Size Matters.

I may have mentioned, casually, once or twice.. or fifty-gazillion times, that I come from a large family. I am the ninth of ten kids, and the youngest of the five girls. Growing up at the tail-end of the brood meant that there were actually only 5 or 6 kids around for my childhood. By junior high it was just 3 of my brothers.. and me.

Any way you slice it, though, by today's standards I was in an Exceptionally Large Family.

I have been thinking about this lately as we prepare for the birth of Baby Boy #3. I have never thought that 3 kids a large family did make. As I have become visibly pregnant, however, the comments? They have begun. IN EARNEST.

"Wow! You'll REALLY have your hands full now, won't you."
"So is this your last one? I mean, you won't have more than three.. will you?"

And my favorite:

"Don't you know what causes that?"

For the record: Yes, we are quite aware what causes that. Oh, and in case you were wondering, engage in that activity as often as possible.

But even living in a small town, I am realizing that having more than 2 children makes us something of an anomaly. Having one more would bump us into "Mega Family" status, according to, at least, these websites I stumbled on that are dedicated solely to support for large families.

It got me thinking about the psychology behind the number of children couples decide to have. There's this guy - who, in this article from 2004, appears to be suggesting that people have more than 2 kids for the tax breaks. To which I say to him: Sir, I suspect you do not HAVE children. If you did, you would be acutely aware that the sacrifices required to have and raise a small human entirely outweigh the "benefit" of getting a few bucks back from the government.

There are these people, and many others like them (including my own parents) who have large families because they believe it's what God either requires or requests of them. But, in the spirit of honesty, I find that thinking a little on the crazy side in several respects. However, since Big Daddy and I are not religious, God obviously doesn't figure into our thinking here. That seems to be rare among those who desire larger than 2.5-kid families in general.

So baby #3 is on the way, and I'm left thinking about how we came to this decision. Big Daddy is one of 3 kids, and has always thought that was a good number. Me? I prefer the idea of even numbers, and I'm not sure yet if this is our last baby or if maybe there is one more in the cards for us. That's a discussion for another day and one which does not, dear internets, include you. (Some things remain off-limits after all... who knew?)

I have begun to suspect, though, that the debate here falls on somewhat generational lines. This suspiscion appears to be confirmed by this 2007 Gallup Poll, which seems to show that my generation is more open to the idea of large families than our parents were. Okay, obviously not my parents, but since they're technically part of the Baby Boomer generation it's not really a fair comparison.

I'm not sure how this compares to my actual life, though. Few of the friends our own age are even beginning to contemplate children yet, and more than one has entirely ruled out the idea. They are, for the most part, young professionals. More than one has commented negatively, in our presence (and assumedly forgetting to whom them were speaking), on other people with children at restaurants or other public venues. We try to take it with good grace.

The friends a few years older than we are who are working alongside us in the parenting trenches are mostly 2-kid-limit sort of people. The obvious exceptions are these fantastic women, and between them S and PK are my heroines when it comes to juggling the demands of raising their kids with sanity and grace.

The most important lesson they have both taught me, by the way, is about setting boundaries with other people when it comes to your time and your kids. It's ironic, then, that I have let the unsolicited opinions of other people send me down this path of pondering, but since the opinions themselves are not influencing my ultimate decision, I suppose it's probably a healthy question.

In our case, if I have to boil it all down, I think it falls to 3 main categories for consideration: Age, Finances, and Time.

Big Daddy and I are both still young; he'll be 30 in July and I'm 29 for another year. If this is, indeed, our last baby... well, we'll be done having kids before most people begin these days. So we have almost a decade where the option to have more will still be physically open to us.

Financially, we fall squarely in the middle class. Supporting and caring for 3 kids, or even 4, is feasible - even if we figure in sharing a portion of the costs of college education for all of them. Then again, the sooner I am done being pregnant and get all the kids into elementary school the sooner I can go back to school myself and persue a career - which will make our financial position stronger and more stable for the future.

Time is the final consideration. We are determined not to have more children than we can give sufficient individual attention to; I want each of my kids to have a comfortable certainty that there parents know them as an individual and that their activities and interests are as important to us as our own. If one of the boys wants to try his hand at something, I want to give them the option and not be limited by the impossibility of trying to keep it "equal" while dividing ourselves between the siblings. There are, after all, only so many hours in a day.

If I'm totally honest, I also have to admit that the idea of a small family makes me feel vaguely lonely. I adore our two boys, but if I thought there would be no more children I'd be .. intensely wistful. I embrace the chaos of a larger family, and imagine Christmases of the future spent around a huge tree. I picture adding a gaggle of grandkids and beloved in-law children to our brood. It's a nice picture in my head, even if reality doesn't usually quite measure up to the imagination.

So here's a question I'll pose to you, dear readers. How do you feel about family size? What determined or will determine the number of kids you have? Do you have to resist the temptation to make snide comments to parents of lare families, or do you follow a strictly nonjudgmental policy? OR are you on the receiving end of the comments, well-meaning or otherwise, as you attempt to navigate the aisles of Target with your brood in tow?

I'm going to reach out to a few of my favorite blogistas here, and I'll link back to you if/when you want to post on this topic. (For now? I'm lookin' at YOU: S, PK, Mocha, and to get a scientific-atheistic perspective up in here I think it would be lovely for chanson to chime in, too!)