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!

DC was the only kid on Xmas day. It was quite boring for her. Of my three closest friends, only one has had children. It's not the norm now.

Absolutely. I have 25 cousins, of which only five of us had children. My own DC don't have any cousins (we never see the handful of second cousins). We don't even have any friends with children as they are all child free by choice, so DC don't know any other children outside of school. Pretty sad really.

Not yet, but I do wonder if it will in the future. I have 5 cousins on one side and from them they have had 7 children. I have 3 cousins on the other side and they have 4 children. I am in a sibling group of 4 and between us we have 8 children. So in my generation the family has grown. But the eldest siblings and cousins’ children are now adults themselves and have not had children at the ages their parents did. One cousin’s child has had 2 quite young but there are another 7 aged 25-32 and none of those have yet had children, whereas their parents all had by their age. It could be that they will just have children a bit later than the generation before them. Or maybe they never will. Time will tell.

Yes each generation is smaller, my granny had 6 siblings, she had 4 children, 6 grandchildren and 3 great grandchildren.

Dh has a very small family. I have a large family, lots of cousins due to dm and her 2 siblings. We would all meet ip every weekend for tea at DGPs. Quite often bedlam! But great. We all drifted apart but are now back in contact. My siblings have either 1 or 2 kids, now with gdc arriving. Think most will have 1 or 2 purely down to COL.

Yes my kids have one cousin I had six

My children have no cousins or aunts and uncles on my side (I have two siblings on my side who show zero interest in them and I don't count them as family) and only two cousins on my husbands side but a fabulous Uncle and Aunt.

I don't see it as a negative. It is what it is. We have an enormous social network of close friends, family friends, second cousins etc. We go on holiday with them, days out, get togethers etc. They certainly aren't lacking for anything with a smaller family and I love that we've been able to choose who we are close too and we have such a varied group of people and kids for my children to grow up with. I didn't leave near my extended family or saw them often and because my parents were so social, we never missed out onanything.

Kind of the other way around! I grew up with 0 first cousins, my kids have 5. My dad's late sister had no kids, my mum's family weren't in England and most of her father's family were murdered in the Holocaust so basically a branch of family is missing. Extended family were almost all descended from my father's grandparents so we didn't see them all that much or know them well.

Both of my siblings have kids, as does my BIL, though doesn't look like SIL is going to have any. But there's a fair amount of cousins about.

I find it interesting that my dh works in a large investment bank so people are on good wages. In his department the most common option of those with children is to make a choice to have only one, a lot have chosen not to have any. Having multiples is the least common option.

Yes. My generation is 7 cousins. Between us and partners (13 people in total - one cousin is single), we only have 5 children and very unlikely to have more.

This is down to a combination of choosing to be childfree, not meeting anyone they wanted to have a child with, and life-limiting illnesses with a genetic component.

I’m childfree by choice and also unable to have children. Weirdly, the shrinking of our family is the only aspect of not having children that makes me sad.

Yes - I literally couldn't count how many cousins I had growing up. I never even met them all, couldn't remember half their names. It was just the way it was, my mum has 6 siblings, my dad had 5. All of them had at least three children each, probably. They didn't have much, but they had enough to sustain large families on (usually) one wage, and that's the crux of the matter isn't it?

My children have 8 cousins, which sounds a lot but actually, for our family this is incredibly few - and all my 4 brothers are done having children now, this is the final number of cousins. They have no cousins on DH's side at all - he has one brother and he doesn't want children.

We're heading for a reckoning. Those who bullied, denigrated and shamed people for having children they "couldn't afford" are suddenly tight-lipped whenever the aging population crisis is brought up.

Yes we’re in this position too. Our relative wealth is low compared the previous generation and I doubt very much the way things are going it’s going to get better for us our my kids who have SEN. But my DC will benefit from our parents, aunts/uncles and siblings who have chosen not to have children themselves.

I have 2 children. I’d have another except my pregnancies are very risky and I don’t want to leave my current 2 without their mum!

They have no cousins. My husband is an only child and my brother doesn’t want children. I only had 2 cousins myself (mums two siblings didn’t have any children, and dads sister had 2 children) but my husband has 8. My children have lots of 2nd cousins as a result (18 in total) who we consider to be their cousins.

The thing is with cousins you're maybe close to them when little but as you get older, you grow much closer to your friends. My parents both come from enormous families, around 40 first cousins each and I've never met any of them yet my parents childhood friends were very much part of our lives. I would struggle to think of anyone I know that has a closer relationship to their cousin than close friends as an adult.

Yes, my parents and husbands parents came from families of 6 and the normal number of kids their siblings had was 3 in our generation the number of children myself and our cousins have had ranges between 0 and 2 at most. One child or no children seems to be the norm. Most of the people I know who have any children had one at the last possible moment and that's it.

Husband and I are both 1 of 3 kids. There are 7 kids between me and my siblings, but only 3 on my husnband's side.

One set of my grandparents had 11 grandchildren from 4 children the other set.had 14 from 6 children.
My parents have 7 grandchildren from 4 children. MIL has 5 from 2 children.
So yes I would agree some families are shrinking.
However my DHs uncle and aunt have 10 grandchildren from 3 children so guess it depends on the family.

My maternal GM had 6 children (one died in infancy) - paternal GM had just one. Maternal GM had 10 Gdcs.

I’m one of 4 siblings - we’ve had 5 dcs between us. Of my two dds, one has 3
dcs, the other has none, from choice.

Dh is also one of 4 - 11 DCs between them.

Definitely. My DD has no siblings or cousins! She does still have both sets of grandparents, but when they pass there will be one auntie and uncle on each “side” (neither of whom will ever have children so the family is def not ever getting bigger) and that’s it.

That being said, I had a load of aunties and uncles and cousins growing up and we barely ever saw them.

hmm the same at the moment, my mothers side i have 4 cousins, my children on my side have 4 cousins but i have 2 younger sisters and a younger brother who are only just hitting their 20s so they may have more cousins at some point xx

I have 6 cousins all from my mums side, dad is an only child. My husband has more cousins than he can count and they all have children, but we don’t see any of them as he hasn’t kept in touch with his family. My kids have no cousins and won’t have any due to age / circumstances/ choices of siblings and are the only 2 children in our immediate family. I do think I’d like another just to boost their numbers, but I’m getting older and my second pregnancy was high risk so I don’t think it’s worth the gamble. I love my family but do also feel a pang of envy at people with bigger families.

No. I have 16 biological aunts/uncles and most of them had children. The majority of their children also had children. No one speaks to each other though so it’s not like having an actual large family as I could walk past an aunt/uncle/cousin/grandparent in the street and not have any idea who they are.

Not really. It conjures up the definition, they dont have children.
Making up "childfree" to avoid using the usual term makes it sound like they have such sensitivites about being childless that they need to frame children as a negative thing and then the topic needs to be delicately avoided.

My kids have more cousins than I did. However I knew my cousins (all 2 of them) really well despite them living 100 miles away. Christmas and Easters and often a holiday spent with them.

My kids have 8 cousins, but barely know any of them. 2 are via DH's estranged brother and they are over 10 years older than them anyway, so have no contact at all with them. 2 are similar age but in Finland. 2 are about 10 years younger and are in Malaysia so have never met them. And the 2 that are in this country, and are the same age, and should be ideal friends, live 200 miles away and don't my DBIL doesn't really prioritise family preferring holidays with friends etc.

Its really sad

That's been happening for years in my family.

I'm nearly 66. My mum had 5 siblings. She wanted to have 3 children, she told me, but miscarried after having me.

One of her siblings was childless; one had 3 and the others each had 2.

One of my cousins has one child; the others each have two. (I'm childless, but not through choice.)

Two cousins each have 3 grandchildren (each from the one child, if that makes sense). The rest have 2, 1 or 0 and it's unlikely that more will come along.

On my dad's side, it's a very similar tale.