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][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I was the second oldest of 5. My older sibling has 3 kids, I have 4, the third sibling has 4 and the two youngest aren’t married yet. Seems like the people who are thinking large families are bad had bad parents, which can occur in any size family. Was I responsible for helping watch my siblings? Sure. Was it overwhelming? No. It was expected that we helped out in our family. I will say, when my parents wanted to do fun things they would pay us for babysitting (think- if my mom needed to take a younger sibling to the doctors office, I was expected to babysit other kids. If my parents were doing date night I would get paid to babysit)

My folks weren’t rich either. My mom stayed home and my dad was in education. We didn’t take lavish vacations. We were able to do all the basic activities though (sports, music) though I guess not insane levels of travel sports. It never occurred to me to think me being able to play more travel sports and maybe getting to go to a third tier university to play sports should have been prioritized over my siblings existence.

My own (4) kids are 6 to newborn and while we do have financial resources we obviously will need to ration time. That means our kids will not be able to do all sorts of activities. If they show talent or inclination in a specific area we will obviously try to develop that but within reason. My kids are highly unlikely to be professional athletes based on the genetics they received so it’s weird to prioritize the insanely intense parenting culture in the DC to them having siblings.

Will they be required to help out around the house? Of course. Will they have responsibilities to each other? Again, of course. I enjoyed and was proud growing up with a family identity that we were the “X’s” and this is how we did things. [/quote]

I don’t think the fact that you all have lots of kids proves that you had a happy childhood. How religious are you?[/quote]

Well, there’s a constant refrain that older kids don’t have lots of kids cause being an older child in a big family is miserable. At least in my family the older children have had decent sized families.

But can I ‘prove’ my other siblings had happy childhoods? No. I know I did. I’ve never heard much grumbling from my siblings so I assume they did as well, or at least non-miserable childhoods.

Again, I think this is much more about the parents rather than the number of kids. I get that there are parents of two who don’t have the capability to have more than two. I don’t know why they project that on others. And I’m sure some who have more than 2 share that incompetence and their children are miserable. It’s just not my experience having grown up in a big family.[/quote]

Sure, of course it’s about the parents. There are no doubt some parents out there with the personality, resources, and energy to be good parents to 4-5 kids.

The problem with Carney is that he is an orthodox Catholic and he thinks women should be COMPELLED to have as many kids as their bodies can handle. He doesn’t believe that women should make a choice based on their own assessment of their skills and resources and strength of their marriage. He thinks they HAVE to do it. And he doesn’t stop at 4. If a woman gets married at 21 she’s gonna be getting up to 6 at least, maybe 9 or 10.

This is why, despite my wounds of being in a large family, I don’t blame my mom. She was pressured into it by her religion. [/quote]

DP. Philosophically I don’t care how many people anyone “thinks” other people should have. It’s a personal decision. I do disagree with the rampant posts on dcum against parents who choose to have more than 2 kids. These posters arrogantly think that because they could only provide their definition of ideal attention and resources to two kids, therefore nobody else can handle more than 2 kids. I’m one of the previous posters who has 2 kids but grew up as 1 of 4. I had a great childhood and we were all high achieving students and are now successful adults with our own families. It depends on family resources and parental dedication. It’s a function of parents and socioeconomic factors more than number of kids.

I’m not talking about families of 11 children. I’m talking about normal mid size and entry level larger families. [/quote]

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