Is having 4+ kids a status symbol?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No. It is not a status symbol. Its usually a symbol over religious extremism, being latino catholic, or lack of access to birth control.

Hi antisemitist! Respect others’ religions and they’ll respect yours-atheist with one kid

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Well, they better be rich. They are going to have to pay over a million dollars in college tuition alone.

Parents should help kids with it if they can, but there’s no law that parents “have to” pay for any college. I wish that were a law; I wouldn’t be drowning in state school loans still!

Yep, several posters here with large families cannot afford to pay for college. Then you read on the money & finance board how hard it is to get ahead, the overwhelming feeling of not being able to afford a house, the envy for those who got a better start because of family resources.

This is national and international research. There is simply not enough attention to go to some many kids and they suffer

Researchers from the University of Houston and the London School of Economics recently evaluated 26 years of data for the National Bureau of Economic Research, a nonprofit think tank. They found siblings had lowered cognitive abilities and increased behavioral problems with each added child in the family. Girls tended to suffer more cognitive setbacks and have a higher risk of teen pregnancies; boys developed more acting-out behavior.

And, the researchers found, those difficulties persisted into adulthood. Adults from large families tended to have lower levels of education, lower earnings, and more criminal behavior, according to The Washington Post.

But what constitutes larger families? I’m not convinced 4 kids trigger poor outcomes.

I’m one of 4 kids. Everyone got a degree. Nobody is struggling. Two of us make six figures, the other two are SAHPs.

I have 4 kids. My kids have passports and love to travel.

More than 3 is large family. The academic achievement drops significantly with the 3rd. Search pubmed.

More: "Empirical studies have consistently reported a negative correlation between number of children in the family and intelligence test scores (Belmont 8c Marolla, 1973; Dandes 8c Dow, 1969; Eysenck 8c Cookson, 1970). Research relating family characteristics to academic performance found the same pattern as with intelligence, with children from smaller families having higher achievement test scores or grades than children from larger families (Eysenck 8c Cookson, 1970; Schachter, 1963). "

"Theory suggests a trade off between child quantity and 'quality'. Family size might adversely affect the production of child quality within a family. A number of arguments also suggest that siblings are unlikely to receive equal shares of the resources devoted by parents to their children's education. We construct a composite birth order index that effectively purges family size from birth order and use this to test if siblings are assigned equal shares in the family's educational resources. We find that they are not, and that the shares are decreasing with birth order. Controlling for parental family income, parental age at birth and family level attributes, we find that children from larger families have lower levels of education and that there is in addition a separate negative birth order effect. In contrast to Black, Devereux and Kelvanes (2005), the family size effect does not vanish once we control for birth order. Our findings are robust to a number of specification checks."

Again, I'm the PP who knows a family of 6 successful adults. The answer was hundreds of million of $ trust fund, individual nannies and tutors and Deerfield boarding for all. The drawback was one of the daughters doing so much coke in college, because nannies are not parents. It's impossible to have quality one on one time with more than two. Just some bedtime reading and homework help would get to 1 hour per child, so that's 4 hours daily minimum. Add dinner, jobs, sports, school etc.

Mmm...
Who are these lunatics who assess children as being of higher or lower quality based on achievement test scores?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why would anybody in their right mind want 4 kids?????

I never thought I would, but it’s so incredibly fun! I love having a house of laughter and little feet running around. When we go on vacation the kids are always playing together and they have a blast. There’s never a moment of stillness—until bedtime—my heart feels so full.

This post makes me truly wish I could tolerate the noise and chaos a big family would bring. Too many stupid sensitivities, I just don't think I could.

[Anonymous]

Nowadays it means someone has fertility problems. Their shit doesn’t work so they dump a shit ton of embryos In the uterus and hope something sticks.

They end up with multiples and act “surprised.”

Then these tiny scrawny babies come out and they parade them around even if they are deformed and act like they got “ lucky” and say “ multiples run in our family.”

Yah bullshit.

Those babies cost north of $20k.

[Anonymous]

No. I just think you don’t know how birth control works or are very religious.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Well, they better be rich. They are going to have to pay over a million dollars in college tuition alone.

Parents should help kids with it if they can, but there’s no law that parents “have to” pay for any college. I wish that were a law; I wouldn’t be drowning in state school loans still!

Yep, several posters here with large families cannot afford to pay for college. Then you read on the money & finance board how hard it is to get ahead, the overwhelming feeling of not being able to afford a house, the envy for those who got a better start because of family resources.

This is national and international research. There is simply not enough attention to go to some many kids and they suffer

Researchers from the University of Houston and the London School of Economics recently evaluated 26 years of data for the National Bureau of Economic Research, a nonprofit think tank. They found siblings had lowered cognitive abilities and increased behavioral problems with each added child in the family. Girls tended to suffer more cognitive setbacks and have a higher risk of teen pregnancies; boys developed more acting-out behavior.

And, the researchers found, those difficulties persisted into adulthood. Adults from large families tended to have lower levels of education, lower earnings, and more criminal behavior, according to The Washington Post.

But what constitutes larger families? I’m not convinced 4 kids trigger poor outcomes.

I’m one of 4 kids. Everyone got a degree. Nobody is struggling. Two of us make six figures, the other two are SAHPs.

I have 4 kids. My kids have passports and love to travel.

More than 3 is large family. The academic achievement drops significantly with the 3rd. Search pubmed.

More: "Empirical studies have consistently reported a negative correlation between number of children in the family and intelligence test scores (Belmont 8c Marolla, 1973; Dandes 8c Dow, 1969; Eysenck 8c Cookson, 1970). Research relating family characteristics to academic performance found the same pattern as with intelligence, with children from smaller families having higher achievement test scores or grades than children from larger families (Eysenck 8c Cookson, 1970; Schachter, 1963). "

"Theory suggests a trade off between child quantity and 'quality'. Family size might adversely affect the production of child quality within a family. A number of arguments also suggest that siblings are unlikely to receive equal shares of the resources devoted by parents to their children's education. We construct a composite birth order index that effectively purges family size from birth order and use this to test if siblings are assigned equal shares in the family's educational resources. We find that they are not, and that the shares are decreasing with birth order. Controlling for parental family income, parental age at birth and family level attributes, we find that children from larger families have lower levels of education and that there is in addition a separate negative birth order effect. In contrast to Black, Devereux and Kelvanes (2005), the family size effect does not vanish once we control for birth order. Our findings are robust to a number of specification checks."

Again, I'm the PP who knows a family of 6 successful adults. The answer was hundreds of million of $ trust fund, individual nannies and tutors and Deerfield boarding for all. The drawback was one of the daughters doing so much coke in college, because nannies are not parents. It's impossible to have quality one on one time with more than two. Just some bedtime reading and homework help would get to 1 hour per child, so that's 4 hours daily minimum. Add dinner, jobs, sports, school etc.

Mmm...
Who are these lunatics who assess children as being of higher or lower quality based on achievement test scores?

Sadly, most parents on dcum are like this. They measure worth by grades, degrees, and income.

[Anonymous]

It is a symbol in the sense that having more kids will not impact your life outcomes. So the super rich or the super poor have 4+ kids. For the super rich, they can afford it. For the super poor- they were not going to break out of the cycle of poverty anywhat you slice it. so the number of kids does not matter.

For middle class- we stress about paying for childcrae, college, and balance it against saving for our own retirmenent.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Nowadays it means someone has fertility problems. Their shit doesn’t work so they dump a shit ton of embryos In the uterus and hope something sticks.

They end up with multiples and act “surprised.”

Then these tiny scrawny babies come out and they parade them around even if they are deformed and act like they got “ lucky” and say “ multiples run in our family.”

Yah bullshit.

Those babies cost north of $20k.

I don't know anyone with quadruplets from IVF!

[Anonymous]

I don't think it is a status symbol. The moms talk real fast like they are constantly in a state of stress.

[Anonymous]

For SAHM’s it = I am never going back to work.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Nowadays it means someone has fertility problems. Their shit doesn’t work so they dump a shit ton of embryos In the uterus and hope something sticks.

They end up with multiples and act “surprised.”

Then these tiny scrawny babies come out and they parade them around even if they are deformed and act like they got “ lucky” and say “ multiples run in our family.”

Yah bullshit.

Those babies cost north of $20k.

I don't know anyone with quadruplets from IVF!

Gosselins have sextuplets

[Anonymous]

Child “quality”

[Anonymous]

I have low “quality” children!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Nowadays it means someone has fertility problems. Their shit doesn’t work so they dump a shit ton of embryos In the uterus and hope something sticks.

They end up with multiples and act “surprised.”

Then these tiny scrawny babies come out and they parade them around even if they are deformed and act like they got “ lucky” and say “ multiples run in our family.”

Yah bullshit.

Those babies cost north of $20k.

I don't know anyone with quadruplets from IVF!

I don't know them. It's certainly not a common cause of 4+ kids.

Gosselins have sextuplets

[Anonymous]

Only three possible reasons.....very religious, low intellect, or utter narcissist. And yes, I judge all of them.