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What do you consider to be a big family?


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6+ children?

 

That's what I consider big. With 7, you need some kind of big vehicle. Like someone else said, as long as we could all fit it our 8-passenger Sienna, it seemed like we were just an average-size family!

 

Now we're expecting #9, and I definitely feel like a big family. The food! The laundry! The time homeschooling! The food!!! It's a ton of fun, though.

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I'm thinking 7 seems "a little" big. No longer can we fit in the "small van." The clean laundry multiplies like bunny rabbits. We have to more than double most recipes. And yet it doesn't feel like "big" in terms of spending time with people, tripping over people (though I did go look at a little bigger house today), even managing extracurriculars, etc. I went to look at a house today and there is a homeschooling family with 9 that lives two doors down. I didn't blink at nine. I probably would at ten though. LOL So maybe 10 is truly big while 7 is only "above average."

 

ETA: I always feel like we're missing one. I don't know why. We'll see....

Edited by 2J5M9K
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If adults are outnumbered by kids, it's a big family! :lol: j/k

 

I think 5 or more is a big family these days. 100 years ago, that would have been 7 or more for anyone but a farming family. But families are smaller now in general.

 

I grew up one of 8 kids. Six of their own children and my brother and I were foster kids. It felt like a big family.

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Four children, because it's out of the norm for most areas. I have four, and I'm the oldest of four, so it seems normal to me, but I also know that four is not all that common. I think of one child as a small family, two or three children as average, four or five as large, and six or more as very large.

:iagree: I have 4. In homeschooling circles I feel average. At community events I am definitely at the awe inspiring "large" level.

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I'd say 7 or more. Five is just normal for me (now), and I can always imagine our family with one more child, but if you ask me to imagine any more than that, it starts to seem really overwhelming.

 

There was a time when I would have considered our five children to be a large family, though!

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:iagree: I have 4. In homeschooling circles I feel average. At community events I am definitely at the awe inspiring "large" level.

 

Yes; you said it better than I did!

 

I've noticed that the comments and silent counting of children increased a lot when we had the fourth child, so I think most people must consider four to be a lot.

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For a long time I thought of as 4+ as a big family ... now I lean more to the 5+ seem to be big for others because we have 5 and there seems to be so few that I know IRL that have that many. In my mind 8+ is a large family...

Edited by mommy5
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Interesting question, and one that I've asked myself a lot. I used to think 4 kids was a big family. To a lot of people it is the beginning of 'big family' status since 3 kids is pretty standard. However, ever since I've had my fourth it seems I keep meeting people with 4 or 5 or like today, 8, children. So then I don't feel so 'big' anymore. But everyone around me always tells me how busy I am and need help and have a lot of work to do and, and, and...

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I notice families of four, because they are unusual around here. I'd probably think of five or six as largish, and over that big. Somewhere around ten or twelve it gets really big.

 

There is a really relative quality to it though, if someone my grandfathers age came from a family of seven I wouldn't think of it as big, and my parents came from families of four or five which I don't think of as big either.

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