Angelina Jolie’s Expanding Family May Be Sparking Baby Boom
With the addition of twins Knox and Vivienne, Hollywood star Angelina Jolie and partner Brad Pitt have expanded their family to six children, and could add one more. But that’s not all.
The star’s desire for a large family may also be responsible for a baby boom among young couples. For decades, two children has been the norm. But four may be the new two, and six may by the trend, according to one expert.
Instead of a big-screen TV and expensive car, the new one-uppers just keep adding more kids to the fold. While my husband and I have four stair-step boys ages 10, 9, 4, and 2, and I'm expecting another, we aren't part of that particular breed of breeders, according to Meagan Francis, author of "Table for Eight: Raising a Large Family in a Small-Family World” and founder of largerfamilies.com.
Four kids weren't always considered a "big" family. In 1976 an American woman had a 36 percent chance of giving birth to four or more children in her lifetime, and about 60 percent of women had families of three children or more, she says. But according to the latest census, the number of women who can expect to have three or more has been cut to 29 percent, while those with four or more children has dwindled to 10 percent. But that could be changing again.
“There are many of us who simply like children, enjoy having a lot of them around, and even do a good job at raising them in bulk – though if you buy into today's high-pressure, high-cost parenting style (which, incidentally, isn't scoring many points among child-development experts these days), it may seem impossible.”
“It's true that I may never be able to provide all five of my kids with all the material comforts that I might have given one or two. They'll have to figure out a way to help finance their higher education (a fate that many kids from smaller families also face). And, yes, the fact that I have to divide my time between them pretty much eliminates the danger of my turning into a ‘helicopter parent.’”
While material comforts may be in shorter supply for average income families with four or more children, there are advantages for the kids later in life. “My kids will reach adulthood with a built-in support network that will be around long after my husband and I are gone. There's plenty of love to go around in my family – and not all of it has to come from Mom and Dad, though of course, plenty of it does,” Francis says.
“It's time our entire culture shifted its priority away from things and back toward people. There are a lot of ways to accomplish that. Ours happens to be choosing a larger family over a more luxurious lifestyle. And who knows? Someone's fourth or fifth baby may just change the world. Or at least, her little corner of it,” she says.
