Were you asked if you were done having kids while still cradling a newborn?

Years ago, it was considered normal for couples to have three or more kids, but today, having more than two children is considered brave. I get it. I have three and I fully understand all the time, expense, and effort that goes into raising a family. I don’t really consider three kids a large family; so many people have 4,5 or 6 or more children. I say more power to them and God bless them because I don’t think that I could handle any more kids than I already have.

That being said, if we chose to have more, it would be our decision and nobody else’s. Some people assume we are finished (which I’m fairly sure we are now since our youngest is 8), but shortly after we had him, questions were abound asking if we were done, along with the smirk that said, ‘I hope you are because you already have three’. I never gave it much thought until I read one mom’s account of how every time someone asked her if she was done having kids, she felt offended.  To some women, questioning if they will have more children is taken as an insult.

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A 2-year old girl was accidentally left on a Wisconsin street while her parents went to a birthday party in Illinois.

Oh my goodness this story makes my heart practically stop. A family was picking up kids in Kenosha, WI to take to a birthday party in nearby Illinois when they accidentally left their 2-year old daughter behind, playing in the street. They realized that they had forgotten her about a half hour later. Thankfully she was found wandering the street unhurt and safe, and was returned to her mother. Continue reading »

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That's one quality kid right there

As a mom of five, I know there are things my kids go without that have become normal for children in smaller families. Their own bedrooms, for example, and new toys and non-hand-me-down clothes. And when it comes to activities, my offspring have to choose wisely. There’s simply not enough time to chauffeur five kids around to several activities each, and in a large family the extracurricular budget can only stretch so far.

But it had never occurred to me that those tradeoffs might lead to an inferior set of human beings until I saw the headline on this article in the Globe and Mail: “Do big families affect the ‘quality’ of children’?

Luckily, the answer – at least according to the reporter’s criteria – seems to be “not so much.” Continue reading »

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As a mom of 5, I’ve heard a lot of speculation about why anyone would want to have a big family. Most of the theories people come up with make no sense to me, and yet I keep seeing them brought up again and again.

So just in case you’re considering having a bunch of kids, you might want to make sure you’re NOT doing it for the following five reasons: Continue reading »

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The conclusion of a new fertility study out of the U.K. reads more like a quirky summer chick-lit novel than actual science, but here we go:

The most fertile couples — the ones who are likely to have the most kids — are made up of an extroverted man and a neurotic woman. (Bridget Jones Diaries Part III?) Why? Why this particular coupling? (And why does it make me roll my eyes?) Continue reading »

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The folks at WalletPop UK, noting that a survey commissioned by the Optimum Population Trust indicates that nearly a third of people in the UK would support a cap on the number of kids a couple can have, took a look at the financial implications of family size.  Their conclusion?  Although kids are expensive and do cost the taxpayers money, they do pay that back when they become adults and begin paying taxes.  Furthermore, the author notes that at some point in the future, the current crop of parents will be grandparents (Get off my lawn!) and we will need those kids to support us and care for us.
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