Fewer kids, better outcomes?

May 5, 2012 12:14 PM

Are there any studies that show that couples who have fewer children are able to raise the children they do have better?

Better as in, the children do better along some axes (health, education, whatever). I seem to recall hearing this idea, but I am having trouble Googling up any data.

On a related note, what about studies showing that access to contraception tends to mean fewer children?

posted by adamdschneider to science & nature (12 answers total)

Key words that will be helpful are "family size" plus "education," "development," "health," and "well-being." This paper says that studies that show that there's no causal relationship between education levels and family size are faulty - its bibliography is a good source of studies.
posted by SMPA at 12:21 PM on May 5, 2012

Also, be sure to use Google Scholar, not plain vanilla Google.
posted by SMPA at 12:22 PM on May 5, 2012 [1 favorite]

Don't forget to correct for socio-economics -- compare parents at the same socio-economic scale, not just parents with one kid and parents with five kids.

I cannot for the life of me believe that fewer kids would equal 'better' kids though. If you find something, please do drop it in here, I'd be interested.
posted by incessant at 12:45 PM on May 5, 2012

I cannot for the life of me believe that fewer kids would equal 'better' kids though.

Well, the arguments I remember were along the lines that fewer kids meant the parents could spend more time/money on each individual kid. Especially time.
posted by adamdschneider at 12:56 PM on May 5, 2012 [1 favorite]

I have looked before, but have not been able to find such studies. I was thinking that more kids would make it harder to help with homework, class projects, shuttling kids to specialized activities, pay for tutoring/assistance, manage health care needs/appts, do home reading, play with kids, etc. Much like these things are harder for single parents. But I have never run into a study that addressed this.
posted by Chaussette and the Pussy Cats at 2:38 PM on May 5, 2012

I think you are looking at how much resources are available per child. The role of privilege/class also comes into it.

So two parents working minimum wage jobs have a lot fewer resources for their one child in an inner-city school than a single mother of four who has a high paid/high status job with extended family support, an excellent school system, a society that does not assume her children are thieves based on the colour of their skin etc, etc. She can afford to spend time with her children in museums or nearby, safe, well-equipped parks. The other parents may spend more time with their children but that may be time spent riding public transportation or at home watching TV.

As an aside, I was just reading today that the number one indicator that a child will go to university in Canada is no longer the parent's education level but the parent's status as an immigrant. Children of New Canadians go on to post-secondary education at far greater numbers than children of parents born in Canada.
posted by saucysault at 3:26 PM on May 5, 2012

Probably because most newcomers are good at navigating systems, motivated and well educated.
posted by Chaussette and the Pussy Cats at 4:36 PM on May 5, 2012

It appears that the terms you should be plugging into Google Scholar or the sociology database of your choice are "resource dilution" and "family size".

Here are a couple of articles that came back on that topic. (Note that I do not have any special expertise in this field and cannot judge the quality of the research or journals. Also these articles are old-ish, which either means that the model has either been accepted to the point that no one is interested in disproving it any more, or that it's been challenged to the point that no one is bothering to defend it any more.)

Downey 1995

Knodel and Wongsith 1991
posted by The Elusive Architeuthis at 6:08 PM on May 5, 2012 [2 favorites]

Freakonomics had a post on how spacing children makes them smarter. I had thought they had one explicitly about family size and parenting resources but I'm not finding it.

Banerjee and Duflo discuss some of these issues in Poor Economics.
posted by crush-onastick at 6:45 PM on May 5, 2012 [1 favorite]

Birth Order, Family Size, and Achievement: Family Structure and Wage Determination
posted by Nickel Pickle at 7:01 PM on May 5, 2012 [1 favorite]

Page 2 of this Time article on only-child myths gives some names you might want to look into: Toni Falbo and Judith Blake.
posted by moira at 8:24 PM on May 5, 2012

The Downey article The Elusive Architeuthis article linked to is a good one. Downey does great research, I think.

Another useful article is this one by Guo & VanWey

Yes, research shows that increased sibship size (another useful search term) is associated with decreased education outcomes (not sure about other outcomes--I know education stuff).

The two competing explanations for this are resource dilution theory (assuming stable family resources, having more kids means you're dividing resources by more people, and everyone gets less, so kids have lower outcomes) and the confluence model (says that there is a overall "family intellectual environment" and when you have more kids there is a lower intellectual environment because young kids have lower intellect).
posted by kochenta at 12:31 PM on May 6, 2012