[marssaxman]

This did not stop people in the past. You read of three-room New York tenements holding families of ten, or families with half a dozen children living in a single-room frontier cabin, and this was considered commonplace.

My parents raised eleven children in a typical four-bedroom suburban tract house.

I wonder why modern people would be different?

[ok_dad]

Because we have an expectation for more space. Pretty simple, no one wants to go backwards to when we lived in single room tenements with a wife pumping out babies for a decade in a row. Also, no one can afford a four bedroom home with twelve occupants on a single income like in the 50s.

[krapht]

You couldn't in the 50s either. You just made do.

[bombcar]

That’s the real key to all this - if you want it, you make do, and learn to grab what you can.

Much worse than housing is the vehicle when you cross the 5 or 6 kid boundary, your available vehicles begin to rapidly plummet.

[angmarsbane]

They didn't have birth control then so it was much less of a choice.

[marssaxman]

Well, then we should say that it is something related to availability of birth control which has caused the change, not some novel preference for living space.