Do you think having a larger family affects your childrens education?

[sb2184x]

Hi, i recently saw an article stating that those from large families tend to achieve less in their education due to factors such as parents not having time to read and work on homework with their kids and less money for educational resources etc. As a child with 9 other siblings, i'm interested if anyone else from/with large families has a take on this? Do you think having a large family affects how someone achieves in school?

I have multiple dc, oldest went to university, 2 on the G&T register, personally it's a load of bollocks!!

Well education and intelligence are 2 different things.

I am from a large family. We are all intelligent.
Was education valued at home. No. We were sent to school until we were old enough to get a job in order to pay our way.

I have 5 children. Number 4 is having learning difficulties at school. He is 6 and I worry a lot that it may look, from the school's point of view that he is neglected by us in the educational sense. I do take much longer with him on his homework and reading. We do bedtime stories every night and extra throughout the day when possible.

No, I don't think it would be a negative factor. Most important is whether the parents value education and contribute to their child's education. I have 4 dc, and encourage them all. Some are more naturally clever than others, but they are all encouraged/read too.

I have 4 siblings and it was a lot different in our home. Education was not valued or celebrated.

A statistical link wouldn't surprise me.

Time divided by 3/4/5+ is going to be less than using all that time for one dc.

Other things are more important though like having lots of books and parents valuing and encouraging education.

DH’s uncle has 5 (now young adult) DC. One is a surgeon, one a Human Rights lawyer, one a nurse and two currently studying at top unis.

I think if your home is a learning environment, where schoolwork and homework is valued. Reading is encouraged and general life includes learning opportunities then a large family can only benefit children (more role models and people to learn from and encourage each other)

I can see how there would be a correlation due to simply not having as much time. I know when DS1 was an only child we had much more time to sit with him and go through homework. Now we have two of them we have half as much time to spend with each. So even at the most basic level I can see how there might be a link.

Whether that make a difference in the long run though is a different question. Certainly sitting down with a DS to do A Level Physics is going to be way beyond me and so I could have all the time in the world to spend with him and it would make not one jot of difference.

It probably depends on how much time and money you'd have to spend on education to begin with.

Clearly private school fees for one child is going to be far more affordable than private school fees for five - but for many families a private education is out of reach anyway.

As for resources though, actually if you have more children, you probably end up with more stuff, which could be a bonus. For example, I can buy reference books, science kits, props, etc for DS - but he is just one child so my budget is limited to what is reasonable. If we had more children, then we'd still have all the stuff from DS1 plus more time/income to buy further things for DC2, and so on. Unless it's something which gets used up, you can re-use things with the subsequent children.

I’m one of 9, of those old enough to go, all have gone to university. 2 have done medicine. So I’d say bollocks too!

Surely it depends on other factors as well? My dad is one of 16(!) and they were forced to leave school at 15 to start supporting the family. But that’s an extreme example where they had far too many children on such a low income and importantly education wasn’t valued (unless you were on of the younger ones in that family 🙄).

I'm pregnant with DC3. My children are only 5 & 3 and one of my worries is about being able to educate them.
For me education is very important and valued. My DS is in year one of one of the top non private primary schools in the country. Already the home work is quite a lot. Whilst we do it DD who is 3 just sits and colours in. I'm aware already that I'm not sitting down with her & doing as much learning as I would like to to prep her for school in September. My time will be less when the baby arrives next month & I hope I'm not going to put her at a disadvantage.

I definitely think it's more about family ethos based on examples of people I know.

We have four children and they are all expected to work hard and achieve their full potential.

Ds2 isn't as bright as his siblings and is in the second set for everything but works hard and is doing very well in sport.

It's about encouraging them to work at things rather than cultivating geniuses imo

No definitely not.xx I have 9 children and they have all achieved differently.Its up to them and what they want from life.xx

I don’t think anyone can be sure what the factors are that mean children from large families achieve less.

It might be to do with less time. It might be to do with the type of people who have large families (and of course there will always be exceptions). I might be something else entirely- how can it be quantified?

Nope. I'm one of 8 and I have a First Class Honours Degree. 2 brothers with PHDs, a sister with an MA. We are all graduates. Being from a large family didn't hold us back.

I have 4 and find it very difficult to give them all the time they need to be honest.

I have 5, all privately educated. 3/4 to top universities, one a lesser one, and one still in school.

I think they are doing fairly well educationally.

I have 4,triplets born 26 months after eldest.Three are at uni. ,1 studying medicine, 2 are dyslexic .1is studying for a trade .All very different despite lots of parental support throughout school . I found it frustrating that some of their teachers found it necessary to compare them , something I have tried not to do either as a parent or a teacher.

I would think the link would be because very generally speaking, educated parents are less likely to have big families. They have their own careers, get married later, post uni, start families later.

Mostly it depends on the education status of the parents. I know a family with 14 kids. Parents both teachers. Once you reach critical mass it becomes easier too, older siblings help younger ones with homework etc. They are all lawyers, dr’s etc. Then i teach families where the parents left school at 16 with little education, and they just cannot help with homework or support school. There is a cycle in one school
I taught in where the kids move out once child benefit stops, and the easiest way to move up the housing list is to get pregnant. If you have your first child at 16, two or three relationships later and you have 6.

Do you think having a large family affects how someone achieves in school?

Indirectly. Youngest gets loads of freedoms older ones never did. Especially much more screen time, which discourages reading books, and then youngest is less articulate as a result of never having been that interested in books.

at moment my eldest is the under-achiever. That comes down to personality, not birth order.

I am one of 5 and 4 of us went to university whilst the 5th now has the equivalent of post-graduate qualifications in his given field.

I suspect that the correlation is also sadly related to the social background of families who now have large nunbers of children and the support they do or don't get. I suspect that families with more children are more likely to have a SAHM because of the costs of childcare so may have more parental time than smaller families where both parents work FT.

I also think that access to technology if users correctly can counteract a lot of the issues relating to reduced parental time for all families.

There have been some really interesting studies and experiments done by Sugata Mitra relating to how children actually learn better with less adult intervention which are really worth checking out.

This is interesting. I’m a second child and was always told I’m a total genius for being able to read really young but now that I’m a mum I can see that younger siblings get the benefit of hearing their older siblings learning to read and it sinks in with them too. I bet families with lots of children have early readers/writers etc.

I suspect that the correlation is also sadly related to the social background of families
May also be down to heritage - I may be wrong but I think it’s more common in families where perhaps English isn’t the first language (I know a lot of big Polish/south Asian/Afro-Caribbean families, a number of whom don’t speak English/much English at home), and obviously school in English is always going to be more of a challenge. (Not to do with being less intelligent/academic/stimulated)

Saying that - I was one of 9 and didn’t start learning English until I was 2 (I was bilingual from about 4/5 though) and studied English at Oxford! Also the four of my five children in school/at university are bilingual and considered above average academically. That could be aided by bigger age gaps (18, 13, 12, 5, 2) but also I think by our home environment. I care very much about learning, so I make sure to read to the little ones every night before bed (and during the day), and go through homework with them rigorously. It might not impact much but I saw someone mention it up thread - they also don’t have a lot of screen time - I limit phone usage for DDs 1 and 2, and we don’t have an iPad or anything. DDs 3 and 4 just play wih playmobil constantly