Family Trends

Families come in a shapes and sizes. Mine is no different. I  grew up in a blended family with 9 children. (I know, that is a LOT of children!) I am number 8, so I have 7 older brothers and sisters and many nieces and nephews. (I LOVE being an aunt! My older siblings are my half siblings and my younger brother is my only “whole” sibling. They are all my brothers and sisters. We may not be full-blood siblings, but I see and love them as if they were. I love each one of them dearly. To me, having 9 children in a family was normal. When I was little, I thought that it was weird that other families did not have 9 children. That was my family. To me, that was normal. I did not comprehend that how uncommon it is to have 9 children in a family until I got older.

Have you noticed that families are having fewer and fewer children? Why is that? There are many factors that have contributed to smaller families. One of them was the Population Bomb. This book was written by Paul Ehrlich and was published in 1968. In it, he predicted that in the 1970s and 80s there would be a worldwide famine due to overpopulation. (This link talks about it more) As you can imagine, this caused many people to panic. Couples started to have smaller families of 1 or 2 children. Since couples are having fewer children, how does that effect our population?

First, we need a little background information about what is needed to keep a population going. The NCBI (The National Center for Biotechnology Information) says that, “the replacement fertility rate is roughly 2.1.” What is a fertility rate? What is a replacement fertility rate and what does that mean? Good questions. A fertility rate is the average number of babies that a woman has in her lifetime. In order to stabilize a population each woman needs to have about 2.1 babies, or a population will decrease, that is a replacement fertility rate. If the fertility rate is greater than 2.1, then the population grows. The NCBI was saying that approximately 2.1 babies need to be born to each woman in their lifetime to maintain the current population. 

United States Fertility Rate

Graph taken from the World Bank.

In 2017, America’s fertility rate was 1.77 according to The World Bank. What does this mean? This means that the population of the United States of America will shrink (it is less than 2.1). This does not mean that the population is going to plummet starting tomorrow. Thankfully due to many wonderful medical and safety technology, many people are able to live to an old age. So, it seems that our population is continuing to grow because not many people are dying right now. But as older generations start to die, there will not be as many people to replace them. Therefore, if this trend continues, then our nations’ population will decrease. You may be wondering if this is only happening in the USA. It is not. It is happening all round the world including Europe, Russia, Asia, and Africa. (If you want to learn more, check out this cool website! It shows all of these countries’ fertility rates) If our population stops growing, will there eventually be too many jobs or houses? Maybe, if this trend of low fertility continues. There’s this cool documentary called Demographic Winter. It has many intriguing insights about this topic and the possible outcomes if you would like to learn more.

I am not pointing a finger at or saying that anyone, including those I know, needs to have more children. That is a very personal decision that has many factors that contribute to that decision (infertility, high risk pregnancies, etc.) I believe that how many children a couple decides to have is in between them and God. One of the sweetest couples that I know did not have any children. I have also seen and know many wonderful families with anywhere from 1-9 children. What is most important is that each child is loved and gets the nurturing that he or she needs.

So, what do you think? Will people keep having small families, or will that trend reverse? What other  trends have you noticed in families?

If you want to learn more, check out the links up above or check out these other awesome blogs about families!

Keep on dancing!!

❤️ Emily