No. One. Cares.

Anonymous wrote:When starting a family in your late 30s is the norm it becomes more challenging to have 3+ kids. Not for everyone, obviously, but that is going to play in to the average family size in high COL neighborhoods full of highly educated, high income, dual working parent households.

OP here. Thanks all for the responses. I'm 33 with 3 kids already so for DC standards I started early.
We both work full time, although we mainly work at home and do split days as much as possible (DH does an early 8-hr shift starting at 5AM so I do childcare/drop-offs before I start work, then DH is off at 2:30 so he takes on childcare from pick-up until dinner time).
Somehow I still think we could manage this with a 4th, especially if we take as much leave as possible the first year. I'd stack my sick leave, annual leave, and 12 wks of Paid Parental Leave, return to work and then have DH take his leave as long as possible. This is what we did with our 3rd and it worked out great - we didn't need much childcare for the baby until she was 7 or 8 months old. (I never mentioned we have no family here... We manage a lot on our own).

I think the only time people will talk about your larger family is if you start to offload your kids onto other people via non-reciprocated play dates, non-reciprocated carpools, kids staying too long at sleepovers, etc. If you can manage everything and pay for what you need, it’s nobody else’s business but your own.

When starting a family in your late 30s is the norm it becomes more challenging to have 3+ kids. Not for everyone, obviously, but that is going to play in to the average family size in high COL neighborhoods full of highly educated, high income, dual working parent households.

We had two healthy kids, three years apart, took our blackjack winnings and left the table.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Everyone we know have 2. Everyone. Except one couple who had twins in their 2nd pregnancy.

People who had twins in their 1st pregnancy in our circle stopped after having them.

Huh- there are at least three families in my NW elementary school who had a singleton after having twins

I know a couple of these as well and it always surprises me.

Anonymous wrote:Everyone we know have 2. Everyone. Except one couple who had twins in their 2nd pregnancy.

People who had twins in their 1st pregnancy in our circle stopped after having them.

Huh- there are at least three families in my NW elementary school who had a singleton after having twins

I live in Fairfax and send my only child to a Catholic school in our neighborhood. There are many 4+ kids families. There are also many 2 and 3 kids families.

I don't know anyone who lives in DC With 4 kids though.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Almost everyone I know has 3.

3 is the new 2 imo.

One more is not that crazy.

I have three. I think four is manageable with a SAHP. With two parents who work FT, four is... not manageable. I suppose the exception is a full-time nanny who stays on indefinitely, to manage school and stuff. I don't see the point of having a fourth in that scenario, but YMMV.

PP here. I have 3 too and I could envision having a fourth. We opted not to so we'd have more money to give our three existing children (college, cars, down payments, etc.). If my husband had been for it, I would have done it though.

We both work.

Part of my reasoning is that I know very, very few families with four kids and two working parents. Maybe one, and there's four years between each kid, so the older ones help a ton, and the mom is also a nurse and works three 12 hour shifts.

Two working parents who do 40+ hours/week? I think that's one of those things that a competent parent of three thinks, yeah, I could do that, and then in reality it's overwhelming.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Almost everyone I know has 3.

3 is the new 2 imo.

One more is not that crazy.

I have three. I think four is manageable with a SAHP. With two parents who work FT, four is... not manageable. I suppose the exception is a full-time nanny who stays on indefinitely, to manage school and stuff. I don't see the point of having a fourth in that scenario, but YMMV.

PP here. I have 3 too and I could envision having a fourth. We opted not to so we'd have more money to give our three existing children (college, cars, down payments, etc.). If my husband had been for it, I would have done it though.

We both work.

Anonymous wrote:Almost everyone I know has 3.

3 is the new 2 imo.

One more is not that crazy.

I have three. I think four is manageable with a SAHP. With two parents who work FT, four is... not manageable. I suppose the exception is a full-time nanny who stays on indefinitely, to manage school and stuff. I don't see the point of having a fourth in that scenario, but YMMV.

Almost everyone I know has 3.

3 is the new 2 imo.

One more is not that crazy.

Anonymous wrote:I don’t think it’s very common anymore anywhere outside of very religious communities.

Well for starters even an instate college education will be north of $200k for anyone born today. To say nothing of the costs to get them to 18 in the first place.

I don’t think it’s very common anymore anywhere outside of very religious communities.

Come live in my Catholic neighborhood! We are outliers with only 2 kids. Most have 4-5. One family has 9!