Tim Carney in the Post: The Ideal Number of Kids is Four (at a minimum)
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Anonymous
some of my worst memories of childhood were the times my mom leaned on me to care for the babies - like, at 9 I remember trying to set the table holding a crying baby. I even dropped the baby on his head once. good times! |
Anonymous
| Maybe parenting is easier for the parents, but what’s the impact on the older kids forced to parent younger siblings? What impact does that have on them? |
Anonymous
Nah. I have an only child because I wanted to chill and enjoy my kid, spoil him with attention, and give him all my resources. |
Anonymous
My mom goes around telling people to have even numbers of kids. She had three girls. |
Anonymous
"My kids are now teens, and they can take care of themselves for the most part." Teens need attentive parents and parenting IME. If they are taking care of themselves "for the most part," you are doing it wrong. |
Anonymous
I'm one of six kids and my parents did this kind of thing. It sucks for the kids. |
Anonymous
Sorry your childhood sucked. I’m one of five and we all pitched in and my childhood was amazing. |
Anonymous
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“ Over the past few decades, scientific research has shown that children in larger families perform worse in school, score lower on cognitive tests, and attain fewer years of education than kids in smaller families”
https://bigthink.com/the-present/large-family-worsens-kids-cognitive-development/# |
Anonymous
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“ Larger families are more frequent with early marriage and rapid birth of the first child. In larger families, child rearing becomes more rule ridden, less individualized, with corporal punishment and less investment of resources. Smaller families tend to result in higher IQ, academic achievement, and occupational performance. Large families produce more delinquents and alcoholics. Perinatal morbidity and mortality rates are higher in large families as birth weights decrease. Mothers of large families are at higher risk of several physical diseases. Common methodological errors are indicated and exemplary studies are described.”
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3900289/ |
Anonymous
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“ Families face a substantial quantity-quality trade-off: increases in family size decrease parental investment, decrease childhood performance on cognitive tests and measures of social behavior," they wrote.
"Importantly, we find that these negative effects are not merely temporary disruptions following a birth but in fact persist throughout childhood." https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/01/160111135748.htm#google_vignette |
Anonymous
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“ Teens from larger families tend to have poorer mental health than those with fewer siblings, according to a large-scale analysis of children in the United States and China.”
https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2024-01-15/bigger-families-could-mean-poorer-mental-health-for-kids |
Anonymous
This plus your subsequent posts indicate you're purposefully trying to have people hate the large family model. You hit it all - the obnoxious smugness, the total indifference to your oldest kids' feelings on whether they want to help, the constant unprovoked attacks on those who have smaller families. Go away, troll. |
Anonymous
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Many many factors impact how hard or difficult parenting is. But undoubtedly, the difficulty goes up with the number of children. Sure, older kids help out a bit with younger kids and they do play together, but not really. Kids close in age play together, but not kids with a five, 10 year age gap. Plus there is no way of getting around the mental load, and the schedules, and the paperwork, and the finances, and the emotional issues (the older kids can't manage that for the younger ones!), and the sports equipment, and practices, and games etc. etc. of. having five kids. It's harder, no doubt.
But moms of many kids should just own it. You wanted a big family and you have it! There are a lot of benefits of having many kids, but being easier is NOT one of them, so stop trying to make that argument. |
Anonymous
| I've always thought that with 3 or fewer kids, the primary relationship paradigm is between parent and child, but once you have more than 3 kids the relationship focus shifts to the relationships between siblings, since the parents don't have enough band-width to do intensive one-on-one time with the kids. At least that is what I have observed in my adult friends from large families. |
Anonymous
Oh, large families can screw it up in a myriad of ways, it's not always a joy for the younger kids either. In my family with 4 kids, my older sister went on to have 4 kids... but she is now pretty miserable and has a bad relationship with our parents, so I don't know what that says about her experience. She complains a lot about her childhood. The two youngest (me and my brother) didn't enjoy the experience either. I wound up often being tasked with caring for him even though I'm just 3 years older (getting the "you're a girl so your more mature" bonus) while my parents did stuff with the the older kids, or even when my mom just slowly melted down over the course of several years and fell into a deep depression. I have almost no fond memories of my family having a great time together, and my sibling relationships are all quite strained. I can imagine parents who would do a good job with four, but my parents were totally overwhelmed and didn't parent any of us well, nor did they take great care of themselves. Like a lot of families with a lot of kids, they started very young (too young, they really had no idea what they were doing) and had absolutely no idea what they were getting into, despite coming from big families as well. I think they would have struggled with parenting no matter what, but the problems might have been mitigated had they stopped at one or two. I don't think they were ever in danger of becoming intense helicopter parents. |