$$$ Money. Daycare is expensive, activities are expensive, summer camp is expensive, college is expensive, housing is expensive. Would have totally had more if we could afford more. Also you really either need one working parent with a relatively high income that can support the fam+ a stay at home parent or two much much much higher incomes if both are working so you can afford to outsource help. Otherwise the stress is too much at some point.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We had two because that is what we could handle and afford without any family support. We also could see how a third put a strain on the marriages of several of our friends.

Same.

Plus 2

No family help, we both work, youngest has mild SN - we knew we were tapped if we were going to give them the childhood we want for them. No regrets!

Because I didn’t want my husband and I to be outnumbered or for one of us to have more kids than hands when alone.

Because I didn’t want to always have to get a second hotel room

Because I didn’t want to deal with having someone in the third row of a car.

Because I didn’t want to be pregnant as many times as it would take to have three kids.

Because I didn’t want to pay private school tuition (plus all the other things we pay for) times three.

Because I didn’t want to deal with the logistics of three kids going in three different directions.

Because I think three can be a bad number for children because there can often be an odd man out and no way was I having four kids.

Because I didn’t want to feel the pressure to have a house big enough to give three kids their own rooms and it seemed unfair to make two share. (We need a guest room for visitors so that would require a five-bedroom house.)

There are more reasons but those are just some.

Anonymous wrote:We had two because that is what we could handle and afford without any family support. We also could see how a third put a strain on the marriages of several of our friends.

Same except most of my friends don’t have kids yet. I wish I could have more but the cost of two is already pushing the budget and (more importantly) I’m just at my emotional limit dealing with two preschoolers. If I added a newborn into the mix I think I would be a worse parent to the two I have and probably to the baby. I’ve always loved large families but I guess I don’t have the personality for it.

Because we got a late start. Didn’t meet until our 30s, married at 34, then had kids. Now pushing 40 and totally exhausted.

Because one of our kids has special needs, which makes us more likely to have another kid with special needs, particularly when you factor in our ages.

Because daycare for two kids is $4k a month, which is most of my take-home pay as a teacher. Any more kids and I’d have to quit my job; it just wouldn’t make economic sense for me to keep working. I have so much respect for stay-at-home parents, but I know that is not the right path for me.

bc i think if you can't afford to help your kids financially when they're getting started and pay their full college tuition and for private school if needed eg for SN then you should not have kids and certainly not more kids. I can afford to do this for 2 but not more

Because I had hyperemesis gravidarum with both pregnancies and could never put myself or my family through that again.

Because my oldest is the worst sleeper on earth, truly a .1% bad sleeper who is also low sleep needs, and my health and energy have never recovered from surviving 3 years of extreme sleep deprivation and the stress of all the medical interventions and investigations we did when she was a toddler trying to solve it.

Purely money. Expenses for parochial school and extracurriculars are a huge chunk of our DCUM-poor salary. I know these things aren't necessary, but I'd rather raise two kids the way I want then raise more and feel I wasn't doing my best for them.

I hemorrhaged with kid #2 so didn’t want to risk that with a 3rd.

Because we didn’t want to be in the baby/toddler phase for a decade or more. Our oldest is 7 and we see how fun it is starting to be at this age and the idea of starting over again with a newborn is exhausting to think about. We want to be able to comfortably afford daycare and fully fund college for both kids without them needing loans. We want to be able to travel and have lots of experiences that require having extra money. We both have careers and neither of us are willing to become a stay at home parent. Basically we like our lifestyle with 2 and it’s something we’d have to sacrifice for more.

We didn’t want more. I am an only and DH is one of 6. Neither of us wanted a large family even though we came at it from opposite perspectives.

Day care costs. We had twins and it broke us financially. I really wanted one or two more.

Anonymous wrote:Why didn’t you have more children? What would motivate you to have more?

pregnancy was not kind to me - nothing would motivate me to have more. Two was plenty.

Because I wanted two. Fortunately I wasn’t required to bear more children than I wanted to have.

Oh and it took three miscarriages to get to the second one. Glad that that was all almost a decade ago so I needn’t worry about whether I could have gotten appropriate treatment when one was suspected to be ectopic.