..to consider social impact of family size?

[nornironrock]

I'm wondering if anyone else ever gives consideration to the social impact of their family size? I'm thinking about allocation of public resources, consumption of limited resources (such as water), and in the longer term issues such as housing and healthcare provision.

I certainly believe everyone should be free to have the family size they want insofar as they are able to support that number of people, but I sometimes wonder what the future holds if we don't get a handle on population.

In the past, before we had medical science to keep people like my son alive, and to allow us all to live past 50, a bigger family was often required to enable the family to generate income, and look after older members. This requirement doesn't exist now.

I'm genuinely interested to hear peoples thoughts on this.

We talked about it when going from 2 to 3. Despite 3 dc sometimes being considered a larger family, dh and I consider it to actually be 'replacement' size. Plenty of people do not have children, or have only one child. More, I think, than have 3+ children.

What was more important to us than overall world resources was whether we would be a drain on society. It was more important to us that we be able to support our dc and teach them, by example as well as overtly, to be self-supporting.

If anything, having a larger family reduces our use of certain resources, as we cannot afford to jet off on luxury holidays! We re-use as much as possible, we walk/cycle/use public transport as much as possible, the house is no warmer than it would be with 2dc and so on. Does one shower more per day and one load of laundry more per week make that much difference?

In the UK we have a problem with an ageing population, so a fairly high birth rate is no bad thing from a social perspective.

From an environmental perspective I agree with previous posters that things like air travel have a far greater impact than the number of children you have.

I think BasketOfDeplorables is referring to women who are part of misogynistic cultures where they are treated as second class citizens.

Although there are some women who seem to think that continuing to have many babies is their life's work, but they are mad few and far between.

Can't be right though surely - you have created resource using adults who will be on the planet for 80 odd years and will have kids themselves and realistically unlikely to continue your lifestyle. Surely that's way more environmental impact than the odd (demonised) plane trip to Disney. Magical thinking.

It bothers me too. I would have stopped at two but my second pregnancy was twins.

We need to rethink the crazy Ponzi scheme whereby more youngsters are perpetually needed to support the elderly. The world, and certainly the UK, are already massively over-populated. IIRC, many years ago the Green Party had a policy of active population reduction for the UK, aiming for approx 30 million. I'd like to see political parties addressing the time bomb.

Does one shower more per day and one load of laundry more per week make that much difference? Possibly not but that child will become an adult, perhaps have children and ultimately "be responsible" for a lot more consumption than one washing load and an extra shower.

The UK birth rate is at 1.8 children per woman - so while some people are having larger families, it's not the norm. I'm not saying people shouldn't think about the impact of having a large family, but having 3 children who are brought up to eat meat a couple of times a week would probably be more beneficial than 2 who eat it once or twice a day.

I actually did think of this before having dc. The state of the planet due to human activity is heartbreaking and I really worried about what kind of world my adult dc would my future dc would inherit and whether I would be partly responsible, along with everyone else, for straining its resources. However, the biological urge to reproduce was stronger than my anxieties and I now have 2 dc. I'm hoping their generation will be socially and environmentally responsible enough to reverse some of the damage and assuage my guilt! Very selfish, I know

Part of the reason I want 2 kids is down to this. Replacing myself and DH seems reasonable - producing more people than that seems a bit selfish. Just my opinion!

I am certain that - unless the world implodes from political tensions - the next 50 years will see as much engineering change as the last 100 years. Our use of resources will become more efficient, less wasteful, and more renewable. Today's children will be able to use less resources than we did.

I worry about the impact on the environment yes and whether resources like food and fertile land can sustain everyone.
We planned to have two children which we could afford but my second pregnancy was twins so we now have 3! We can just about afford to look after us all but had to buy a bigger car and soon hope to move house as our current home is very small.

Personally I'd rather highly qualified high earning families had more children and Vicky Pollard had less...

Why, Hipster?

We have three kids, and I feel guilty about it. It is selfish. We do lots of things to try to make up for it, but I know that it is still wrong for the planet.

the cost of children (school, NHS, tax credits) tends to more than make it's money back as the child pays taxes when it's older. We are producing less as a country than we support, if that makes sense. Different countries are different but in the UK it's fine.

I don't believe this is the case now. Do you have any supporting info for this statement?

Population is a nonissue in developed economies. It's the population and birth rates of developing countries which is a concern.

Necessity is the mother of invention and all that Goody.

"but having 3 children who are brought up to eat meat a couple of times a week would probably be more beneficial than 2 who eat it once or twice a day."

People with larger families always trot out this argument. I have read loads of posts on MN from parents of 4, 5 or 6 children who eat woven lentils for every meal, wear carefully crafted knitted chick peas for clothes, don't own a car and have never even seen an aeroplane let alone travel on one. But the reality is somewhat different. All the larger families I know are multi car families and travel abroad for holidays, often long haul.

The trouble is that larger families here are generally of the type where the members do not go on to be taxpayers, but repeat the exercise with the girls (and it is young girls) getting married off and having large families themselves.

I was just reading that the population of Africa has gone from 400m in 1980 to 1.2 billion today, and increasing rapidly.

I had 2 D.C.'s. money considerations, but also environmental concerns.
The worlds population is increasing rapidly and sometimes I feel I should have stopped at 1.
Children in the U.K. are going to use up far more resources than in less developed countries and the impact of an extra human for maybe 80 years and then their descendants far outweighs any lifestyle changes anyone can make.

This is the one thing that I considered and feel guilty about as I'm currently pregnant with my 4th child...

I live abroad and we pay for all medical care, education etc...and we get no handouts whatsoever but we're very fortunate that we do not (currently - never say never) need any...however the effect on the environment is very real...

I agree in general with a pp's point, but we're neither poor nor uneducated...all 4 of her children were planned but yes we would most certainly be in the minority in the UK....

I have an image of the children from the non travelling lentil weaving type large families leaping on planes and scoffing macdonalds the minute they hit 18 and escape parental control

lam I'll confess I don't know anyone with that size family so have no idea what arguments they 'trot out'.

My point was that the difference between 2 and 3 children in a country with a birth rate of 1.8 isn't having as much of an impact as the consumption of meat.

Globally population growth is much more of an issue, and this problem would disappear if women had control over their own reproductive choices. Very few women want to go through pregnancy, birth and breastfeeding that many times. Of course there will be some who choose to have 6 children, but I haven't ever met one.

I don't have a large family, and we couldn't afford to have one even if I was willing to go through all those years of pregnancy, birth and feeding, so I don't have that horse in the race. I've never eaten meat, so it's easier for me to suggest lesser consumption than many, but as I said, a couple of times a week ought to be sustainable.

BasketOfDeplorables I often see this argument trotted out on MN, although I agree with your point about meat eating. Since DD became a vegetarian our meat consumption as a family has reduced drastically.

Kerala

Things are going to swing the other way very, very soon.

People see the population rising and think it will just go on like that, but in fact it can all change within a generation or two. Already there are countries that are well below replacement birth rates, and more and more are going that way. Every developing country that's gotten reasonable access to education and birth control has seen a massive drop in birth rates, mirroring that of the West not that long ago.

In 50 years everything could have changed and we'll be facing a very different population crisis.

As someone with a large family, I can honestly say they all,contribute more than they take. How those children are raised and what they do as adults is key. There are few families with large children and they take up very little of the country's resources overall.
We need young workers to support an ageing population and at moment population growth in uk is not sufficient to replace losses. Particularly post Brexit.
The issue is probably more about greed and polarisation of wealth and resources. It's more about sustainability than family size. It's more about education and support to nations who continue to have large families for fear of being left without a younger generation to provide for them in old age. If we equalise child mortality figures, support education for all and insist on women's rights in all countries we trade with, it might go a long way to solve the worlds issues.