The GEM Debate: Should Society Start Limiting This In Families?

The GEM Debate:
Should Society Start Limiting This In Families?

How many children do you have? What’s your, “too many”? How did you decide? Should there be a cap?

Family size is a very personal thing for most of us and today’s debate comes from the comments of an article I read about a family adding a boy to their brood of four (five with dad) gents. Seemed innocent enough until I started reading the comments. Of course, some assumed that the couple were trying for a girl (it didn’t say they were or weren’t) and others didn’t care why they were having a fifth, but thought they may have tipped the scales a bit with “so many” children. It got me to thinking about that “perfect” number of offspring.

There are those of us who always dreamed of a big family. It may have stemmed from the numbers in our own households or some childhood obsession with The Cosby Show and all that love or whatever other show we watched. I always thought the twins in Double Trouble or Sister Sister were cute until I got pregnant and then those single children homes (like my mo m’s) made a lot more sense. Hanging with Rene this week I realize there is a lot of parenting/refereeing to be done with two or more, but I still have a hankering for at least one more, even at my age.

But I don’t think that a person “breeding”, as one or two comments mentioned, is anyone else’s business. Sure, there’s the aspect of our economy being less than ideal right now causing parents to have to factor in whether the family can sustain growth, but if the family can and they have the heart to do so, who are we to say that five kids is too many? Of course, some worry the government is footing the bill for a great deal of these offspring, but let’s assume for now it isn’t. Why should I care if someone wants to, “try for a girl”? (I do care, actually. You can read more about that here.) Family size and composition is a personal journey. It would seem with so many questionable parents out there that we’d see less people having children, but as most parents might agree, you don’t really know how hard it is until you have one; and I can only assume that adding a second in my case would be much more work than even I can fathom (and I fathom it being hard).

So what say you? How did you get to your number of children? Did you live out your childhood dream? Was finance an issue so you had to stop? Do you have a child you thought you couldn’t afford and realized you had enough love and just “made a way”? Let us know!