Reply to Do you know anyone with one kid who wanted just one kid?

Forum Index » General Parenting Discussion

Reply to "Do you know anyone with one kid who wanted just one kid?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I think a LOT more families will stop at one in the next generation.  It used to be that three was standard, and large families not all that unusual, but now people seem to think even just two is a huge slog, whereas two would have been a tiny family in the past. The natural progression will be that two is too hard, and stopping at one is fine.  Affordability will also play in, as it will become literally impossible to go to college and buy a house and save for retirement/college and have more than one child,[/quote]

I agree with this. I think there are 3 main factors driving families to become smaller:

1. Increasing expenses associated with raising a child and retiring.

2. More women wanting to continue their careers as unabated as possible.

3. Less social pressure to have a large family.

The average American family is already down from 3.7 kids in 1960 to 1.9 kids now. Of course, this is all an issue for population growth, given that the replacement rate is 2.1 kids, but the best thing you can do to combat climate change is to have fewer kids, so I consider that a positive. [/quote]

I would just add to this list a #4: For better or for worse, there is more of an expectation to engage in "intensive parenting" in recent years--parents are tons more involved than our parents were in the 70s/80s, when kids were much more free-range.  There is more of an expectation of a "curated" childhood--from the "right" type of early experiences for toddlers, to enrichment/extracurricular activities, etc.  It is more difficult to maintain this level of involvement the more kids you have.  I think there are drawbacks to this approach (see: helicopter, lawnmower, and other types of intensive parenting), but this is where we're at as a culture.  For two-working parent families in particular, it's difficult to be this involved with multiple kids.[/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