Is having 4+ kids a status symbol?

[Anonymous]

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

You sound lovely.

[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!

Gosselins have sextuplets

You pick one sensationalist faux celebrity as proof?
This might be the stupidest post here yet, and that’s saying a lot. People aren’t having four kids because they’re infertile. Fertility treatments have come a long way since early 2000s and fewer high order multiples are conceived.

[Anonymous]

Ever since I learned about evolution, I was determined to win at it so that in millions of years, my genes will still be hanging around.

So I moved to the Middle East and had 10 wives and 100 children, got them all visas to the USA and I'm well on my way to genetic world domination. .

Okay just kidding. But seriously there are lots of reasons to have lots of kids. Our society is very anti kids and its not healthy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Ever since I learned about evolution, I was determined to win at it so that in millions of years, my genes will still be hanging around.

So I moved to the Middle East and had 10 wives and 100 children, got them all visas to the USA and I'm well on my way to genetic world domination. .

Okay just kidding. But seriously there are lots of reasons to have lots of kids. Our society is very anti kids and its not healthy.

If anything "our society" is too child focused / childcentric. The fact that a few posters always come in to say otherwise just shows that it's still never enough for some.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ever since I learned about evolution, I was determined to win at it so that in millions of years, my genes will still be hanging around.

So I moved to the Middle East and had 10 wives and 100 children, got them all visas to the USA and I'm well on my way to genetic world domination. .

Okay just kidding. But seriously there are lots of reasons to have lots of kids. Our society is very anti kids and its not healthy.

If anything "our society" is too child focused / childcentric. The fact that a few posters always come in to say otherwise just shows that it's still never enough for some.

Please compare us to literally any other country in the world lol. France has a park at every highway rest stop. So does Germany.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ever since I learned about evolution, I was determined to win at it so that in millions of years, my genes will still be hanging around.

So I moved to the Middle East and had 10 wives and 100 children, got them all visas to the USA and I'm well on my way to genetic world domination. .

Okay just kidding. But seriously there are lots of reasons to have lots of kids. Our society is very anti kids and its not healthy.

If anything "our society" is too child focused / childcentric. The fact that a few posters always come in to say otherwise just shows that it's still never enough for some.

Not really. But go off with your tired “childfreeeeee” talking points.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ever since I learned about evolution, I was determined to win at it so that in millions of years, my genes will still be hanging around.

So I moved to the Middle East and had 10 wives and 100 children, got them all visas to the USA and I'm well on my way to genetic world domination. .

Okay just kidding. But seriously there are lots of reasons to have lots of kids. Our society is very anti kids and its not healthy.

If anything "our society" is too child focused / childcentric. The fact that a few posters always come in to say otherwise just shows that it's still never enough for some.

Please compare us to literally any other country in the world lol. France has a park at every highway rest stop. So does Germany.

Having lots of kids is definitely looked down on in Europe as low class, more so than here.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ever since I learned about evolution, I was determined to win at it so that in millions of years, my genes will still be hanging around.

So I moved to the Middle East and had 10 wives and 100 children, got them all visas to the USA and I'm well on my way to genetic world domination. .

Okay just kidding. But seriously there are lots of reasons to have lots of kids. Our society is very anti kids and its not healthy.

If anything "our society" is too child focused / childcentric. The fact that a few posters always come in to say otherwise just shows that it's still never enough for some.

Please compare us to literally any other country in the world lol. France has a park at every highway rest stop. So does Germany.

Having lots of kids is definitely looked down on in Europe as low class, more so than here.

You mean where everyone squeezes into tiny apartments and little houses?

Gee, I wonder why people stop at two?

I think you just made a strong case for why 4 kids absolutely IS a status symbol in Europe.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: 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.

Making $100-200K is not middle class. Saving for college or retirement isn't middle class. Real middle class struggle to save anything.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Ha! I guess the authors of this study found their audience.

I wonder what the purpose of the study was. Usually authors of studies like these want to influence policy in some way, and referring to children as high and low quality widgets seems to go along with that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Ha! I guess the authors of this study found their audience.

I wonder what the purpose of the study was. Usually authors of studies like these want to influence policy in some way, and referring to children as high and low quality widgets seems to go along with that.

Those studies are really tracking low income families.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: 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.

Making $100-200K is not middle class. Saving for college or retirement isn't middle class. Real middle class struggle to save anything.

+1 Truly middle class families in 2020 have a lower standard of living than ever before

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: 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.

Making $100-200K is not middle class. Saving for college or retirement isn't middle class. Real middle class struggle to save anything.

+1 Truly middle class families in 2020 have a lower standard of living than ever before

Truly middle class are also unlikely to have two parents with degrees who care about saving for college.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: 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.

Making $100-200K is not middle class. Saving for college or retirement isn't middle class. Real middle class struggle to save anything.

+1 Truly middle class families in 2020 have a lower standard of living than ever before

Truly middle class are also unlikely to have two parents with degrees who care about saving for college.

They are worried about paying all the bills. Those kids will get financial aid.

[Anonymous]

Over 3 kids, you realize life isn't about test scores. You stop sending kids to test prep. You realize that some of your kids will be doctors and lawyers and others will be plumbers and landscapers and others will be caretakers and mechanics and uber drivers and instacart shoppers. And you stop measuring worth by which role in society they end up playing.