The Perfect Number

           

 Imagine this, according to UNICEF 353,000 babies are born each day! For my friends who are living in Rexburg, Idaho, that’s 12.5x’s bigger than the population and for my friends back home in Oshkosh, Wisconsin that’s 5x’s the population size. Now I know a significant amount of us are unlikely to live in these two places so to put it into better perspective it’s roughly 11,800 classrooms of about 30 people each. Better yet, it’s about 6,303 Kobussen yellow busses full of babies. Now that’s a whole lot of babies born each day in the world. Over the span of a women’s childbearing years, according to The World Factbook this could range from 19 to 30 years. This increases the number of children born to be from around six to ten million. These numbers are huge but the most important number to consider is how many of those children will you decide to be yours, how many children will you decide to have?

            Will you have ten? Five? Two? Or maybe none? Are you excited to have kids in the future or to have more? Are you nervous to thinking about how many to have?

There is no perfect number for the amount of kids to have because we are all so unique and different for the perfect number to exist. Health is a big factor into whether we should have kids and how many to have. I love that we are starting to talk about this because it brings awareness to medical issues that causes infertility such as endometriosis. Did you know one out of ten women in the U.S. suffer from endometriosis, world wide it’s about 176 million women. Yet it’s too common for women to feel shameful for talking about having endometriosis or any other reasons that cause infertility without our will. I think what is most important is to consider your own health and realize that’s one of the most important factors. No one will have to live with the medical complications that occur afterwards more fully than YOU. Remember you are important as much as this baby and this baby cannot make it in the world without a mom like YOU.

Another big factor that plays into how many children we should have is sometimes the worst of all: social pressure. Maybe a few of you will relate with feeling like it’s too much of a financial burden right now, not enough time, having a big family is unwise, or having a little family makes me seem vain and selfish. Social pressure sucks! Sometimes we can receive so much support and sometimes we just tear each other down. We have to look and listen and realize which voices are the most important. This can be your family, friends, and the biggest one is yourself. Will you be happy with the decision? However, in counterargument with some of the pressures I’ve just listed, we should remember that there is no perfect time for children. There are the best times to have children but most families that are happy have learned to make the best of every moment and to make things work with what they have. No number is perfect, there are benefits to having a small family and a big family. Just ask the happiest people and you’ll realize they all come from different family sizes. 

I’ve said enough and I want to hear from you! What are your thoughts your questions? What should be talked more about in the number of children people should have. Share with me your family stories of whether you came from a small or big family!