This is probably just my experience in a very rural white area, but it seems like most families with more than 3 children are either drug addicts or committed Christians. On surveys, they would balance or cancel each other out on church attendance, education, politics, etc.
I don't understand the rationale for dropping the 0 children families? Isn't the question, what percentage of all Evangelicals (including 0s), for example, have "large" families, however defined, compared to percentage of all families in other religious groupings? You note that 0s are more common among some groups, which means the results could look quite different for % of all families.
My wife was a "surprise" baby to a Catholic family in the early 60's. So the choice wasn't to have a 4th child, but following the church's teaching against birth control.
If you had gone back to the Greatest Generation, the parents of the Baby Boomers, you would have seen a very different pattern. I remember my mother saying that she once felt social pressure to have four kids instead of the three of us, but by the 1960s was feeling guilty about having more than two.
Religious people with large families are certainly outliers, but they also tend to operate in their own subcultures, so I’m not sure you can say it’s not its own phenomenon. I think you can say that it’s a phenomenon that is statistically hard to measure because it’s so small!
For example, only 14% of Jewish people are ultra-orthodox, and only 2.4% of Americans are Jewish. In terms of the American population ultra Orthodox Jews are a fraction of a percent. Despite being a very real phenomenon, they would be hard to pick out of a national survey.
Statistics don't really tell the story on this. Most of us are familiar with popular presentations like Cheaper by the Dozen or had a classmate who had six sibs. Those are outliers that do not affect how most people live.
There are some very real exceptions where large families, often of religious homogeneity, concentrate and have a great impact on schools, social services, and in some places, politics. The prototype of these are the Haredi Jews who typically have large families. They have a few towns of their own, like New Square and Kiryas Joel, but share other towns like Monsey and Lakewood. Those large concentrated families, along with other religious uniqueness, impact those within the sect and those who are more secular. Small part of the composite, big effect on those there.
We see it in Israel, where that bloc determines coalitions, military service, and future government planning.
These are the most extreme, but I could make a similar statement for large Catholic families, once more common than now. The archdioceses had to accommodate the affordability of parochial schools, as these families were most likely to opt for them over public schools. And many governments were required to arrange bus transportation to school for all children. So while outliers from the composite, they impact how people live.
What I find interesting from the graphs of birth cohorts is how little impact the availability of contraceptives starting in the 1960s, then ubiquitous since the 1970s, and the availability of abortions since the 1970s had on family size. Not much.
Having spent a lot of time at homeschool conventions, the one topic that would be really interesting to explore by family size is the age at which they gave their children their first cell phone. I've noticed a divergence where large families behave dramatically different on this metric.
Exploring the "by family size," however, is often data-constrained. The groups who consistently have large families (Conservative Anabaptists, Ultra-Orthodox Jews) often avoid social surveys.
This analysis is valid among older people, but it misses the trend. If you are looking at 45+ (what is the average age in that group, 60?) you miss the story.
There didn't used to be an ideological fertility gap in fertility, and childbearing was near-universal in many 20th century cohorts. But among young people, a massive ideology-fertility divide has opened up.
Fertility among younger cohorts has completely collapsed for young liberals (who tend to be secular). Among those age 25 to 35, the fertility gap has exploded to 2 to 1. Now this is conservative/liberal not religious/nonreligious but there is huge overlap there.
The literature overwhelmingly finds higher fertility among the religious. Here is a thread of numerous studies on the subject. It is one of the strongest effects in all of demography.
Dr. Burge, shouldn’t you include those that had zero children into the mix to see a full picture, where the averages really are? My understanding is those on the political left and/or non-religious are much more likely than right and/or religious folks. The number of zeros could shift the averages substantially.
This is interesting, insofar as the information it gives. However, it obscures the larger "religious difference" for parenting: childlessness, couples and singles who have NO children. That figure is notably higher among the non-religious than among Christians (and other religionists). Such a analysis would, necessary, also have to correlate with individuals' political leanings. In fact, that angle would also be appropriate to consider regarding the present analysis. Besides Dem vs Rep, Burge should examine number of children according to the radical left, left, moderate, conservative, far right spectrum.
Ryan, I understand that you've written about "no children" before in other posts, but I still think that topic is apropos to the question at hand here regarding of family size /religion.
Thanks for the analysis. Out of curiosity, what was definition of large family, relative to parents? Was it basically asking how many children a given adult (mom or dad) had? I doubt there are too many single moms with 4+ children, but given the relatively small number of large families, it might make a difference to consider married couples with large number of kids vs singles or blended families.
I thought it was interesting that independents scored highest in regards to percentage with many kids. I assume that's not statistically significant, given the small gap. But, anecdotally, I've found that people who are willing to have such large families tend to be the most reticent to trust any mainstream institution, including political parties, public schools, and large denominations.
This is probably just my experience in a very rural white area, but it seems like most families with more than 3 children are either drug addicts or committed Christians. On surveys, they would balance or cancel each other out on church attendance, education, politics, etc.
That's probably the best way to put it, honestly. You don't see a whole lot of "normal" couples having more than 3 kids.
You are absolutely right... because we have 4. Not normal. :)
Yeah, I'm never writing a piece about fertility ever again, folks.
If you want more of this there are literally dozens of researchers writing about it. Read them.
I don't understand the rationale for dropping the 0 children families? Isn't the question, what percentage of all Evangelicals (including 0s), for example, have "large" families, however defined, compared to percentage of all families in other religious groupings? You note that 0s are more common among some groups, which means the results could look quite different for % of all families.
I've written about child free decisions a lot over the years. I didn't want this to become another discussion of: children or no children.
I wanted to focus here on: for couples who choose to have children, what's the difference between stopping at 1 vs going for 4.
It really does affect the dataset when you exclude the no children couples.
I can't paste an image in this to show it visually, but when you include 0 children (using the same CES 2024 data)...
3+ children
Weekly+ is 37.5%
Never is 20.7%
That's a massive gap.
My wife was a "surprise" baby to a Catholic family in the early 60's. So the choice wasn't to have a 4th child, but following the church's teaching against birth control.
If you had gone back to the Greatest Generation, the parents of the Baby Boomers, you would have seen a very different pattern. I remember my mother saying that she once felt social pressure to have four kids instead of the three of us, but by the 1960s was feeling guilty about having more than two.
Religious people with large families are certainly outliers, but they also tend to operate in their own subcultures, so I’m not sure you can say it’s not its own phenomenon. I think you can say that it’s a phenomenon that is statistically hard to measure because it’s so small!
For example, only 14% of Jewish people are ultra-orthodox, and only 2.4% of Americans are Jewish. In terms of the American population ultra Orthodox Jews are a fraction of a percent. Despite being a very real phenomenon, they would be hard to pick out of a national survey.
I discussed the real limitations of data in this piece: https://www.graphsaboutreligion.com/p/why-i-cant-tell-you-how-quakers-or
But you've hit the nail on the head here -- very large families are incredibly rare in the grand scheme of things.
Statistics don't really tell the story on this. Most of us are familiar with popular presentations like Cheaper by the Dozen or had a classmate who had six sibs. Those are outliers that do not affect how most people live.
There are some very real exceptions where large families, often of religious homogeneity, concentrate and have a great impact on schools, social services, and in some places, politics. The prototype of these are the Haredi Jews who typically have large families. They have a few towns of their own, like New Square and Kiryas Joel, but share other towns like Monsey and Lakewood. Those large concentrated families, along with other religious uniqueness, impact those within the sect and those who are more secular. Small part of the composite, big effect on those there.
We see it in Israel, where that bloc determines coalitions, military service, and future government planning.
These are the most extreme, but I could make a similar statement for large Catholic families, once more common than now. The archdioceses had to accommodate the affordability of parochial schools, as these families were most likely to opt for them over public schools. And many governments were required to arrange bus transportation to school for all children. So while outliers from the composite, they impact how people live.
What I find interesting from the graphs of birth cohorts is how little impact the availability of contraceptives starting in the 1960s, then ubiquitous since the 1970s, and the availability of abortions since the 1970s had on family size. Not much.
Having spent a lot of time at homeschool conventions, the one topic that would be really interesting to explore by family size is the age at which they gave their children their first cell phone. I've noticed a divergence where large families behave dramatically different on this metric.
Exploring the "by family size," however, is often data-constrained. The groups who consistently have large families (Conservative Anabaptists, Ultra-Orthodox Jews) often avoid social surveys.
This analysis is valid among older people, but it misses the trend. If you are looking at 45+ (what is the average age in that group, 60?) you miss the story.
There didn't used to be an ideological fertility gap in fertility, and childbearing was near-universal in many 20th century cohorts. But among young people, a massive ideology-fertility divide has opened up.
https://x.com/MoreBirths/status/2043028248737546398?s=20
Fertility among younger cohorts has completely collapsed for young liberals (who tend to be secular). Among those age 25 to 35, the fertility gap has exploded to 2 to 1. Now this is conservative/liberal not religious/nonreligious but there is huge overlap there.
The literature overwhelmingly finds higher fertility among the religious. Here is a thread of numerous studies on the subject. It is one of the strongest effects in all of demography.
https://x.com/MoreBirths/status/1787136084654104773?s=20
Dr. Burge, shouldn’t you include those that had zero children into the mix to see a full picture, where the averages really are? My understanding is those on the political left and/or non-religious are much more likely than right and/or religious folks. The number of zeros could shift the averages substantially.
This is interesting, insofar as the information it gives. However, it obscures the larger "religious difference" for parenting: childlessness, couples and singles who have NO children. That figure is notably higher among the non-religious than among Christians (and other religionists). Such a analysis would, necessary, also have to correlate with individuals' political leanings. In fact, that angle would also be appropriate to consider regarding the present analysis. Besides Dem vs Rep, Burge should examine number of children according to the radical left, left, moderate, conservative, far right spectrum.
Ryan, I understand that you've written about "no children" before in other posts, but I still think that topic is apropos to the question at hand here regarding of family size /religion.
Thanks for the analysis. Out of curiosity, what was definition of large family, relative to parents? Was it basically asking how many children a given adult (mom or dad) had? I doubt there are too many single moms with 4+ children, but given the relatively small number of large families, it might make a difference to consider married couples with large number of kids vs singles or blended families.
You could write a lot of articles on families that followed the now disgraced Institute for Basic Life Principles.
I thought it was interesting that independents scored highest in regards to percentage with many kids. I assume that's not statistically significant, given the small gap. But, anecdotally, I've found that people who are willing to have such large families tend to be the most reticent to trust any mainstream institution, including political parties, public schools, and large denominations.
That thought did occur to me, too. The same thing that makes folks being politically independent also makes them more inclined to have lots of kids.
The idea of "I don't want to conform to society's standards of normal"