The children of a generation of parents are childfree, by choice or circumstance, and their parents are grappling with the consequences. The New York Times recently ran a piece about this titled “The Unspoken Grief of Never Becoming a Grandparent.”
My grandparents were the parents of four children and, from those four children, only had two grandchildren (their two oldest daughters had one child each). I became interested in genealogy in my 20s and would often reflect on how my family tree practically dead-ended with them. Irish Catholics were the products of many children, and their grandparents and great-grandparents were also the products of large families.
Of course, this is the case for the family trees of almost everyone in 2024: Bigger families of previous generations have been replaced by ever-shrinking versions as we have hit modern times. Some people call that progress. Women have access to birth control and full careers and, as a result, are having fewer and fewer children. Except that doesn’t seem to be what women really want: smaller and smaller families, getting married later and later, if at all.
The United States, along with almost every other Western country in the world, is facing a birth crisis. Births are at a record low and below the replacement rate. But according to Brad Wilcox of the Institute for Family Studies, that’s not necessarily by choice.
“[J]ust because fertility is falling and childlessness is rising does not mean this state of family affairs is what most women want,” Wilcox wrote over the summer. “Even today, most young women say they would like to have a family. Among women under 35 today, 30% already have children, 41% say they want to have children, 15% are not sure, and only 14% say they don’t wish to have children, according to a new Institute for Family Studies/YouGov survey of 2,000 young adults conducted in May to June of 2024.”
My branch of my family tree looks a whole lot different than the previous generation — there are six limbs coming out of my branch. What led me to have six times as many children as my parents?
It has everything to do with the fact that my parents died while I was in my teenage years, my mother when I was 16 and my father when I was 19.
My mother was ill with lupus and every possible complication my entire life — she almost died while pregnant with me (part of the reason why I would remain an only child). Starting around when I was 10 until she died six years later, my mother’s health was slowly declining. I grew up knowing that it was extremely unlikely she would live to my high school graduation.
That made my growing up more intense than that of most of my peers. I was learning how to administer insulin shots and balance a checkbook while in early high school — partially because I was my single mother’s only caretaker and partially because she wanted me to be ready and mature for when the inevitable day did arrive. But because death was always close on the horizon, she was extremely open and reflective about her life and the choices she made. She told me every single day that she loved me and that becoming my mother was the best thing that ever happened to her. How she felt about being a mother was never a secret, never something I was left to wonder about.
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Because my parents died when I was so young, I went into dating and motherhood with eyes wide open about how short life is, about what is truly important. When I had my first child, I reveled in how happy she made me. I kept having them because we never hit a dud. Every subsequent baby brought our family so much joy.
My children tell me they want to have between five and 100 children each. (Some children are more ambitious than others.) Time will tell if my children actually give me hundreds of grandchildren (I’ll settle for between 20 and 35), but I know how to better my odds because I know what led me to make the choices that I made: I tell my children that they are my greatest joy. And better than telling them, I show them each and every day.
Bethany Mandel (@bethanyshondark) is a homeschooling mother of six and a writer. She is the bestselling co-author of Stolen Youth.