Yahoo Finance ‘It’s gonna directly affect your wallet’: This TikToker says there’s a ‘maximum’ number of kids that a family can raise before issues pop up — and the number is lower than you think. Agree?
While billionaires like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk insist that we need a larger global population, ordinary people must face the reality of raising children without infinite resources.
TikTok user Andra discussed the issue in a recent video, where she shared some data and personal experiences to highlight why people should ideally be having fewer kids.
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A larger family “is going to affect your wallet, of course,” she says. But the impact goes way beyond financial considerations.
Here’s why an excessively large family could negatively impact both parents and children over time.
The impact on parents
Andra says that much of the research she uncovered focuses on the impact of larger families on parents — not kids. The average cost of raising a child to the age of 18 is $237,482, according to LendingTree. But this cost is even higher in some states and doesn’t include the additional expenses of post-secondary education that usually comes after 18.
That’s only the tip of the iceberg.
Having three or more children had a negative impact on parents’ cognitive abilities, according to a study by researchers at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, Robert Butler Columbia Aging Center and Université Paris-Dauphine–PSL.
“The negative effect of having three or more children on cognitive functioning is not negligible, it is equivalent to 6.2 years of aging,” said Eric Bonsang, PhD, one of the researchers.
Meanwhile, a Pew Research study found that 41 percent of American adults with children said parenting was “tiring” while 29 percent considered it “stressful” all or most of the time. Tired and stressed parents might find it more difficult to deal with more kids, which potentially impacts outcomes for the kids, too.
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The impact on kids
Andra admits there’s a lack of research on how large family sizes impact children’s mental and emotional well-being. However, from personal experience growing up with two siblings, she believes parents with more kids have lower expectations and outsource some parenting tasks to older siblings.
Meanwhile, research published by the American Psychological Association found that a child with more than one sibling was more likely to be bullied... usually by the older ones.
Bullying between siblings is “often seen as a normal part of growing up by parents and health professionals, but there is increasing evidence that it can have long-term consequences, like increased loneliness, delinquency and mental health problems,” according to Dieter Wolke, PhD, of the University of Warwick, one of the lead researchers on the study.
What’s an ideal number of kids?
Having children is a personal choice and depends on your preferences and financial situation.
However, a recent Gallup poll uncovered interesting trends about America’s consensus on family sizes.
Ninety percent of Americans either have or wish to have children, with 2.7 children as the average family size. However, 45 percent of Americans considered three or more children to be ideal — the highest ratio since 1971.
Despite this stated preference, the U.S. fertility rate was just 1.66 in May 2023, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
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This article provides information only and should not be construed as advice. It is provided without warranty of any kind.
