How many kids do you have, and how many kids do your friends have?

[Anonymous]

I have 2. My friends have 1-2 kids, but mostly has 1 kid for now. The reason behind 1 kid is kid is too expensive and parents age are near 40. The reason behind 2 kids is siblings growing up, and want to pursue different gender.

[Anonymous]

I have four. Friends in this area usually have between 1 and 3, a few with none. My more distant friends have more than that. One has seventeen - eleven adopted, six generated the usual way.

[Anonymous]

I have 5.
I have close friends with 0-10 kids.

I will say that when we were having our children most of our friends were LDS (we are not) and had large families. I do think that influenced our decision to have more. If having more children would have meant being pushed out of our social circle, we might have thought differently about it. Who knows.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We have 1. The vast majority of all parents I know have 2. For those that have more than 2, the vast majority of those families have a SAHM.

I only know a couple people with only children like us.

I also know only a few families with one. It's nearly impossible to have 3 and two full-time working parents, unless there is full-time live-in help, a very flexible job(s), or a SAHM. Ironically this gets more true as the kids get older. One person can't be everywhere at once.

I have 4, and I’m going to have to disagree that this gets more difficult as kids get older. As the kids get older, they are more independent with their activities and plans, can be left alone for periods of time, are responsible for their own belongings, and can arrange transportation (walking or riding a bike) most of the places they want to go. There are times on weekend afternoons when DH and I are home alone for hours.
I personally think the hardest part of having 4 is extending those little kid years, when you can’t even run out to take the dog for a walk or get a gallon of milk without getting shoes and coats and the stroller and going potty 5 times before you leave.

[Anonymous]

We have 4. I find it hardest to hang out with parents of 1, especially if it’s a baby, because their lives often revolve around the nap time.

Anyway, I am able to be friends with parents of any number of kids. I find it strange that someone would write me off for having 4, but I don’t really care. I do feel like when I meet other parents of 4 like we’re in a special club!

[Anonymous]

We have 4 kids. Our friends' families, that we tend to hang out with on a regular basis, have between 2-5 kids. A couple of my kids have friends that are only children, and those get togethers tend to be just those particular kids and a parent for each kid, as opposed to the whole families hanging out. I am happy hanging out with any of the families, we have a big backyard and at this point all of the kid noise is just background noise anyway (as long as everyone is being kind and getting along).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We have three and most of the friends we hang out with have two kids. A few families have three kids. Very few have one, probably partially due to reasons PP articulated, in that families with one kid by choice have different enough preferences that we wouldn't enjoy hanging out with them.

We just got together with three other families yesterday (two of us have three kids, two have two, all adults vaccinated), and it was a glorious chaotic mess. We co-hosted with our next door neighbors, and let the kids go back and forth between the backyards, the older ones helped keep an eye on the little ones, who love the attention, and it was great. We're also always happy to pitch in with each other and each other's kids, which isn't a dynamic I've commonly found with families opting for one kid. All the adults are reasonably laid-back, which is part of the reason we get along.

I am a PP who said I have 4 kids, and most of my friends in my current town have 4 kids too. I think you make a really good point- we too enjoy the glorious chaotic mess! We have many fond memories of big cookouts where the kids played all day into the night. And I feel the same, that all the adults we hang out with are reasonably laid back.

I would argue that having a large family, you get really skilled in making it an organized, productive chaotic mess and the kids do benefit from that for the most part. My husband and I are both from large families, and we both get along with our siblings and are still really close. So this was definitely one of many factors that played into to having a large family for us.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We have three and most of the friends we hang out with have two kids. A few families have three kids. Very few have one, probably partially due to reasons PP articulated, in that families with one kid by choice have different enough preferences that we wouldn't enjoy hanging out with them.

We just got together with three other families yesterday (two of us have three kids, two have two, all adults vaccinated), and it was a glorious chaotic mess. We co-hosted with our next door neighbors, and let the kids go back and forth between the backyards, the older ones helped keep an eye on the little ones, who love the attention, and it was great. We're also always happy to pitch in with each other and each other's kids, which isn't a dynamic I've commonly found with families opting for one kid. All the adults are reasonably laid-back, which is part of the reason we get along.

I am a PP who said I have 4 kids, and most of my friends in my current town have 4 kids too. I think you make a really good point- we too enjoy the glorious chaotic mess! We have many fond memories of big cookouts where the kids played all day into the night. And I feel the same, that all the adults we hang out with are reasonably laid back.

I would argue that having a large family, you get really skilled in making it an organized, productive chaotic mess and the kids do benefit from that for the most part. My husband and I are both from large families, and we both get along with our siblings and are still really close. So this was definitely one of many factors that played into to having a large family for us.

I'm the PP you're quoting, and I mostly agree with the bolded. I do think some large families are incredibly dysfunctional in ways specific to having a lot of children. We're finding three is the right balance between not helicoptering over the kids and still being able to provide the oversight they need (probably would have gone for four if we both didn't work or had local family support).

But in terms of socializing, yes, there's a casualness to families with more kids that I really appreciate and that I think is good for kids. I want my kids to be able to get along well with different ages and personalities. Even if that means one of them chills in the corner with a book or whatever, that's preferable to obsessing over whether they have the perfect friend match at every social event.

[Anonymous]

I have two. Most others I know have 2. Very small minority has 1 or 3.

[Anonymous]

At our ES I would say it’s pretty evenly split among 2 or 3 kids, a smaller percentage of families have 4 or 1. I can only think of 2 families that have more than 4.