When College-Educated Women Choose Big Families

Is having a big family irresponsible? Perhaps it is an indulgent choice in the face of climate change or a choice to conspire against one’s career. After all, we Yale women jumped hoops from kindergarten until now to prepare for the most coveted positions in America. Why risk a break in that trajectory?

Dr. Catherine Pakaluk, in her book Hannah’s Children: The Women Quietly Defying the Birth Dearth, offers answers to such questions by focusing on the few who challenge the norm in what she dubs a “two-trending-to-one child world.” Her book contains conversations that aim to make sense of the decline in birthrates through the lives of the outliers. Pakaluk received her doctorate in economics from Harvard and is now a professor and proud mother of eight.

HER RESEARCH METHOD

To unpack the “why” behind falling Western fertility rates, Pakaluk interviews the cultural anomaly – college-educated women in the US with at least five children. Only 5% of American women aged 40-45 today choose to make that daring choice (Gallup). Her emphasis on women who hold at least a bachelor’s degree nods to the educational component correlated to lower birth rates. By controlling for that variable, the author reveals the factors behind that lifestyle that are hidden from popular view. Additionally, her interviews featured mothers working full-time and part-time and a strong majority of mothers who opted out of the workforce for all or part of their childbearing years. 

Notably, Pakaluk’s sample varied racially, religiously, and economically. The economic diversity, from very affluent women to those in the bottom income quartile, highlights that intentionally large families are not simply possible for the wealthy. Parents have thriftily managed with less, choosing hand-me-downs and shared rooms over expensive clothes, homes, and vacations. Those lower-income families often cited divine providence and reported that the community around them — often faith-based — contributed so that what little they had could become enough. 

THE UNSEEN BENEFITS OF LARGE FAMILY

Pakaluk proposes that we have not seriously considered why we should encourage bigger families, or what one interviewee called a “home rich in persons” (Pakaluk, Hannah’s Children, 239). 

More children can heal the family

In the loneliest generation to date, children of larger families simply have more opportunities to feel useful. The feeling of being needed can be linked to decreased chances of anxiety and depression. With record-high reports of mental health issues amongst teens, the presence of another little sibling who adores them could make a tangible impact. 

As an example of the profound difference families can make, one mother shared how, after her seventh child was born with a rare genetic disorder impairing speech and physical movement, the older siblings rallied around their new brother. They even took turns flipping him regularly as the physical therapist prescribed. Future younger siblings motivated their brother to miraculously start walking and become verbal faster than doctors could have envisioned.

Pakaluk writes, “Babies better lives and love disinterestedly. They bring healing that no one else can bring. […] Today’s typical middle school, high school, and college student will never have lived in the same house with a human infant, and if so, will not remember it” (Hannah’s Children, 310). 

More children can heal the nation

An often neglected benefit of a bustling household is that the social virtues forged at home uplift the moral fiber of a nation. One mother of six described how younger children amidst the older siblings made for a “natural school of virtue” (Hannah’s Children, 329). They learned to care for one another and develop a mind for cooperation and sharing. Living in a big family provides more occasions to remove focus from the self during pivotal periods of adolescent identity formation. In other words, Pakaluk says, “the self-imposed duties of an abundant, generative family life provide the ballast against selfish forms of individualism” (Hannah’s Children, 16). 

THE ROLE OF FAITH

Chief among the reasons for this lifestyle choice is the internalized belief that having many kids is good. The women Pakaluk and her team interviewed consistently had a religious affiliation, with varying degrees of piety, that ascribed a level of normalcy to childbearing. Faith-professing families tended to believe in a hopeful future for their children. They also considered the opportunity to be a parent a divine fortune in itself.

Additionally, often for these women, places of worship provided spaces for social support and aid in raising a child. Religious communities tended to be more understanding and supportive of bigger families in general, making the social costs of a larger family lower. Where there is a lack of peers with shared experience, there is greater loneliness, which makes the idea of more kids less appealing. A belief in providential care and the goodness in family made it easier to be open to more children. 

SHORTCOMINGS OF TRADITIONAL PRO-FAMILY POLICY

Pakaluk believes longer maternity leave and traditional monetary stimulus methods will not overcome the social losses and perceived burden that goes along with a child. In essence, children cannot be “bought” with a bonus. Countries that have adopted those policies receive marginal returns, if any, though it is a nice honorarium for those already choosing to be parents. Consider that Norway, the country with the most generous parental leave policy on the planet at 49 weeks at 100% pay (European Commission), still maintains a declining birth rate, hovering at 1.40 children per woman in 2023, according to Norway’s government statistical agency (Statistics Norway).

Another striking outcome of these policies, Pakaluk points out, is that women are merely shifting the timing of childbearing. These actions do not increase the number of children women would have or convince more to become first-time parents. The Tokyo Metropolitan Government will allow its city government employees to have a 4-day work week starting in April 2025. The initiative is “so that no one has to sacrifice their careers due to life events giving birth and caring for children,” Tokyo governor Yuriko Koike says (“Tokyo Plans 4-Day Working Week to Boost Births”). 

To put this into perspective, Japan’s births per year dipped to 700,000, the lowest number seen since population recording began in 1899. Tokyo hopes the reform will make child rearing more amenable to the schedules of working women. It is yet to be seen by precedent if that will be enough to raise the birth rate. I doubt it, and I reckon Pakaluk would agree with me. 

In sum, Pakaluk says the typical methods of incentivizing more births are not working. Heart change is necessary. As long as children are seen as a burden rather than a blessing, the birth dearth will continue. Pakaluk says policy in support of religion can go a long way. Without internal motivation and external community, childbearing will continue to be too daunting. She claims that, by becoming more devout, a new generation can make choices of hope and legacy over professional experience and temporal relevance. A revival of faith can renew a love for children and family.

MY RECOMMENDATION

All in all, I recommend Hannah’s Children. The author trudges forward in an investigation that is the first of its kind. As an economics degree holder myself, I find her vein of analysis fresh. She details the calculus involved in childbearing in terms of supply and demand for children, and, maybe more meaningfully, qualitatively through insightful narratives. 

For example, Palakuk keenly claims that children are what economists call an “experience good,” something whose value cannot be ascertained beforehand. While there are large upfront costs associated with beginning parenthood, the marginal costs of childrearing decrease with each kid. This realization is good news, considering financial concern naturally ranks among the top reasons why people do not have more children. “You don’t have to buy everything for every kid,” one mother explained. After two children, “you’ve put in so much effort, so much blood, sweat, and tears to learn how to be a good parent, and by the time you get to kid three, four, and five, you’re a different person. You’re good at this now,” (Hannah Children, 274). 

To be fair, some readers may find Pakaluk’s generous quotations from dozens of interviews lumbering. Even still, the author manages to pull out sufficient stories to quite literally inspire future generations. The compilation is not completely fluid, but the fact that she and her research team were able to take on a topic few dare to tackle makes the project a remarkable achievement in its own right.

THE BOTTOM LINE

College-aged women should know the full story about what it means to take childbearing out of the picture — or squeeze 2.1 kids into their late thirties or early forties. Pakaluk weaves together the accounts of dozens of women to reveal a perspective that I wonder how many of us at Yale would find otherwise. Hannah’s Children gives us a glimpse into the lives of women who are doing a very hard thing and yet are glad to be doing it. 

Reevaluate prevailing cultural narratives

One interviewee, a mother of five and tenured professor, when asked why she thought her peers chose not to have a big family, replied, “Second Wave-feminist presuppositions are now our standard view. It’s just that women cannot thrive, unless they’re in the workforce, living their passions, literally. And children will inhibit you, maybe, [from] working at the capacity that you would otherwise,” (Hannah’s Children, 248). She said she would have been a better scholar if she chose not to have children, but, with her latest toddler in tow, she could live with that. 

Consider the trade-offs

Perhaps most vitally, as observers and participants in modern discourse, we should raise awareness of the fact that postponement of the family carries a cost. Reduced fertility follows increased age. In delaying family for the sake of what we were told would be most important, we as women may miss the boat entirely. What if, by fiercely trapezing to the next big thing, we do not see what we left behind? And, what if the very thing we were told would ruin our lives could paradoxically bring about some of life’s greatest joys?

THE CHOICE IS YOURS

Ultimately, Pakaluk calls out a point worth repeating: no one should be shamed for choosing a small family, and no one should be shamed for choosing a larger one, but dignity is in the choice. What we believe as a generation about family matters. In Pakaluk’s study, those who chose larger families were convinced of its spiritual or even eternal significance. These women engaged in a quiet revolution, an act of defiance against the prevailing spirit of the day, which claimed that the personal sacrifice involved would be far too great to overcome. Time after time, though, these women declared it was worth it.

Hannah’s Children reminds us of a fundamental human truth: Children make life full. They imbue it with meaning that is imperceivable beforehand. Perhaps more children make a dying world worth saving. Having a big family may not be for everyone, but it is for more people than we might think.

Works Cited

Pakaluk, Catherine. Hannah’s Children: The Women Quietly Defying the Birth Dearth. Regnery Publishing. 2024.

European Commission. “Norway: Your Rights Country by Country.” Employment, Social Affairs & Inclusion, employment-social-affairs.ec.europa.eu/policies-and-activities/moving-working-europe/eu-social-security-coordination/your-rights-country-country/norway_en. Accessed 19 Jan. 2025.

Gallup. “Americans’ Preference for Larger Families Highest Since 1971.” Gallup News, 25 Sept. 2023, https://news.gallup.com/poll/511238/americans-preference-larger-families-highest-1971.aspx. Accessed 19 Jan. 2025.

Statistics Norway. “Births.” Statistics Norway, http://www.ssb.no/en/befolkning/fodte-og-dode/statistikk/fodte. Accessed 19 Jan. 2025.

“Tokyo Plans 4-Day Working Week to Boost Births.” Financial Times, 13 Dec. 2024, http://www.ft.com/content/7cc71f62-0a89-4a85-95f9-6ff7577810b4.