Thursday, February 12, 2009

Family Size: How many children are ideal?

We sometimes hear in the news about couples who have very large families of ten or more children, but is there an ideal number of children a family can and should have? What factors (emotional, spiritual, financial) should help determine whether a family should have one or more children?

How many children are in your family and what have your parents done to raise you successfully? Share your ideas.

Randall

11 comments:

  1. In my opinion, i think it is difficult to draw out exactly which factors give influence on the family size since we are living in different region with different culture and custom. But i can summarize two factors which strongly decide the number of children in a Vietnam family: habit custom, finance, and law factor.

    First, habit custom gives deep effects on ideal number of children in parent's mind. Habit custom varies from regions to regions surrounding the country. In remote or countryside areas, families tend to have over three children on average as parent consider the more children they have the more prosperous they get. It is easy to understand this point when all family in remote/countryside areas live on agriculture, and more children will help family having strong labor force. But it is completely reversal in the big city, parent tend to have only one child. Besides, at some regions, people have attitude of respecting male and ignoring female. Then if a couple haven't had a boy they will continue having babies until a boy is born.

    Second, finance plays very important role in deciding the number of children in a family nowadays. The monthly cost of raising a baby is account for nearly majority salary of a dad or mum on average. So, the problem of finance crunch may be the factor that curb couple to have more babies even they want to. No parents want to have more babies if they are in the tight of money that cannot provide enough milk and comfort for their child.

    Lastly, in a country with population growth rate increases rapidly like Vietnam, the government must control by the population law. Even pregnant or bear a baby is one of the human right but by this way or that way government must curb the rapidly increase in population to make sure of social security. Government encourages family give a limited children to raise them successfully.

    There are four people in my family totally: my mother, my father, my younger sister and me. I think my family size is the typical size of almost Vietnam family. And it is not too hard for parent to raise two children successfully.

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  2. If we take into account that lots of countries around the globe have been facing overpolutation problems and from time to time there's a global financial crisis that directly affects our budget, I believe that the ideal number of children in a household should be no more than two. Otherwise, raising our offsprings will become a burden and not a pleasant and gratifying thing to do.

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  3. In Korea, people had not care about number of children a family in my grand father's generation. At that time, people's life is so harsh that many children had gone because of the poverty, the disease and the war.
    Since parent had not care about children too much, many kids get died easily. So parents have to birth many children because they don't know when their children will be in danger.
    As their lives get better, people's minds get changed. Children are no longer died easily, so family have many children.
    Since the number of people is rising steadily, the government have to make a policy.
    They announced "The family should have one child no matter what they get."
    Not only the policy but also people's minds has changed little by little.
    Each family has reduced their children so that many families have only one child or two these days.
    It followed that Korea is one of the low birth rate nation.
    So the government make many policy that is can stimulate the birth rate these days.

    I'm also only one children in my family. So I always have felt loneliness.
    That's why I want to have children 2 or 3.
    I hope my home is always full of vigor and happiness.

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  4. Babies are very lovely, we like to get them a lot. But it is not easy to grow them so to get how many children depends on you own situation.
    If both parents have to work, I think 2 is enough.
    It is not good for the baby if you born them but have no time to take care them.

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  5. i like babys so much,and i want to have 2 kids.one boy and one girl.i like to play with them,and kiss in their face.oh my gosh ,i want to get rhem now.

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  6. In my opinion, i think children are so important in build you own family, but you have to be careful with the size of them, because actually the financial situation has become very difficult in the last few years.

    there are many factors that we must have in mind when we decided the size of your family; your social status, time, financial situation, etc.

    I think the exactly size are two, because you can support them without problems, and the most important think is give them all the time and love posible, because you have to tech them a lot of things.

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  7. Hi, everyone, My name is Emine ,and I am from Turkey.i like babys so much and i want to have 2 kids but very diffucult:(

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  8. In Libya, I think most of family have many childreen, I don't expected that there is family has less 3 childreen.

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  9. OK, I think I enough with 2 children, I think in these days it's very hard to raise them.

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  10. Well, it's depind on person or couple , I means both of thim. But I think if I will
    marry I don't mind

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  11. my answer is very simplified about this topic.

    I think just depends on the resources that every family has to raise their kids such as money, time, love, understanding and support to each other

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Thanks for posting a comment. I appreciate your interesting in sharing your ideas.

Best,

Randall

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