Family Size

I went sailing a week ago, and I was talking about genealogy to one of my fellow sailors.  When I mentioned that my husband is descended from at least 3 Mayflower passengers, he asked how many descendants of the Mayflower passengers there were.  He imagined there must be a large number.  I told him I didn't know exactly, but I had read somewhere that it was in the millions.  Even though only 50 of the 100 original passengers survived the first year, those 50 went on to have many children, and over the years, the number has increased geometrically.   Of course, up until the 1960s, when the birth control pill was developed, most families were large.  In my background as well as my husband's, the number of children in families was rarely less than 5, and often more than 10.  Many men married several times - often because a wife had died in childbirth -  and had multiple families.  It wasn't unusual for a man to have as many as 15 or even 20 children from 3 different wives.

Today, the situation is very different.  It is a rare family that has more than 2 children.  People marry later these days and for financial and other reasons, limit the number of children they want to raise.  Of course, our ancestors did not have the means to limit their families, unless they chose to forego marital relations, but obviously most of them didn't.  It wasn't only the absence of reliable birth control that led to large families, however.  It was also the need for many children to help run the farms, or the obedience to religious directives to "increase and multiply," or simply the belief that children were a gift from God.

Today, we're concerned about how expensive it is to raise children and we worry about overpopulation.  Women pursue careers along with men and no longer think about child-rearing and housewifery as a lifelong occupation.  Raising children is, instead, something one does in one's spare time, or in addition to climbing the career ladder.  Some couples choose not to have children at all.  This is neither right nor wrong.  Each generation has its own culture, challenges, and desires, and the smaller families of today fit with the values and needs of our times.

It will change things for genealogists, however.  There will be fewer siblings to research, and it it will take a lot longer for an original group of 50 people to produce over a million descendants.