What constitutes a large family, in your opinion?

[Anonymous]

I had goats when I was in my hippie phase. You're making me miss my goats and homemade goat cheese.

3 (human) kids is pushing up against big. 4+ is definitely big. I see families that big and assume they're either uber-religious, or absolutely idiots like my brother --7 children because he and his wife who keep having oopsie babies ("we're just so fertile, I keep getting pregnant even when using birth control!") and my parents keep bailing them out and subsidizing every aspect of their lives.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:3+

Can't road trip in a regular car, need 2 hotel rooms, don't fit in a standard restaurant booth. The world is designed for families of 4 or less people.

Based on my personal feelings, I agree with this. Based on just looking around and seeing what’s common, I’d say 4 or more children. 3 kids just slides in as “normal.”

+1

I have 3 kids and feel like this is the cusp of normal especially if you planned 2 and had surprise twins. It’s like the “wow you’ve got your hands full” reaction versus the “they must be religious” reaction.

As a family of 5 there are still lots of time we are all together (like 2 siblings + parents watching 1 kid’s sports game). Or all of us going to a friend’s backyard bbq.

But the few people I know with 4+ kids are almost always divided up. I rarely ever see all 6 or 7 together, and in the case of age gaps, there is already a kid off at college while the youngest is friends with my elementary aged kids. The 4th kid really seems to be a tipping point into large family.

[Anonymous]

8+ kids

I have four and don’t consider us a large family.
I know several families with 8+ kids

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:3+

Can't road trip in a regular car, need 2 hotel rooms, don't fit in a standard restaurant booth. The world is designed for families of 4 or less people.

I have four; there's plenty of room in a minivan with four kids, and most families start thinking minivan or SUV before they hit three. Nobody's ever given us guff about being in one hotel room, either. Most restaurant booths seat 6?

Generally my kids will have another classmate with three siblings at school, but meeting a family who has five or more children is exceedingly uncommon.

[Anonymous]

I have qualifiers relating to how much 'work' it is. These qualifiers are when I'm like 'wow that's a lot in your situation' in terms of support/finances/workload.

1+ if serious special needs child/single parent or no extended/family help.

2+ if neither parent works or has consistent income or if there is one working parent who travels a lot but the income is good.

3+ if both parents work full time at well paying jobs.

4+ if one parent is working and the kids are in school and activities.

After that, I don't really count it as 'big' or 'hard' because I assume there is usually a lot of family help, money or religiosity that helps get them through, especially if they are nuts enough to think it's satisfactory to home school them all.

[Anonymous]

I also think 4+ kids.

Also, similar to other posters, I feel like I grew up around a ton of 2 kid families but 3 seems so common now!

[Anonymous]

I agree with 4.

Of all the families with kids we know, I’d estimate about:

60%- two kids
25%- three kids
10%- one kid
5%- four+ kids (and almost all stop at 4)

3 is pretty common, 4 is unusual, and I can only think of a few families that have more than 4.

We have 3.

[Anonymous]

3 or more. 3 was common in my generation (born 1973) but very few of my friends and neighbors in DC have 3 kids. Only one has 4 and he comes from family money. 4 girls. Everyone assumes they just kept trying for a boy.

[Anonymous]

In my neighborhood, 2 is the norm. There's a few families with 1 (although one of those families is young, they might have another), and one family with 3.

[Anonymous]

More kids than parents

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:At this point I consider 3+ kids large. When I was young it was 4+. But I think as parenting standards have risen to expect more involved, intensive parenting, 3 kids now taxes the ability of parents to meet those standards in a way it didn't back in the 80s and 90s.

I know so many 1 or 2 kid families now. It's the vast majority of families I know (2 is most common but I know a LOT of onlies, likely because I am in a field where many women marry and start families later). This also makes the 3 kid families seem so much bigger than they used to. The third child adds an element of noise and (for lack of a better word) chaos that does not exist with most of the families I know.

Sort of the opposite! I didn't know a single family that had more than 2 kids when I was growing up (I was born in the 80s). I have tons of cousins and they all only had one sibling each.

Now 3 seems to be standard for those who can afford it. Everyone seems to have either no kids or 3 kids.

The new most obnoxious comment on DCUM is people who view having 3 or more kids as a signifier of wealth and class. What a stupid reason to have more kids.

I can afford to have a goat and yet I don't because who wants a goat? I certainly don't walk around explaining to people that it makes sense for me to have a goat because, after all, I can afford it.

I don't think it's a signifier of wealth/class in that it's intended to show off, but I wouldn't have had a third or a fourth at the expense of the lifestyle I wanted for my first two.

[Anonymous]

Why was my comment about the neighbor with 4 daughters taken down?

Bizarre.

[Anonymous]

I think 3 kids+2 parents is what I'd consider the minimum of "large".

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:3 or more. 3 was common in my generation (born 1973) but very few of my friends and neighbors in DC have 3 kids. Only one has 4 and he comes from family money. 4 girls. Everyone assumes they just kept trying for a boy.

So funny, I have a family member with almost the exact opposite. Relatively poor, they have 4 boys and everyone assumes they kept trying for a girl lol.

For some reason I generally only see big families with either very wealthy or very poor families. Not many (in my circle) middle class with large families.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:At this point I consider 3+ kids large. When I was young it was 4+. But I think as parenting standards have risen to expect more involved, intensive parenting, 3 kids now taxes the ability of parents to meet those standards in a way it didn't back in the 80s and 90s.

I know so many 1 or 2 kid families now. It's the vast majority of families I know (2 is most common but I know a LOT of onlies, likely because I am in a field where many women marry and start families later). This also makes the 3 kid families seem so much bigger than they used to. The third child adds an element of noise and (for lack of a better word) chaos that does not exist with most of the families I know.

Sort of the opposite! I didn't know a single family that had more than 2 kids when I was growing up (I was born in the 80s). I have tons of cousins and they all only had one sibling each.

Now 3 seems to be standard for those who can afford it. Everyone seems to have either no kids or 3 kids.

The new most obnoxious comment on DCUM is people who view having 3 or more kids as a signifier of wealth and class. What a stupid reason to have more kids.

I can afford to have a goat and yet I don't because who wants a goat? I certainly don't walk around explaining to people that it makes sense for me to have a goat because, after all, I can afford it.

It. Makes me laugh that someone would think of 3+ kids as a signifier of wealth. I grew up with 8 kids in my family. Many kids in my neighborhood had 8 or more. Back then, it just meant Catholic, Mormon, or Orthodox Jew. I feel sorry for anyone who has more than 2.