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

Forum Index » General Parenting Discussion

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

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Backward reasoning.

1. The reason mothers of 4 are generally happier than mother of 3, is that they wanted a large family all along, and got it. Not that they ended up with a large family by accident, and then found out that it was "easier".

[b]2. I know lots of people who had to parent their little siblings. Most of them don't have kids of their own, because of the psychological toll it took on their childhoods.[/b]

3. While I would have loved a large family, my oldest was born with special needs. Parenting him was a full time job, and I missed my fertile window to expand beyond 2. But I certainly wouldn't have forced my oldest kids to parent the younger kids!

4. This man is a moron.
[/quote]

Absolutely this. Go ahead and have 5 kids if you're going to have real adults taking care of them 90% of the time.[/quote]

+1 This.   If you've got the money to foist your kids on nannies great.  If you have the money to have a SAHD or SAHM with talent for kids, great.  But 2 working parents without means having all those kids because of reasons of faith (no birth control) or by accident is a recipe for disaster.[/quote]

Even the best SAHM cannot take care of say 4 kids under 7 competently. Nobody can. [/quote]

Says someone who thinks it’s fine to sends their kids to a daycare/preschool with a 8:1 ratio.  
[/quote]

No judgment but I actually did not send my child to daycare until they were older in part because I didn’t like that ratio. Also daycare is 8 hrs/day, not all day, and the care workers have no duties other than attending to the babies. Very different from a mom with a newborn, preschooler, toddler, and a bunch of older kids to manage, plus housework.

I posted above numerous studies on large families having poor outcomes for children. It’s simple physics- just not enough parental resources that kids need to thrive. [/quote]

Meh. Besides the daycare example, kindergarten teachers watch 24 kids plus for 8 hours a day.  I think it's likely a competent SAHP could manage up 5-8 kids reasonably well.  The SAHP may be tired but they don't have the stress of working out of the home and presumably the other parent would be around to help with the kids and housework when they're not at work.[/quote]

Spoken like someone who has never lived in that kind of household. Kindergarten is 4-6 hours not all day. I think you literally have no understanding of this. [/quote]

Chill our anonymous poster.   Pre-birth control families were large.  And some families in America with a SAHP still live like it's the 1950s. No one is saying that it all runs beautifully and some of those SAHM end up psychotic from too much postpartum depression and harming their children (see Andrea Yates), but it is POSSIBLE to have a large family and have them happy.[/quote]

DP but consider the vast range of outcomes between "mother loses it and kills her children" and a large, happy family, and ask how many of those outcomes are actually good.

My mom was a SAHM to four kids and she did not lose it and kill us all, but none of us were happy, including her. In fact she spent years where she spent the bulk of her day in bed because she was so depressed.

Or my aunt and uncle who had 5 kids and abused all of them -- three wound up teenage parents. Three out of five! Sure, they weren't drowned in a bathtub, but...

You just glide over a lot of negative outcomes for kids when you blithely say "oh sure there are outliers but surely a competent SAHP can raise 5-8 kids no problem." Those examples are rare. Everyone else has problems to varying degrees. Raising kids, any number, is not easy. More kids is harder. Most people are NOT cut out for it. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics