Alright, I was on Familsearch looking at my past family and I noticed that it was super common to have 9 or more children. that is definitely something that is out of the norm now days. I wonder why that is? In the past, I don't know, 2 centuries there has been a definite decline in number of children. I am just thinking about that. My family is fairly large, we don't fit the norm. I grew up with 5 older siblings and I felt a sense of pride in being in a family that large. when we went to a restaurant people were surprised and impressed, especially when we were on vacation to places with less members of the church,and I was proud of it. I had a sense of team, a feeling that I was part of something larger than just me. I feel like most useful life skills I learned from my older siblings, which was obviously important to me, and I think that the chance to teach a younger sibling was important to them in their development as well.
I am also thinking about how well-off a family is. I know that my family was pretty wealthy and I feel like having a lot of kids was something that spurred us to that (as counter-intuitive as that may seem) nothing inspires hard work and success like an increase of responsibility, and having kids does just that.
Another quick thought: could it be that people are simply more selfish no than they were before?
Another side thought. I almost wanted to do my research on ancient Cherokee chieftains seeing as this guy right here is one of my distant ancestors. His name is standing Turkey. That is pretty cool.
Children used to be seen as contributors on the family farm or family business, and therefore, they were seen as an asset. Are parents more selfish---possibly, but I also wonder if in our society it is harder to raise a big family unless a family has a way to put all those kids to work.
ReplyDeleteIt is interesting that your ancestors had such big families.You could probably find a lot of research about big families in the past and how they influenced the ways that families are today. Good luck!
ReplyDeleteI like the topic idea! Maybe you could research the cultural significance of large families around the world and find commonalities behind all those who have large families and those who don't and see what they have in common.
ReplyDelete-Tanner Hales
I think that family size sounds like a really interesting topic! To go along with how you said you felt like you were a part of something bigger, you could look at the effect that family size had on the development of children. Possibly the personality traits and characteristics that children from large families have in contrast to children from small families.
ReplyDeleteI think it would be interesting to look into culture influences on family size. Rachel Tietjen
ReplyDeleteThis is a very intriguing topic. I would really like to know the answer! I come from a family of only 4 kids, so it will be interesting to see how your background experience influences the perspective you have on your research paper.
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