In the days after my fourth child was born I remember telling my girlfriends It really feels like we leveled up here. This is different this is a lot of kids. I am a member of a Facebook group for parents raising large families and the benchmark for admission is four kids or more. Thats when an American family goes into large territory in this day and age.
Few celebrities clear that bar and when they do their admission into the club is sometimes cringe worthy. Rapper and comedian Nick Cannon just announced the birth of his ninth child his first with model Lanisha Cole. The star practices what he calls consensual non monogamy and he has three children just this year one in July and one in August in addition to the latest birth.Then there’s Tesla founder Elon Musk, who has 10 children, three of whom were born last year.And so when celebrities welcome children in a more traditional way as Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds do its cause for celebration.
Lively made headlines late last week after appearing at the Forbes Power Women Summit in New York visibly pregnant. This was just days after posting an apparently old bikini clad photo in which she was very much not visibly pregnant. That led to an influx of paparazzi which she tried to stave off by posting pregnancy. pictures on social media.
Its unclear when the actress is due, but Women’s Health magazine speculated that the due date is likely in January or February.
In having a fourth child Lively and Reynolds are joining an ever-shrinking pool not just of celebrities, but also of Americans generally who are raising more than three children. According to the U.S. Census Bureau the average family size in the U.S. was 3.31 persons in 2021 down from 3.7 in the 1960s.Writing for Plough a few years ago New York Times columnist Ross Douthat made the case for one more kid despite the car seat economics that work to restrict or delay child-bearing. Because normal backseats would not hold three car seats so you basically can not have a third young kid in America unless you upgrade to a minivan.
As a mother about to grow out of a minivan and into a literal van I can attest that Douthat is on the money especially in the post COVID 19 supply chain that makes buying a car nearly as painful as childbirth. Obviously celebrities like Lively and Reynolds are not bound by the same economic questions the rest of us are when it comes to deciding on whether we should have another child or two or four.So why should more Americans opt for a fourth, as Lively and Reynolds have, even without Hollywood resources? The best argument I can make sounds trivial: There’s something about even numbers.
In our family as in many others, our kids pair off in our case with our oldest four the girls and the boys play together consistently, despite the fact that my oldest and fourth are the girls and are five years apart versus my sons who are just two years apart. Moving into family territory is an adjustment but a fun one. The most common comment I get from those with one or two kids is I can hardly handle what we have I can not imagine having double the number of kids.
But four kids is not twice as hard as two in a lot of ways they are easier. I was discussing this with two mom friends recently one with two children the other with six. With four or five or six kids the onus is off the parents to be a playmate everyone always has someone with whom they can play and theres always a sibling to torment or throw a ball with.For sure there are moments when a large family has its downsides When its time to buy plane tickets or when theres a stomach virus running around the household. But as I have written before more children bring more joy which makes the occasional stressors more bearable.
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