A Few of the Benefits of Large Families
If you’re fully invested in it, a large family is a blessing: to your children, to your household, and to society. Not everyone can have this kind of family, and not everyone should. I’ve written elsewhere about the real challenges of large families, including the ways they can become perilous if they’re poorly ordered or half-heartedly embraced. I still believe all of that, despite the pushback I get from thin-skinned idealists.
Still, I want to walk through a few of the benefits that consistently come with having a large family. For the sake of clarity, I’m defining “large” as four or more children. I write this as someone still in the thick of it. I have one son who will turn two in a couple of months, another son who got married two weeks ago, and six in between. This life is exhausting and demanding, but it is also deeply satisfying. And it’s worth telling the truth about the good that comes with it.
What Big Families Do to Children…
A daily social-skills laboratory
Children with siblings live inside a constant negotiation. Who gets the seat. Who touched whose stuff. Who’s lying. Who’s sulking. Who needs to apologize. They learn, whether they want to or not, how to read moods, repair conflict, wait their turn, and restrain themselves. Large datasets back this up: teachers consistently rate children with siblings higher in self-control and interpersonal skills than only children. Lots of siblings provides lots of practice. Reps matter.
Character is formed through ordinary friction
Large families are loud. Disappointing. Inconvenient. Someone is always in your way. Someone always got the bigger piece. Someone ate your snacks you hid deep in the back of the cabinet.
This provides a lot of training. Kids learn to absorb frustration without melting down because they have to. By contrast, children raised in quieter, highly managed environments often reach adulthood with very little tolerance for inconvenience or conflict. When life presses in, they spiral because they’ve never been pressed before.
Entitlement is hard to sustain when attention is shared
It’s difficult to believe the world revolves around you when it demonstrably doesn’t. In a large family, attention is finite. Resources are finite. Schedules are negotiated, not curated.
Only children can learn humility. Of course they can. But in a large family, the lesson is unavoidable and relentless. Reality teaches it daily, without asking permission.
What Big Families Do to Households Over Time…
A thicker lifelong support network
When sibling relationships are healthy, they tend to stay that way. The research shows lower loneliness and stronger relational stability well into adulthood. This isn’t automatic, you have to cultivate it, but the upside lasts decades when you do.
The burden of aging parents is shared, not dumped
Only children are far more likely to face eldercare alone: emotionally, financially, logistically. That’s hard. Large families don’t eliminate that burden, but they divide it. Decisions are shared. Crises are absorbed by more than one set of shoulders.
That matters more than people realize, and it matters more every year we live longer.
Stress rises early; meaning rises later
The early years of a large family are demanding. No one disputes that. But over time, something interesting happens. Longitudinal studies and lived experience converge here: parents in larger families often report higher life satisfaction later on.
Stress peaks early. Meaning compounds. People confuse the two and assume the first cancels out the second. It doesn’t.
I’ve never been this happy before. Watching my kids launch into adulthood is thrilling and satisfying.
What Big Families Do to Society…
Large families transmit culture because they have mass
Traditions stick when there are enough people to carry them. Stories survive when more than one child remembers them. Faith, memory, and shared identity don’t disappear the moment someone opts out.
Sociologically speaking, large families behave and perform more like institutions. And institutions, unlike individuals, can endure. Think of the analogy where you break a stick and then show how hard it is to break a bunch of sticks bound together.
Demographic stability is not optional
Societies with sustained low fertility don’t drift gently into decline. They hit predictable walls: labor shortages, care crises, pension collapse, cultural fragmentation. All that is happening to us right now.
Large families, when tended well, are a public stabilizer. You don’t need everyone to have six kids. But when no one does, the bill comes due. And when it comes due, it’s ugly.
I know I’ve left many benefits out, and a lot more could be said about each point. That’s fine. This wasn’t meant to be exhaustive. That’s what the comments are for.
And for those interested, here’s the two-part piece I wrote on The Perils of Large Families: Part 1 and Part 2.
I have 12, ranging in age from 8-28. It has been a lot of work and emotional/physical/financial investment, but it has been worth every single tear shed and dollar spent. My children are incredible people—12 unique individuals with their own ideas, skills, gifts, and personalities. I was raised in the middle of the early homeschool boom in 1980s America, and my parents built a great support network in our community where families could get together for activities and study. The danger I have seen in the last ten years is the fragmentation of that support. Sure, there are “support groups,” but there is usually an entry fee now—like the co-op down the road from us that asks $1k per child per semester for one day of classes per week. For families with four or more kids, that’s just not workable. So those avenues are pretty much closed off to all but the very well-to-do. There’s also a really ugly attitude, even among fellow Christians, that “you got yourself into this (having lots of kids), so you’re responsible to carry the load.” Americans are very much about “rugged individualism” to a degree that those who struggle or ask for help are seen as failures. This is not sustainable. One of my sons and his wife just had their first baby and have bought a house two blocks from us. We have already committed to doing everything we can to support them and help them, because it is a very lonely road in a culture that says marriage and childbearing are “irresponsible” in your 20s. Never mind that they’ve managed to stay out of debt and purchase a house; people still tsk-tsk. I took my share of ugly comments and ridiculous “advice” when I was in the middle of having a large family. To keep going, you need the emotional and spiritual support for sure, but you also need practical, hands-in-the-dirt help. But the tide is turning, because functional families are a beacon in a dark world. 99% of people who hear how many kids I have don’t make a face like they did ten years ago. They light up. They get excited. Two women who came into our family-run bistro last week asked if the barista was related to me. I answered, “Yes, and so is the chef, the dishwasher, the social media manager, and the baker!” One of them leaned across the counter and said, “God bless you. The only way to fix this messed up world is to bring good people into it.” That’s what we want to do. It’s what we will continue to labor for. But we cannot do it without community to support us. So let’s build it.
Agree on all fronts, thank you for sharing.