S/O What do you consider a large family?

[umsami]

I found the large family threads interesting, because some people would say that they only had 4 or 6 children now (implying that was not large).  When I grew up, anything over two kids was considered large.  Now that I'm the Mom of four, I'd probably say, 4+ is large.  

 

What did you consider a large family growing up.  Has it changed? What would you consider a large family today?

[SparklyUnicorn]

Anything over 2 kids...

 

 

[umsami]

I should also say....is there a deciding factor?

 

Like, when we hit four kids, that meant we couldn't just have a normal sedan or car that sat five.  We had to move on up to a minivan or big SUV or something.  

[SparklyUnicorn]

Huh.. My cars could not have accommodated three children. 

[Guest]

Growing up, five or more was large, which was our family size. Now I think four or more is large. I think the factor for me is that four is getting into the atypical category for people I know.

 

I had wanted six or seven kids earlier on. Now, though, I am fairly content that I'm not up to my eyeballs in caring for kids...it is nice as they become less dependant.

[Guest]

Four or more. I still think of our family as fairly small, because I know gals with double our number of kids, but ours is large and closely spaced. As a kid I'd have thought we were enormous, but now I live in a bigger family friend area it seems just slightly large.

[TracyP]

I say 4+ because in my area that is the family size that begins to fall outside the norm. There are lots and lots of families with 3 kids, 4 starts to move into the large family zone, and seeing a family with 5 or more kids is a rarity.

[Murphy101]

I found the large family threads interesting, because some people would say that they only had 4 or 6 children now (implying that was not large). When I grew up, anything over two kids was considered large. Now that I'm the Mom of four, I'd probably say, 4+ is large.

 

What did you consider a large family growing up. Has it changed? What would you consider a large family today?

Growing up? Idk really. Never really thought about it. I do know that it was normal for my classmates to have 2-3 siblings, so I'd say based on that* that a family with 3-4 siblings was average. No one ever considered me from a large family even tho I had 3 older siblings. Well, if they did, it never was mentioned or referred to around me that I remember. Not my graduating class was over 900. So it was very normal to know people with 3-4 siblings, I'd ballpark most families had two and some were single child households. But I don't think anyone thought 3-4 for large per se.

 

*While noting that it is not anywhere near a scientific base and thus I'm well aware it may or may not be accurate to others at the time or in other locales.

 

...

 

Asked dh (an only child)..

 

He says anything bigger than 1 or 2 seemed large to him. He says he doesn't remember meeting hardly any families in his school with more than 2 kids in their family.

 

Now we are discussing whether it is because he was raised in a small one stop light suburb 45 minutes away from my school district.

[Jennifer132]

I considered our family large when we had three kids and I was pregnant with the fourth. Now with five kids, we definitely feel large to me. And I know we seem like a spectacle wherever we go based on the looks we get.

 

Growing up the largest family I knew had 5 kids. I think anything over three back then seemed large to me.

 

I will say, in my mind it makes a difference when families have several children close together (like in a 8-10 year span). To me that seems larger than, say, a family who had three kids, waited until they were teens, and then adopted a few toddlers. So technically they have five or six kids, but the age gap makes them seem like a smaller family because they're a lot less likely to go places all together on a regular basis.

[Word Nerd]

Four or five or more seems large to me now. I don't remember thinking much about it when I was a kid, except when seeing formal portraits of my grandparents and all their siblings.

[Mrs. B]

My friends with 3+ kids have told me all sanity goes out the door after 3 kids. 3 kids is such a jump to them that it doesn't seem to matter to them if they stick with 3 or have many more children after that.

 

I used to consider my friends with 5-6 kids as large families. Then I found out about the Duggars. That is large!

 

Newest definition of large family: I'm not sure the number, but if a family needs a large van with extra rows, like the ones that take church groups on outings, to tote the whole family somewhere, then the family is large.

 

FTR, even though I have a small family, want to be large family, I am open minded to anyone who wants to be a large enough family to need to own the long van with extra rows. Secretly, I am thankful we never grew to the size of requiring a minivan to tote the entire family somewhere. I am close minded to the idea of having to drive a van.

[lovinmyboys]

I think 5+ is large. We have 4 and that feels "normal." Going to 5 seems like a huge life change.

 

We live in an area with a large catholic population. I think 3 and 4 is pretty common, but I only know a few families with more. I rarely see families with 5+ out.

[Audrey]

I found the large family threads interesting, because some people would say that they only had 4 or 6 children now (implying that was not large).  When I grew up, anything over two kids was considered large.  Now that I'm the Mom of four, I'd probably say, 4+ is large.  

 

What did you consider a large family growing up.  Has it changed? What would you consider a large family today?

 

 

It hasn't changed for me.  I've always thought more than 3 was a large family.  I asked my dh the questions -- he is from a family of 7 kids -- and he said that, now, he considers 3 or more a large family, but when he was a kid, he only thought families bigger than his were big.  Culturally, though, it was the norm at the time for him to see families of 6-10 kids often.  Usually, families with less than 6 or so were just younger families and it was assumed they "weren't done yet."   This was a traditionally French Catholic area.  It is less so now, but even the French Catholic families are much smaller and it is rare to see a family of more than 4 kids anymore.

[Arcadia]

I should also say....is there a deciding factor?

 

For the country I was from and also the area that I am living now, the cost of housing is a factor.  My maternal aunt and my parents bought the same floor plan for their marital home which was 74sqm/796sqft  two bedroom govt subsidized housing.   My parents only have me, my brother and parents so 4 people.  My aunt has four kids, a single sister, her dad and her husband so 8 people in the same floor plan.  It was not common to have more than parents and 2 kids in that floor plan. 

 

Here when we rent, we would have to rent a two bedroom for four people but we can rent a one bedroom if the landlord doesn't count children under 18.  We also joked about having to upgrade our sedan to a minivan if we have three kids.  There is hardly room left after putting two car seats in the back seat of the sedan. Not much room left in the trunk after putting in a double stroller either.

[purpleowl]

3 kids seems to be the norm in my social circle, so 4+ seems large to me.  There are definitely days when my 3 seem like a lot, though. ;)  And with #3 we did have to get a minivan, because we couldn't fit three carseats in a single row (well, two carseats and one booster), and I figured people would frown on the idea of strapping one of them to the roof. ;)

 

I'm pretty sure I thought 4+ was large when I was growing up, too.  I'm the oldest of 3, but with a big gap between middle sis and youngest sis, so most of my growing-up years there were just 2 of us.  I probably thought at the time that 3 was kind of big, but 4 would have been huge.

 

Anybody who has 6 and doesn't believe they have a large family must spend time around much bigger families than I do!  

[IfIOnly]

I consider 5 or more to be a large family. Guess it's the midwifery/medical terms that have influenced me. 

 

multipara- a woman who has given birth more than once

 

grand multipara - a woman who has given birth 5 or more times

 

http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=9750

[Guest]

I considered our family large when we had three kids and I was pregnant with the fourth. Now with five kids, we definitely feel large to me. And I know we seem like a spectacle wherever we go based on the looks we get.

 

Growing up the largest family I knew had 5 kids. I think anything over three back then seemed large to me.

 

I will say, in my mind it makes a difference when families have several children close together (like in a 8-10 year span). To me that seems larger than, say, a family who had three kids, waited until they were teens, and then adopted a few toddlers. So technically they have five or six kids, but the age gap makes them seem like a smaller family because they're a lot less likely to go places all together on a regular basis.

I agree spacing makes a huge difference, as does age. My family is closely spaced, but they're still youngish. My family will probably seem bigger when the bodies take up more space :D

[EmseB]

I thought more than 2 kids was a big family growing up because I only had one sibling.

 

Now, I go to church where four is pretty normal, but I still think it's a big family.  Mainly because I didn't have anyone say, "Wow, you've got quite an army there!" until I had four kids.

[Forget-Me-Not]

I voted 4+ on both questions.  I have 4.  It feels big, despite the fact that DH and I both grew up with larger sibling groups :) I know it feels like a lot of laundry!

[Tap]

I come from a blended family.  I am the baby of 9 all together, but was raised as the youngest of 5.  

 

I consider 5 close together a big family, but I would say 6 if there is a couple of years between each kid. 

[AnnE-girl]

I said that 5 or more was large when I was growing up. Our family had three, which seemed pretty average, but the two really big families in our church and parish school had 12. Now average family sizes have gotten smaller, so four or more seems big.

[happypamama]

I should also say....is there a deciding factor?

 

Like, when we hit four kids, that meant we couldn't just have a normal sedan or car that sat five. We had to move on up to a minivan or big SUV or something.

We may be the only people who downsized vehicles while expecting their third child. I had an eight seater Ford Expedition, but when gas hit $4 a gallon, we bought a Focus to be DH's commuter car, but since it got so much better gas mileage than my Expedition, we also used it as our family vehicle for the next three years (until baby four necessitated a minivan). The salesman looked a little confused when I hauled a third car seat out of the Expedition to see if all three would fit in the Focus. (Fwiw, they fit nicely.)

 

I grew up the oldest of four, and we knew a handful of families with five, six, or more, as well as plenty with four. A few with eight or ten. So I never felt like we were the only large family, but I do consider four to be a large family. Two or three seems average to me, and one seems small. I think once you are unable to fit everyone in a sedan and require a larger vehicle, you're a large family. Maybe it's also because when you have two, that's one parent per child, so totally doable, because most of the time, both children don't require two full hands at the same time. With three, it's a little more of a stretch if everyone needs a parent at the same time, but not too bad. But by four, it's much more of a stretch, and everyone simply can't be attended to at the same time.

 

I guess I figure that four is on the larger side, but it also doesn't really stick out to me, if that makes any sense. It's what I knew, so it doesn't seem unusual to me, but we were also balanced, two boys, two girls. Five is only one more than that, and it hasn't really seemed like too big of a stretch every time we have added one more, but I do recognize that most families don't have five. But we are not balanced at all, so maybe that makes it seem larger than it is. It's a lot of little blond stairstep boys. I actually get way more comments from strangers about "four boys" than I do about "five children."

 

Oh, I know why I consider five to be large, other than that it fills a minivan to capacity (which is why we didn't replace our minivan with another minivan and went for a full size, for the legroom for teenagers and the cargo space): things are often packaged in sets of eight, so with four children, everyone gets two. With five children, everyone gets one, and there are three left over. Four is simple and tidy; five requires more finesse.

 

(But five! Can't imagine life without our number five! He arrived with great drama and continues to defy all expectations.)

[Laura Corin]

Almost all the families I know have one or two children, unless they are blended families.  I know one with three and one with four.

 

I have two siblings from my family of origin.  My father had three brothers (one a late surprise) and my mother had one sister (my grandmother had severe problems after the second birth).

 

This chart suggests that the number of people having three, four, two or one child has not changed much in my lifetime, but that the number having none is on an upward trend.  Interesting.  

 

I voted four to both questions.

[happypamama]

Also, another reason I think four is on the larger side: if you have two, a girl and a boy, as we did, and you have three bedrooms, which is very common, they each have their own room. If you then add a third, no big deal, as two boys or two girls can share a room. Two children, one room, very easy. If you have a fourth, and it's a third son, like we have, it's trickier. Three children, one room, is a little more cramped in most typical bedrooms. So I think four is large if they are not two and two.

 

Also, yes, spacing matters. My first two gaps are three and three and a half years. My second two gaps are two years nine months and just over two years. That felt like pretty much six years straight of pregnancy, heavy nursing, and toting a baby around (and I loved it!). Even now, my two youngest still need a lot from me. I can imagine that three or four might feel very large if they're all close together and at the Mommy stage at the same time.

[Melissa in Australia]

Other

 I grew up in a family of 8. I didn't really feel it was large.

 

Other. I thought that 6 and over was large as I had 5 children and didn't think it large. Now I have 7 and I still don't think it is so large. the older ones are practically independent.

[Carrie12345]

4+ and 4+.

 

3 has always seemed "normal" to me. I'm one of three. My mother's one of three. My father's one of three. My aunt has 3. (My other aunt has 2.)  My best friend was one of three. Every great-aunt I can think of off the top of my head had 3.

[Carrie12345]

Also, another reason I think four is on the larger side: if you have two, a girl and a boy, as we did, and you have three bedrooms, which is very common, they each have their own room. If you then add a third, no big deal, as two boys or two girls can share a room. Two children, one room, very easy. If you have a fourth, and it's a third son, like we have, it's trickier. Three children, one room, is a little more cramped in most typical bedrooms. So I think four is large if they are not two and two.

 

Also, yes, spacing matters. My first two gaps are three and three and a half years. My second two gaps are two years nine months and just over two years. That felt like pretty much six years straight of pregnancy, heavy nursing, and toting a baby around (and I loved it!). Even now, my two youngest still need a lot from me. I can imagine that three or four might feel very large if they're all close together and at the Mommy stage at the same time.

 

Yes, having my girls, a year apart, sharing a room, is simple.

Having 16, 8, and 4yo boys share is... complicated, lol.

[lailasmum]

I personally think 3 or more is large and 6 or more is very large. Most people in my community only have a couple of kids, both my parents were only kids too so I'm used to that being the norm,  though I'm one of 3  but we seemed unusual. I have known the odd larger family through home eduction and generally they had  around 6 to 8 kids but over a very long period of time so the eldest were pretty much independent when many of the younger ones were born so they probably only had four in the house at one time. 

 

When I was a child I hated other kids particularly babies and toddlers, I pretty much thought that making new humans was a bit stupid. I've mellowed somewhat.

[MEmama]

More than 2 kids strikes me as a large family. Everyone I know with more seems constantly frazzled and exhausted.

 

Growing up the only families I was aware of with more than 3 kids were the Mormon families. I didn't think about the dynamics at all, but they were definitely outside the norm. 2- 3 was probably average in our area in the 70's.

 

Eta: I only know a couple people IRL with 4 kids, and none with more.

[sagira]

4+ kids

 

 

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[Squawky Acres]

I think of 1-3 as small, 4-6 as medium, and 7+ as large.  It could be because we know quite a few larger families.  Somehow, it makes a difference to me how they appear.  If the kids are nicely dressed, have their own interests and opinions, and come across as individuals, I don't tend to think of the family as large even if there are many children.  If, however, they wear matching outfits with very long skirts, drive a big "church van," travel around and sing together, and stand in a row and blink at me, I consider the family large, even if there are only 5 or 6 children.  As I write this, I realize that makes no sense whatsoever.

[momofkhm]

If your mini-van has every single seat filled when your whole family is together or you have to buy something bigger than a min-van to get your whole family in one vehicle, than you have a large family.

 

 

[Pamela H in Texas]

It probably depends on your circle also.  4 or 5 is pretty normal in my circle.  And I don't feel that large myself most of the time when counting just the "little kids."  When I say "8 kids" (counting oldest two), that does sound large though.  Foster homes turn to group home status at 7.  I don't even know anyone with 7 (though we had 7 when Tinkerbell was here and it was perfect....and I have a few friends with 10-12).  

 

Anyway, I put 7.  The line is somewhere between 6 and 8 for sure.

[blackjackoaktree]

7+  and now 7+

 

When I was younger, I had one sibling and nearly everyone around me had 5+. We lived in an area with a large Irish Catholic population where hitting the double digits with headcounts was common.

 

I wanted ten to a dozen kids but have only had m/cs after my last child, so I think anything over what I have is large.

 

So my perception is colored by my desire.

[J-rap]

I agree spacing makes a huge difference, as does age. My family is closely spaced, but they're still youngish. My family will probably seem bigger when the bodies take up more space :D

 

Yes, when they begin bumping into each other in the hallways or finding that squeezing into the 7-person minivan for family trips is not so easy anymore, your family will feel bigger.  :D   In looking at your ages, our kids are spaced the same as yours.  :)

[MomOfABunch]

I think it depends on where you live too. When we lived in the Central Valley in CA, lots of people had 5+ kids. Now that we live in the DC metro area, I don't know anyone irl that has 5+ kids. I get lots of comments/stares when I go out with all of them.

[Jane in NC]

At the Catholic elementary school I attended as a child, I was an oddball coming from a family with two children.  Almost all of my classmates and friends were from families with at least three kids, often more like five or six.  In fact, even the non-Catholics on my street growing up usually had four kids.

 

There is a very different picture today! Most of the kids I work with today through 4-H are from families of two or three kids.  I have one child as do a number of friends. The next generation in my extended family has one or two children--although they are certainly young enough to have more the nieces and nephews are saying not. 

 

 

[JFSinIL]

I come from a family of three, hubby from a family of six, and we have four.  I voted five or more is a large family.

[medawyn]

My mom is one of 8 and most of her siblings have 6-8. Even though I was one of two (and my mom definitely wanted more), I've always thought 6+ was large.

 

It will be interesting to see what happens when my cousins have their own families. One is done at three, but most haven't started, yet.

 

We're aiming for four. I don't consider that large, but I think it's what I'll be able to handle gracefully. We'll see what happens.

 

ETA: Most people I know have three. Some of them might not be done, but many are.

[Cinder]

I grew up in a family of 5 kids and knew a number of other families with 5 kids. I never thought we were a large family, then. I thought 6+ would be a large family. I don't recall any families I knew that had 6 or more, though.

 

Nowadays I think 4+ is large. I don't have any good reason to think so except that I have 3 kids and anything more than that seems large to me.

[MrsWeasley]

We had several families with four kids on my block while growing up, so four felt normal as a kid. As an adult, I know lots of families with six kids. I picked five, but with blended families, I think five kids still fall under normal-sized.

[blue daisy]

I grew up with one sibling, but my mom was the oldest of 9 and we lived around all my aunts and cousins, so I saw the large family dynamics from them and always wished I had more siblings.  I remember telling my mom that I wanted to have  a big family when I grew up and she laughed when I said, like 3 or 4 kids.  LOL  

 

We have 4 and while I don't think that's really huge, we don't know that many families with 4 or more kids and we get lots of comments from both friends and strangers about our crew, so I guess it's considered pretty big here.  We are the only family in our church that has more than 3 kids, for example.  I would love to have more, but since 2 of them are really, really intense kiddos, we are stretched pretty thin and have decided to be done.

[Ausmumof3]

I think 3 is the new 4. Growing up a lot of families stopped at 4. Now I see many perfect pair families or maybe three kids. I think car seats is the defining factor for a lot of people. It's like people say... Can't have more than 3 or we have to have a big people carrier car. But those who decide to go past three often seem to keep going and fill that bigger car up...

 

I agree with the poster above who says that some of the families with split ages don't seem as big as the ones where there's a lot of kids really close together.

[Crimson Wife]

Growing up, 4+. I used to say that I wanted a "big family" meaning that I wanted 4 kids.

 

I'm more religious now and I would consider 3-5 kids to be a "medium" family and 6+ to be "big". I think there has been a generational shift among Christians (both Catholic and Protestant) to become more openly in favor of larger families.

 

We're not planning on any more biological children (unless we get some answers soon as to why our youngest has her disabilities) but I'm open to the idea of adoption down the road.

[RebeccaS]

Growing up I had three sibs and we didn't seem like a big family. I had a friend who was one of seven and that seemed huge and fun. Now I have five kids and I consider anything more than what we have as big. At one point, due to fostering a set of triplets, we had seven kids but it just didn't seem large to me. So my idea of a large family seems to fluctuate a lot and have no real rhyme or reason. At five kids I'm often told I have a large family.

[Cottonwood]

I voted 4. Growing up I felt like 4 was large, still think 4 begins to be a large family and came from a family of 4. Seeing what it took to raise a family of 4 kids, I decide two was enough for me. Dh came from a family of 5 kids, and for similar reasons only wanted 2. His opinion is that 3 or more is large.

[AFwife Claire]

 

 

Growing up, I always went to a Christian school, no matter where we were stationed.  I thought 4 kids was big, and looking back, I think in part that is because I didn't know of any families with more than 4 kids--and that was most likely because how could anyone with more than 4 kids afford Christian school?  Since it was just my brother and me, 4 seemed huge, and definitely what I was aiming for, because I thought 2 kids was the most incredibly boring and predictable thing ever (said in my best pre-teen/teen drama voice).

 

Now that I actually have kids, I would say over 6 is big.  Six kids can all fit in a minivan (we had an 8-seat Sienna), but when we had #7, we had to go up to the full-size van.  However, we do *not* wear matching outfits/long skirts and hair, and we MOST CERTAINLY never sing as a group.  That would be a disaster! 

 

I know we look like a big crowd though.  When we were in Boston last year for my dh's business trip, the foreign tourists pointed and talked about us as we passed all the time while we were sightseeing.  Hey, just another mixed-age tour group that happens to all look really similar (my kids have very similar facial features--you can definitely tell we are all a family)! 

 

I thought that once my older kids were over 8 and became so much more helpful, it was not too difficult at all to keep adding another baby into the mix, so adding #6, 7, and 8 was not too challenging.  It wasn't until the oldest one got into high school, and I started teaching the junior high and high school science classes in our small rigorous co-op, that things started getting hard again, dealing with newborn stuff. 

 

ETA:  Not at all sure why that blank quote box is there, and I can't figure out how to get rid of it!  Oh well . . .

[Mbelle]

I only had one brother, but all my cousins were in families of 3-5, which I considered normal and for us to be a small family.  I considered 6 plus large when I was growing up and now I would consider 5+ large.  I have 3 children and really wanted 4-6 , but it just didn't happen.

 

 

[HS Mom in NC]

My view hasn't changed over the years.  I don't call a family big unless there are 5 or more kids in it.

 

I grew up in a family with 4 kids.

[luuknam]

Growing up, I'm not sure. 4+ would definitely have seemed big, none of my friends, classmates, or cousins were from families that big - most were from families with two kids, and a few from one or three kids. That said, my mom is one of seven kids, and my dad one of four, and I'm not sure about all of my grandparents but one of them was one of twelve. But, that was different, because that was a looooooong time ago (to a kid). My grandmother, when I was an adult, once said that anyone who voluntarily has more than 5 kids is crazy (she had 7, but that's because she and the pill really didn't get along). My other grandmother I think wished that she'd had more than 4, though I'm not sure. She had a couple of miscarriages during the war, so not sure if she wanted *more* kids or just wished she hadn't had any miscarriages.

 

Now, I think 5+ is big. I know some families with 4 kids irl, and living in the US bigger families just seem more common than in NL and not limited to the religious fundamentalists. The people with 4 kids are religious, but they don't have 4 kids because birth control is made by the devil, know what I mean?