More Children

Someone in a comment section claimed that one of older people's greatest regrets is not having had more children.  She didn't give a source.  This sounded suspicious to me, so I went looking for some hard data.  There isn't much, but I found this from Pew Research that mildly supports that idea. It asked women at the end of their childbearing years whether they had reached what they called an ideal family size.  They were on average about half a kid short. That's not quite the same question, however.  People might well think the idea is four but have a disabled second child and stop there, because the amount of energy required is too great.  When they are older they might in some sense  regret not having more, but not a pining, greatest regrets sense. There are a dozen similar personal explanations why people might have fewer children than they thought ideal, without it cresting over into top five all-time-regrets-of-my-life.

What was interesting was the search.  The articles were mostly focused on two things: women who wished they'd had fewer children. Highlighting the "great taboo" of even saying such a thing makes for good copy, and there is a man-bites-dog aspect to sell magazines. None of these articles cited data, they just quoted a few women who said something like this, then further quoted some counselor who talked about shame, secrets, women's roles, etc.  The other focus was entirely financial regrets, interviewing retirees who wished they had saved more.  Those articles often did have data, but only on the money matters.

I tell young couples to have more children and pay less attention to them. I also now think couples should have children younger, not older, after waiting until they are more settled or more ready.  The sheer physical energy required is better managed by younger people, and that is much more important than separate bedrooms and dance lessons.No one listens.  It is interesting that these days we all think we couldn't manage more than two, while much poorer ages, with much less free time, space, and food regularly managed many more.  Our expectations must be different now.

We have five sons.  We thought we were stopping at two - the younger one was in his junior year of highschool - when we adopted two from Romania, who were entering 7th grade and 9th grade. Ten years ago a nephew came to live with us just as he turned thirteen and we parented the rest of his adolescence.  He still lives nearby, as does the oldest, who has two of his own.  The middle three live very far away now, Houston, Nome, Tromso.