All in the Family
Three Myths about Large Families

by Gerald Korson

Like most parents of larger families, my wife and I are familiar with many of the assumptions people make regarding what it takes to raise a family like ours and how such families cause harm to our planet and to the children themselves.

While these assumptions are too many to treat exhaustively here, I will address three of these most common myths.

Myth #1: Large families are bad for the environment.

This statement and others like it are, perhaps, the most commonly heard arguments against large families. They are also among the easiest to refute.

Last spring, an organization calling itself the Optimum Population Trust (OPT) issued a briefing that characterized human population growth as one of the “fundamental causes” of climate change. OPT’s proposed solution, naturally, is to limit the size of families. As then-OPT co-chairman John Guillebaud told The London Times, “The greatest thing anyone in Britain could do to help the future of the planet would be to have one less child.”

That’s an interesting statement, considering that the British fertility rate is only 1.7—meaning that the national birth rate is 1.7 children for every 2.0 persons, already indicative of a shrinking population. If British families were each to produce an average of one fewer child, the national fertility rate would drop to 0.7. At that level, setting aside the impact of immigration, England would be reduced to approximately one-third its present population within a generation.

The OPT even frames the question in economic terms. Every person who is not born means 744 fewer metric tons of carbon-dioxide emissions over a lifetime. Figuring the “social cost of CO2” at $85 per metric ton, the report marvels that “each forgone Briton therefore saves society $63,240”—an amount, the report continues, that could be averted by a single use of a 70-cent condom!

The erroneous assumption is that if the average individual produces X amount of non-recyclable waste, is responsible for Y amount of carbon emissions, and consumes Z amount of available energy, then a family of nine must produce and consume nine times as much. Those who advance such claims fail to take into account the lifestyles of most large families. Openness to raising a large family is a deliberate choice that parents accept with the understanding that they must put their children’s well-being ahead of material goods and conveniences:

• Large families tend to purchase foods and supplies in bulk quantities that require less packaging and less waste. They also are more meticulous about not wasting food, water, and other resources. Family meals serve more people, requiring proportionately less energy per-capita to prepare.
• They comprise “instant carpools,” generally driving the same minivans and sedans as smaller families but carrying more passengers per trip. They tend to own fewer vehicles per capita, often forgoing that shiny new SUV in favor of an older-but-clean minivan that they will use until it is no longer drivable.
• They use the interior space of their homes more efficiently, thus reaping obvious energy savings for heating and cooling. Consider the square-foot-per-capita ratio of a family of four in a comfortable three-bedroom, 2,000-square-foot home with a family of nine in a four-bedroom, 2,300-square-foot home.
• It seems almost a universal experience among large families that mothers of smaller families generously pass along to them the clothes their kids have outgrown. Large families graciously accept such offers as a kind of “recycle and re-use” effort that reduces their clothing expenses.

Arguably, large families of modest-to-moderate means are more “eco-friendly” than most other households by virtue of practicality alone.

Myth #2: The dynamics of being raised in a large family leave a child more prone to psychological and emotional problems.

Not true. In fact, a major report confirms just the opposite.

In 2004, the Department of Public Health Science and General Practice at the University of Oulu, Finland, studied 9,357 eight-year-olds to determine whether behavioral and emotional problems were statistically related to factors such as family size, family type and birth order. It concluded that children with no siblings had the highest prevalence of behavior problems, while children in very large families had the lowest.

Myth #3: To be the parent of a large family, one must be a saint.

This is a common assumption by those who cannot imagine themselves as the head of a large household. I know of no parent of a large family who would make this claim.
What is true about parents of large families is true of every human person: All are called to be saints-in-the-making, to strive always to increase in sanctity and virtue. Parents of many, few, or no children will find ample opportunity for such growth by embracing in faith the challenges and struggles of the life to which they are called by God.

A 25-year veteran of the Catholic press, Korson is a freelance editor and writer for several major Catholic periodicals and publishers. A former editor of Our Sunday Visitor newsweekly (1998–2007), he holds master's degree in theology from St. Mary's College of California and is a longtime associate member of the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars. He and his wife, Christina, reside in Indiana with their 11 children.

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