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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]OP here, thank you for your responses! My parents and in laws grew up in large families (5-7) and all speak fondly of their childhoods. With the exception of one out of 20 none had large families themselves. So I always wondered about the disconnect. If it was & is amazing why did everyone choose less? So I thank you for your insight![/quote]

A few possibilities from the economics literature:

1) All over the world, people in industrialized nations are having fewer children, as the kids are better off if there is more intensive investment in each child. These days, a decent job that offers health insurance really requires a college education.  Sure people in trades do well at first, but they often find the physical requirements difficult after age 50, and that gives them a shorter working life to pay for retirement.  Colleges base financial aid awards on parental income, so if parents refuse to pay, the kids are left scrambling to cover the parental contribution.  Research by Dalton Conley finds that each extra child in a family reduces the access that the other children have to educational resources.  Comments to A New York Times article pointed out last year pointed out that just having extra children offers economies of scale as you just reuse cribs, clothes etc.  Giving them the trappings of a middle class life, however, with lessons, vacations, activities etc. results in increased costs with each child

2) College educations and housing costs have been rising faster than inflation for a while. (Food, clothes, toys etc.  in contrast, have fallen as a share of the budget because those goods are cheaper now in real terms).  These expenses make each extra child an even more expensive proposition that it used to be.

3) Not everyone had an idyllic experience.  As other posters have noted, the oldest child or oldest daughter often ends up pulling a lot of extra weight.  I have two colleagues who were the oldest daughters in large families.  They love their siblings, but they are childless by choice.  Also, read "Fourteen" by Steve Zanichkowski.  Some parents really did have more kids than they could handle.[/quote]

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