Why is having 4 kids not considered a large family but 5 kids are seemingly where it becomes a large family?

[Anonymous]

Parents with five kids don’t think four kids is large.

[Anonymous]

4 kids is considered a very large family. I have four kids. It’s a lot of work. I’m constantly cooking and doing laundry. Saving for college was a huge investment and really impacted our ability to retire early.
Everyone says four kids is a big family. In fact we often don’t get invited to things because we are a crowd!
Five is where I personally think very big family starts— you don’t fit comfortably in most minivans at that point. You are driving legit vans. That’s a lot.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Curious about this viewpoint for families you meet with 4 and with 5. Pregnant with number 4 now fwiw. I’ve heard this many times over the years.

Is four just more common? I haven’t looked at the numbers.

It depends on local culture. 4 really is big in a lot of places, like NYC for example, unless you are uber wealthy.

[Anonymous]

I think this is hyper local. I have three, and in my neighborhood EOTP, there is only one other white family with three kids, and the youngest two are twins (so they didn’t set out to have three!) People definitely see us as a big family. Whereas out in the suburbs (or even WOTP), 3 is no big deal. Same among the Latino and Black families in the neighborhood, three is actually on the smaller end.

[Anonymous]

Anything beyond 2 kids is large.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Definitely subjective. I have 4 kids and don't think it's large.
Every single one of my LDS (Mormon) friends has 5 kids. I'm not LDS, just grew up in an area with a lot of LDS families.
I'm Catholic, and know many families with 8+ kids.

4 kids for an LDS is like having an only for a non LDS - like, you had to check the box but no more than that (not that people with onlies think this, but they are still analogous in my mind)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Definitely subjective. I have 4 kids and don't think it's large.
Every single one of my LDS (Mormon) friends has 5 kids. I'm not LDS, just grew up in an area with a lot of LDS families.
I'm Catholic, and know many families with 8+ kids.

4 kids for an LDS is like having an only for a non LDS - like, you had to check the box but no more than that (not that people with onlies think this, but they are still analogous in my mind)

to continue, if I meet an LDS family with 3 or fewer, i think there were fertiltiy issues etc

[Anonymous]

4 is the new tipping point at which finally no one will criticize you for quitting your job and staying home to raise your kids. Why can’t women support each other’s decisions more

[Anonymous]

When you live in a shoe, it’s too many.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:4 IS a large family. AI says that only 7% of US adults have 4 or more children, a number that stands out even more when you realize that many of those adults are likely in the same families. I’ve always viewed 4 kids as “large” because that’s the point where the whole family can no longer fit in a car together. I guess there’s another “very large” category that’s reached when the whole family can’t fit in a mini-van or SUV together.

That number is 6.
We have a lot of Catholic and Mormon friends and know a lot of families with a large number of children.
IMO, 6 is the tipping point where they really feel different than other families. They have to move from a typical suburban minivan to a weird van. The kids HAVE to share rooms no matter how wealthy the family is. A lot of times they move to a neighborhood where they have a lot of friends that can help each other out. So that means it isn’t just their six kids at home, but often more like 10 kids in the house and yard. They start putting on additions to the house or unusual stuff in the yard because it’s hard to go anywhere.
People start to think you have a lot of kids at 4, but 6 is where you are really different from other families.

An Odyssey will hold 6 kids, but yeah. I don’t get the room sharing point though because a) that tipping point is usually so much lower and b) I had one sibling and we shared a room for years and that seemed normal.

6 kids is usually where I see people switch cars.
I guess what I meant with the room sharing is that even my friends who make 7 figures still have their kids share rooms when they get to six kids. You can get a five bedroom house. And you and squeeze a sixth bedroom out of it. But can’t get a house with 7 bedrooms unless it’s some mansion on a ton of acerage, and that doesn’t really appeal to people who want to have a lot of kids running in and out of their house all day.

The thing people tend to forget is that you can have six kids but they aren't six babies. With six kids, chances are that one of them will be almost out of the house by the time you have all six in the separate-room-needing-territory. With smart spacing, you won't have all six in the house at the same time unless maybe for a short while.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Curious about this viewpoint for families you meet with 4 and with 5. Pregnant with number 4 now fwiw. I’ve heard this many times over the years.

Is four just more common? I haven’t looked at the numbers.

I think 4 is big by today’s standards but feelings somewhat manageable. Not totally manageable, but with spacing and lots of help and money you will get through it and everyone will be mostly fine. When someone told me they have 5 kids recently my first reaction was to think ‘oh how my gosh! How are you doing?!’ I think I nodded and smiled though. I obviously said nothing.

I have three children and my husband and I work full time and we pay for a nanny and have some grandparent help … and it’s a lot. It would be a lot if one of us stayed home too. Four feels like it could be manageable if someone stayed home and there was lots of money for help. We know of a family having a fourth and both parents are in super high powered roles. They have millions in family money and also make millions from their jobs so they outsource a lot of childcare (multiple nannies, housekeeper, etc) and I don’t know how they’ll do it with another kid. Five feels incomprehensibly challenging no matter how much money you have or how many people you hire to help you.

I am a mother of 4. People say this to me all.the.time. I never know how to respond. Any ideas?

[Anonymous]

I don't know anyone with 4 kids. I only know a couple families with 3 kids and those seems like a large families to me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Curious about this viewpoint for families you meet with 4 and with 5. Pregnant with number 4 now fwiw. I’ve heard this many times over the years.

Is four just more common? I haven’t looked at the numbers.

Family with more than 1-2 kids is considered a large family in educated circles.

[Anonymous]

In my friend circle almost all of our fertile parents and grandparents had 4-8 or more kids. Most of us disliked it and in my generation, almost no one has more than 1-3. We thought parenting should be individualized not wholesale. However, likely next generations would see it differently.

[Anonymous]

Because 4 could have been a couple shooting for three, but accidentally got twins. Five just seems irresponsible.