| > This may sound callous but I think parents are much more OK with their oldest son/dqughter taking bigger risks if there are other 4 ones at home than if that's your only child and losing him/her is the end of your lineage. Not saying that more kids work as a genetic backup, but I think that for sure that creates a subconscious effect in the parents' risk assessment. Well, actually you're not totally off. Having more kids (we have three, more on the way hopefully) definitely lowers the pressure on individual ones. But moreover, and more importantly, seeing our friends with large families (5+), the biggest reason the kids can play is that the older siblings are there. When we get together with a few other families of that size, the oldest kids are like 8 - 10 (i.e., old enough to let us know if the littles are in serious trouble). It's really easy to let your kids go play in the woods by themselves if you trust the older ones to run and tell you if something is wrong. Bonus points for having multiple families with the same arrangement so one can tell you something is wrong while the group is still 'supervised'. My eldest girl (one of the youngest in the group) is convinced that the older kids are still 'kids', but she also naturally listens to them despite having a dominant personality herself. Thus, she gets to have fun with them, while we are happy the kids have some sense in the group. So from my perspective I think the following is true: 1. Most people have one or two kids. This makes the child density very low. Parents today have to actually work to get their kids around other kids. 2. The way cities are set up makes it hard for kids to interact. While we live in a walkable neighborhood and some of our friends with large families do too, they're unfortunately not well connected except by car, so my wife or I have to make an effort to see them. Luckily, we're good friends with the parents, but otherwise this would make it difficult. 3. Schooling artificially limits the age range kids are exposed to. Obviously, you only get kids your age in your class, but because of (1), even if you got to know their siblings, you still only get one more age, and siblings are likely to not be super far apart. 4. Yes, parents certainly feel more trepidation when they've invested everything into one kid, versus investing everything into multiple kids. I don't see how anyone can honestly doubt this. I don't even think it's callous. Just reality. I mean, I saw it with my grandparents, who had more kids than my parents did. They were easily taken care of in their old age by the multiple children they had, whereas by choosing a smaller family (not totally their choice), my parents put a much greater burden on my brother and I (mostly me, since I live closer). That's just the truth of the thing. |