Is your family shrinking?

[sunshine244]

I know there's a trend for people to have fewer kids currently, and am curious is others are finding similar patterns.

My kids only have one cousin despite them having 4 sets of aunts and uncles in their 40s. There's not likely to be any more children due to circumstances/age.

My own 6 cousins (40s-50s) have only had 4 children in total, and again it is unlikely there will be more.

Family gatherings are a lot quieter than when I was a child!

Due to special needs my children won’t be having any kids, so I will never be a grandmother, which doesn’t really bother me. My sister is grandmother to one boy. Some of my cousins children have no kids so it is shrinking.

Our family is definitely getting far smaller.

I was 1 of 3 as was DH. We have a young DS who has only 1 cousin who is now an adult. There will be no more children for me/DH or any of the 4 siblings between us.

My grandfather on my mother’s side was 1 of 7 and had literally dozens of cousins. In 3 generations that has reduced right down to my DS with 1 cousin.

We were also older parents which means that when DS is 30/40 he may have only 1 living close relative which will be a cousin of around 50/60. Hopefully he has started his own family by then.

The one major upside of this is financial for those who are in the smaller generation. My DS will inherit huge sums at an early age as not only will he get his parents assets relatively early on, he also has aunts/uncles with properties and other assets who are already retired and have no children of their own so will be leaving everything to him.

He’ll have a very different life and opportunities than we have experienced which I’m pleased about.

I'm in my sixties now, and I'm a childfree only child of two only children. There isn't scope for it to shrink any further. I'm the last of the line of two families.

This is an interesting thread, I've been having a bit of an existential crisis around this subject.

I'm an only child, and have one DS. He's in his 30s but for various reasons it's unlikely he and his current long term DP will have children. His F vanished when he was a toddler, and has been no contact, although I did find out DS probably has a half sibling, however, there's been no desire on either side to pursue a relationship.

I'm in my late 50s. Obviously my GPs are long gone, and in the last 5 years I've lost both parents and my last Uncle on my DFs side. I have 2 cousins on that side of a similar age, both of whom are childless.

Family estrangement dating back 30 years means although three cousins from my Mums side have children, we are not in contact.

I am now the oldest female in the family, but due to the awkward dynamics and various other factors, senior matriarch is a nominal role only.

Our only "family" gatherings are now funerals.

On the one hand, it is what it is and I'm pragmatic for the most part, but it's odd to realise our family history, such as it is, will die with my DS, and is somewhat in its death throes now.

It's oddly maudlin making, but just the way the cards have fallen. Effectively, my whole line will have ceased to exist in another 60 years or so......

Very much so.

My parents were from families of seven and five kids. I have scores of first cousins.

I'm one of three, all now mid-late 40s. Only two children amongst the three of us.

No, and also we are closer. Growing up I had three cousins, two on my mum's side and one of my dad's, but because my parents were not close to their siblings, we saw very little of them. I haven't spoken to one set of cousins in more than a decade; the other one I do speak to from time to time but in a very vague 'happy birthday/congratulations on the baby' kind of way.

OTOH I have two brothers, both of whom have children, and we make sure our children see each other regularly. They all get on. I think this is important.

I am one of 6 ( ages 59 to 78) we had 12 children between us and those 12 (ages 24 to 58) have 6 (ages 11 to 28) between them and then there is 1 child from that youngest layer age 2. DH and I have one child as our other child sadly died, his only sister never had children. My Mother having such a huge age gap between children has caused some weird generational age cross overs plus my very oldest siblings had children young. DS is the 24 year old, cousin closest in age to him is now 40. He knows his second cousins who are 25 and 28 far better. I hated being one of 6 it’s just too many.

On my Dad’s side, he was the bottle neck, after two generations were all but obliterated in WW1 and WW2. Our generation was slightly bigger. Not hard when he had no siblings or first cousins, but it also meant he was very close to his three second cousins, one of whom had four boys and has 15 grandchildren. On my Mum’s side, we were the smallest generation, as she had 4 siblings, but between them they only had 7 children, so averaging 1.4. Ours generation is averaging more than 2 children each. So not the large families that existed a couple of generations ago, but above replacement level.

Yes.

I have 10 children/ nieces/ nephews aged 17 to 34. Eight of the ten are 26-34. So far three are married, but only 1 has children (2 year old and newborn). I'd be surprised if any of the ten has a child this year.

My daughter didn't set out to have a child-free wedding but it was virtually child-free because so few of their friends / relatives have children.

I think my parents were the generation/section of that generation who really didn't care much about family and saw big, close families as either slightly embarrassing or old-fashioned. The idea was that you made a success of yourself by leaving your family behind.

DM was one of 12, 10 boys 8 casualties of the war, one gay One girl was unable to have DC. DM had 4 , those 4 had 8 . Family is quite large, but not what you would expect from original 12.

On all sides of the family it’s an overall reproduction rate of 1, should be 2 to be at replacement rate.

I was once talking to a quite elderly lady who was telling me about the various cousins she was responsible for - sorting out their care home, getting the house sold, overseeing the care. And I thought - shit, I have several cousins who have no children and are single, and I’m the youngest - that’s going to be me responsible for everyone!

This happens every so often. I have just had my 76th birthday and remember people deciding to have less children, sometimes none, way back; then later on started settling down later and consequently having less, or none. There seemed to be subtle encouragement for this trend, eg some popular television programmes featured married couples without children, 'The Good Life' for example. The feminist movement too, which I fully supported. Women were always worth more than being housewives and mothers.

Meanwhile there were also people who had more than two children.

It all balances out eventually, I wouldn't worry.

Some families seem to be thinner on the ground, others don't.

I grew up with a mother who was the youngest of ten, my dad had two younger siblings. I had loads of cousins but they all drifted away. Most have died now, their kids have scattered. My son (46) doesn't know any now, it doesn't worry him, he has plenty of friends and a good social life. I only had one child but had intended to have more, other things intervened and I don't regret it, we were happy but sometimes I think it is sad that, for all intents and purposes, when I am gone he'll have nobody of his own flesh and blood that he knows. He doesn't seem bothered, has plenty going on in his life.

That's just how it is, nothing we can do about it. In a few years life will be different for everyone, there will be another trend.

Family gatherings aren't always wonderful, we tend to look back with rose-tinted specs, forgetting the stresses and the arguments.

My family has always been small. My parents were both only children so I've never had cousins. I had 2 sons but my 2 brothers are child free by choice so no cousins there. One of my sons has 2 small children. His wife is an only child and her parents are both only children so no big family/ cousins/ aunts etc there.I'm 60 so grandparents and their siblings all long dead. My mum has one cousin who is in contact with her frequently but lives in Scotland ( mums in Herefordshire). They're both in their 80s now so face to face is unlikely to happen again.

My husband trumps that with 85! ditto huge Irish Families

In our family we count the child who sadly died. My cousin is very clear that she has had 2 children: a little girl who died aged 3 and a boy who is now a teenager. It actually came about after I was out shopping with her with my little boy some years ago and a shop keeper asked if she was a mother and she said no. We talked about how inadvertently hurtful it was when mothering a child with cancer involves a lifetime of care concentrated into a shorter window of time. After that, she decided to say yes. Once you have been a mother you are always a mother. Then she had the unexpected joy of a baby in her 40s. He knows he had a sister and that she would have loved being an older sister if she had had a chance. She adored my son when he was a newborn baby.

My family is shrinking with several bereavements in just a few years. My parents had 6 siblings between them, 4 did not have DC and the 2 that did were shit parents and estranged from their DC so I’m not close to my cousins. My DH is an only child, and his dad too. I have two DC plus a niece and nephew. We have lost one parent. I miss Christmas in the past with grandparents and aunts and uncles.

Yea. I have 3 cousins. DH has 50 cousins. Our 3 children have no cousins and will never have any.

Growing up I had (and still have) 4 cousins in total. My mom is an only child so none on her side, and my dad’s sisters had two kids each. So far I have one son and a daughter due any day now - I have 4 siblings so the liklehood of there being more cousins is high :) however none of them are anywhere near ready for kids so it’ll be a while yet!

My dad was one of six and my mum was one of four. Of their generation:

• Four had none
• One had four
• One had three
• Two had one
• Two had two

Discounting the overlap between my mum and dad, that's 8 descendents from 10 people.

Of those 8, there are:

• Three with none (one only 22 though)
• One with three
• Two with one
• Two with two

So six descendents (this far) from ten grandparents. But that doesn't seem that far wrong when the first generation were boomers, and include one disabled woman who couldn't have children.

My son has broadly the same size of family I did - two aunts (one on each side) and two cousins (both on the same side) plus all four grandparents and a number of great grandparents still on the go. My husband has a lot more family than I do (five aunts, 12 cousins), although he's not close to any of them.

Yes. Contraception is a wonderful thing. Turns out that people actually don't want loads of kids, if you give them the choice.

I have one sibling, he has one child. I couldn’t have children. DH is an only. So yes, OP.

I’m an only husband is an only and we only have one child. It’s excellent, hardly any family to visit, I had loads of aunts uncles cousins and I hated having to visit every bloody weekend. Much better to be able to choose nice people to visit. Obviously it is not had a majorly dysfunctional family I may feel differently!

No, I use the Wool Programme which uses a lower temperature and gentler drum movements with minimal agitation. We did lose Eddy the Sock last year but other than that the family is the same size as it was before - with no shrinking.