interesting statistic

[TheWheelsOnTheBusHaveFallenOff]

can't remember where I read it but somewhere reputable I'm sure ... we are no longer a nation of 2.4 child families but rather 1.65 children is now apparently the average!

which is good news for the onlies ... yes obviously either of those figures when rounded = 2 ... but I am taking it to mean that there are more people with 1 child out there redressing the balance!

feel free to correct me if my statistical interpretations are off beam - I am not a numbers person.

I did hear at one point that (1) fewer women have children now than at any previous time (2) those women who do have children have more than any time in the last ? years (3) but there are also more one child families than in the ? years (those two ?s might be different numbers).

But yeah, provided that statistic only counts people who have children at all (ie it's not being skewed by those who don't have children) it does mean more one child families.

I'd love to see all the official statistics!

I half-remember seeing something like DCMB's stats. I believe the number of one child families is going up because of the number of women like me who have one child before age and infirmity creep up on them. But round our way, the talk at the NCT and pre-school was that "3 is the new 2" and certainly (2) looks plausible to me: there were several families at pre-school with 4 children, whereas (as best I can remember) I knew only one family with four children when I was a child. I have several friends who don't have children and never will and that, I guess, is the major change over the last (say) 50 years.

A Scandanavian acquaintance of mine once asks "why do Americans and Britons talk about having an 'only child'? We don't make that distinction; if you have one child - you have one chld, if you have two children - you have two children, etc".

Also I think in certain countries like Germany having just one child is the norm (though I stand to be corrected).