Big Families, again

Another article, this one asking if big families really are on the rise.

(When Martin crunched the numbers from a 2004 government survey — the most recent available — he found that 28 percent of women age 35 to 44, who are winding up their childbearing years, have three kids or more. Ten years ago, it was 29 percent. The numbers for younger women haven't budged much, either.Martin says it's not so much that big families are back, as that they never disappeared in the first place. "Large families have consistently been common," he points out. )
MORE QUOTES FROM THE STORY:

The idea that brothers and sisters teach each other social skills is a popular one among big-family moms, and there's research to back it up. A 2004 study of more than 20,000 kindergarteners across the country found that teachers rated students who had at least one sibling as having an edge in social skills: better at making friends, better at helping other kids, and more tuned to the feelings of others. (The catch: having any siblings was what made the difference, and kids with lots of brothers or sisters didn't have any advantage over those who had just one.)

Researchers have also turned up some downsides to big families, although experts argue about how valid they are. About a hundred years of studies — from the 1870s to the 1970s — found that on average, the bigger the family, the lower the intelligence of the kids. One theory holds that as a family grows, the parents have less time and money to devote to each child's education and intellectual development.But some researchers think IQ scores have more to do with socioeconomic characteristics — large families are still more common among low-income parents with less education, and kids tend to match their parents' academic achievement. "It's factors like income and education that the studies are actually measuring,"

Rodgers also believes the effect of family size on both intelligence and social skills pales in comparison to parenting styles. "Imagine two households, one with four children and one with two," he says. "In one household the parents spend a lot of quality time with their kids, the house is filled with books, and the food on the table is nutritious. In the other the parents pretty much ignore the kids and sit around watching TV. What do you think is more important: The number of children or the quality of the parenting?"

I would guess that parenting style would affect quite a bit here. There's a huge difference between large families because the parents aren't careful or want more welfare and parents who truly love lots of kids. There's a huge differnence between parents who love their many kids but don't bother with them and say, a large homeschooling family who do put the effort into spending time with the children. Just as families with only children can do much to teach their children social skills. Today kids go to preschool and daycare and gymboree, or even just hang out with their Mother's friend's kids or their cousins, etc. so they have plenty of experience sharing etc. There are so many stereotypes out there that people apparently still believe-like that all only children are spoiled or all large families force the older children to give up their childhood to raise their siblings. Yes, there must be some families out there that fit those descriptions. But hey, there were only three of us and I spent a lot of time helping with my baby sister-and loved it. (that's just my personal example) Plus I think that parents today are aware of those stereotypes and therefore make effort not to rely on the older kids so much in a large family, or to make sure their only children do play with other kids. I doubt these things were ever as much a problem as people seem to think anyway.