larger families. The second born in my family is one of my brothers, and he’s an amazing father also to three kids. He’s actually a lot more involved than his wife and is always doing fun things with his kids. They both grew up to love kids. My other brother and I - numbers three and four - have less patience with kids because we didn’t really grow up with young kids around us.

Oldest daughter of a large family here. You sweet summer child. You have no idea.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The whole article and 6 pages of comments and still no discussion of the cost of raising 6 kids. In dc? That’s at least $24k/year for daycare. No.

I pay more than that for preschool for just 1 toddler.

I meant $24k/year/kid. 😉

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The whole article and 6 pages of comments and still no discussion of the cost of raising 6 kids. In dc? That’s at least $24k/year for daycare. No.

Several people have mentioned this! It's an obvious issue Carney doesn't even mention except to say there are certain activities like travel sports his family doesn't do because of the size of the family.

Though I will note that no family with 6 kids is going to do daycare. They either have a SAHM or a nanny (potentially both). Still expensive and in a high COL area like DC, not accessible to the vast majority of families. But it is at least efficient -- none of these families are putting 6 kids in daycare.

To me the cost issues aren't even about the early childhood childcare costs, but more the compounding costs of having this many kids that will just add up and up and up. Yes, you will be able to get some efficiencies out of it with handmedowns and toys the kids share. You can have kids share bedrooms too, this was very normal up until only recently so I really don't have an issue with that. But what about other costs that cannot be split among kids. I hope your kids have good teeth because 6 sets of braces is going to be expensive and time consuming. Heck, even just having kids with cavities is going to really add up with that many. Your food costs are going to be high and just go waaaaay up as those kids become teens, even if you never eat out (which is also no prohibitively expensive -- you aren't getting out of a Chipotley for less than $150 with a family of 8). Even if you eschew more expensive activities like travel sports, are any of your kids going to do very normal things like learn an instrument? Participate in model UN? Girl Scouts? These are not bespoke activities only embraced by progressive helicopter parents, many people view these as formative experiences.

How do you allocate college costs among all these kids? Sometimes parents have to have tough conversations with kids about what they can afford in terms of college, but the degree to which individuals in a family like this are going to have to sacrifice for the "greater good" is extreme. And how do you balance the fact that kids are different, have different goals, different willingness to work, different abilities. What if you have a kid who works incredibly hard to earn a spot at a pricier school, and you know they would do great there, but if you send them you will have too little for younger kids to have that opportunity? How do you decide? How do you explain that? What if you have a kid who needs special therapy or treatment, and those costs or the time dedicated to those needs mean other kids have to go without in other areas, as well as without extra time with their parents?

Huge families made sense when it was common for families to lose children to childhood illness, when no one went to college, when families needed all the hands they could get to take care of the house and the land. They made sense when there was a good likelihood that your oldest kids would be heading off to war and might not come back. Now, they really don't make sense unless you have a lot of resources that most people don't have, and an unusual will to live a different sort of life than most people live these days. I don't begrudge people who want and have large families, but to advocate for it as though it's desirable or even possible for most people? You just sound stupid.

In my large family of origin, the boys were given the expensive private educations and the girls went to state schools so you can economize that way. There were more girls than boys.

[Anonymous]

Some people who I’m sure are good people and good parents and have all good intentions still have more kids than they should/can really handle. Unless you have a really amazing community that’ll help you raise your kids (grandparents, aunts, uncles, close friends, who live near by and will actually be really involved) AND you have a lot of $$ to outsource things like cooking, cleaning and can still save for college and fund all other kid expenses, I just do not see how it is practical to have more than 2 kids. Vast majority of ppl do not have that kind of community support and don’t have that kind of $.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The whole article and 6 pages of comments and still no discussion of the cost of raising 6 kids. In dc? That’s at least $24k/year for daycare. No.

Several people have mentioned this! It's an obvious issue Carney doesn't even mention except to say there are certain activities like travel sports his family doesn't do because of the size of the family.

Though I will note that no family with 6 kids is going to do daycare. They either have a SAHM or a nanny (potentially both). Still expensive and in a high COL area like DC, not accessible to the vast majority of families. But it is at least efficient -- none of these families are putting 6 kids in daycare.

To me the cost issues aren't even about the early childhood childcare costs, but more the compounding costs of having this many kids that will just add up and up and up. Yes, you will be able to get some efficiencies out of it with handmedowns and toys the kids share. You can have kids share bedrooms too, this was very normal up until only recently so I really don't have an issue with that. But what about other costs that cannot be split among kids. I hope your kids have good teeth because 6 sets of braces is going to be expensive and time consuming. Heck, even just having kids with cavities is going to really add up with that many. Your food costs are going to be high and just go waaaaay up as those kids become teens, even if you never eat out (which is also no prohibitively expensive -- you aren't getting out of a Chipotley for less than $150 with a family of 8). Even if you eschew more expensive activities like travel sports, are any of your kids going to do very normal things like learn an instrument? Participate in model UN? Girl Scouts? These are not bespoke activities only embraced by progressive helicopter parents, many people view these as formative experiences.

How do you allocate college costs among all these kids? Sometimes parents have to have tough conversations with kids about what they can afford in terms of college, but the degree to which individuals in a family like this are going to have to sacrifice for the "greater good" is extreme. And how do you balance the fact that kids are different, have different goals, different willingness to work, different abilities. What if you have a kid who works incredibly hard to earn a spot at a pricier school, and you know they would do great there, but if you send them you will have too little for younger kids to have that opportunity? How do you decide? How do you explain that? What if you have a kid who needs special therapy or treatment, and those costs or the time dedicated to those needs mean other kids have to go without in other areas, as well as without extra time with their parents?

Huge families made sense when it was common for families to lose children to childhood illness, when no one went to college, when families needed all the hands they could get to take care of the house and the land. They made sense when there was a good likelihood that your oldest kids would be heading off to war and might not come back. Now, they really don't make sense unless you have a lot of resources that most people don't have, and an unusual will to live a different sort of life than most people live these days. I don't begrudge people who want and have large families, but to advocate for it as though it's desirable or even possible for most people? You just sound stupid.

In my large family of origin, the boys were given the expensive private educations and the girls went to state schools so you can economize that way. There were more girls than boys.

I know a family (Catholic) w 6 kids, 4 boys and 2 girls. The parents said they’d pay for college for the boys but if the girls wanted to go to college they’d have to pay for themselves. The expectation of course is that the girls will get married and become SAHMs so they don’t need a college degree. And that’s exactly what wound up happening. One daughter has 5 kids; one has 3 but is under age 30 so I imagine she’ll have more. The boys all have 3-5 kids too but at least they got to go to college…

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Some people who I’m sure are good people and good parents and have all good intentions still have more kids than they should/can really handle. Unless you have a really amazing community that’ll help you raise your kids (grandparents, aunts, uncles, close friends, who live near by and will actually be really involved) AND you have a lot of $$ to outsource things like cooking, cleaning and can still save for college and fund all other kid expenses, I just do not see how it is practical to have more than 2 kids. Vast majority of ppl do not have that kind of community support and don’t have that kind of $.

The world is also just more complex than it used to be when larger families were common. One thing I think about as a parent is a need to be a guide and to help my kids learn to navigate stuff that didn't even exist when I was a child. I think sometimes people who have big families have this Mayberry vision in their heads of a pile of kids playing outdoors and going camping and making their own fun. Sure, all of that can happen. But every one of those kids is ALSO going to have to navigate modern technology, social media, a world where everything (money, jobs, community, politics) is more complex and layered than it was back when huge families were much more common. I know there is this hope that by creating this wholesome, big family experience in childhood, kids will have the skills and resilience to figure that stuff out. But is that true? I don't think it works for everyone. Many kids need more explicit guidance than that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Some people who I’m sure are good people and good parents and have all good intentions still have more kids than they should/can really handle. Unless you have a really amazing community that’ll help you raise your kids (grandparents, aunts, uncles, close friends, who live near by and will actually be really involved) AND you have a lot of $$ to outsource things like cooking, cleaning and can still save for college and fund all other kid expenses, I just do not see how it is practical to have more than 2 kids. Vast majority of ppl do not have that kind of community support and don’t have that kind of $.

The world is also just more complex than it used to be when larger families were common. One thing I think about as a parent is a need to be a guide and to help my kids learn to navigate stuff that didn't even exist when I was a child. I think sometimes people who have big families have this Mayberry vision in their heads of a pile of kids playing outdoors and going camping and making their own fun. Sure, all of that can happen. But every one of those kids is ALSO going to have to navigate modern technology, social media, a world where everything (money, jobs, community, politics) is more complex and layered than it was back when huge families were much more common. I know there is this hope that by creating this wholesome, big family experience in childhood, kids will have the skills and resilience to figure that stuff out. But is that true? I don't think it works for everyone. Many kids need more explicit guidance than that.

+1. Yes. I grew up in a big family and even then needed more explicit guidance and I think kids growing up now need that even more than I/kids in the 80s/90s did. Life is a lot more complex for kids now than it was in previous generations.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:But how does the 12 yr old feel about it?

great - she's happy as a clam and is often offering to help even when I don't need it.

You won't know she is happy as a clam until she grows up. She might be an extreme people pleaser.

Agree. That's how she gets your attention - by being the perfect little parent helper.

I’m the youngest of four. My oldest siblings didn’t have to “raise” me but my sister, who’s the oldest, was desperate for a baby sister and in so many pictures when I was a baby, she’s holding me with a huge grin. We’re still super close today and she has three kids of her own. She loved being a big sister - I think you’re projecting a lot of your own defensiveness onto larger families. The second born in my family is one of my brothers, and he’s an amazing father also to three kids. He’s actually a lot more involved than his wife and is always doing fun things with his kids. They both grew up to love kids. My other brother and I - numbers three and four - have less patience with kids because we didn’t really grow up with young kids around us.

Oldest daughter of a large family here. You sweet summer child. You have no idea.

+100

[Anonymous]

Every family I know with four or more kids is raising their children in an environment with fewer resources and less attention than a 1 or 2 child family.

There are only 24 hours in a day and only 2 parents max. It’s a bad move and you’re doing a disservice to your children having this many kids. It was fine when it was normal to have that many kids but it no longer is.