Wed 25 Oct 2006
According to a recent MSNBC article, while couples in Europe and Asia are opting for smaller families the trend here in the US seems to be toward larger families. More and more these days couples are opting for families of 3 or more kids. In 2004 11 percent of births were to women who already had 3 children up from 10 percent in 1995. Not much of a change really, but pediatricians and gynecologists are reporting that more and more they are encountering women who are open to having more than 2 children, even more than 4.
Duke University sociologist, Phillip Morris, says that the trend appears to be toward wealthier couples having more children. These couples see that they can already easily afford the 2 or 3 children that they already have so why not have more. This is a big change from wealthy couples being the ones to opt for smaller families in the past. It is also quite different from what is being seen in other countries, especially in Asia and Europe, where wealthy couples are opting more and more to have 1, or even no children.
Families are growing, as evidenced by the fact that the population just reached 300 million people this month. The growing acceptance and occurrence of larger families can be seen in the fact that our population is growing at a pretty large pace while other countries are experience stagnate or even declining population growth.
On a personal note, I am actually from a large family, 5 children. My mother always wanted to have lots of kids, even when she was growing up she would always tell people she wanted 5 or 6 kids when she grew up. For her generation that was unusually, the trend at that time was for smaller families. It now seems that things are swinging back to larger families being more common. I can’t say that I would be open to having a large family, 2 sounds more like it for me.
It will be interesting to see how the landscape of this country changes as it continues to grow and what impact an increase in larger families have on education, politics, and healthcare.
What size is your family? Are you planning to have a large family?
Care to comment
Things always go in cycles. We have four, which I don’t consider large, but compared to the norm I guess it is.
Maybe the trend is chaning, but we still get a lot of, “You have 4 OMG!”
The trend does seem to be changing. I encounter more and more people all the time who have 3, 4, or 5 kids.
My parents come from big families (Dad – 10 & Mom – 6). They only had my sister and I. My Sis & I both have 2 children. It’s hard keeping track of just the 2!
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Funny, I was just thinking about this the other night. We had just come back from grocery shopping, so my husband was bringing them in, I was unpacking them, my 5 yr and 19 month olds milling about and actually making noise that could be heard over the din of plastic shopping bags. Couple that with 2 cats and a kitten meowing for their dinner, as I loaded various dairy products into the fridge, I wondered to myself how people with 3 or more children did it.
I have 3 brothers, my older brother has 1, and my younger has 3 kids, 2 that live with him 1/2 of the time.
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I’m from a family of 5 kids and always thought I’d have about that many but the Lord had other plans. ;o) Most days I feel like my 2 keep me as busy as if I had 10 but I’m sure it’s easier to say that without experience.
Hugs,
Holly
Holly’s Corner
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