Reply to Tim Carney in the Post: The Ideal Number of Kids is Four (at a minimum)

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Reply to "Tim Carney in the Post: The Ideal Number of Kids is Four (at a minimum)"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Every family I know with four or more kids is raising their children in an environment with fewer resources and less attention than a 1 or 2 child family.

There are only 24 hours in a day and only 2 parents max.  It’s a bad move and you’re doing a disservice to your children having this many kids. It was fine when it was normal to have that many kids but it no longer is.

[/quote]

[b]Why was it fine back then and not now? [/b] The kids still had fewer resources and less attention back then. I think maybe 2 children is fine but having only 1 causes its own issues. Honestly there’s issues with any number of kids, and some of these families with a lot of kids at least have massive financial resources to throw at problems and they know it.[/quote]

Standards of living were lower, people could get decent jobs and provide for their own families just by being HS graduates, never mind college graduates. 100 years ago there were very few “suburbs,” so if you lived in a city - not even in a high rise building right downtown, I’m thinking of places like Detroit where there were lots of single family homes in the city - you could take streetcars or walk everywhere and not have to think too much about transportation for your family of 4+ kids and 2 adults and maybe whatever older single/widowed relative was also living with you. It didn’t matter if your home had 3 bedrooms and 1 bath because that’s what was expected and kids shared. No paying for expensive after school activities - they just didn’t exist outside of middle and HS clubs and sports. People didn’t have big wardrobes or technology besides a family radio. Everyone was living just about the same life as each other apart from the very rich, and most people had no exposure to them so no one knew.

Now if you have 4+ kids and you want to give them the same life as their 2 kid family peers, it costs $$$$ and the logistics are so complicated. I mean if you have a partner who makes big bucks in a high paid career, great, go for it, but that’s not most people. And if you don’t care about giving them the same lives/opportunities, that creates its own issues. The kids who are being “homeschooled” while mom and dad make RV/bus/van life content for IG aren’t going to have nearly the same opportunities as young adults as the kid who goes to regular school and learns an instrument and takes AP classes and is on the school robotics team. [/quote]

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