Tonight, I caught a bit of a CNN program which included a panel of three individuals who were weighing in on Angelina Jolie’s plans to adopt a little boy from Viet Nam. Since I missed the beginning, I’m not sure what “qualified” these people to debate Angelina’s family planning, nor do I know what aspects of her adoption they’d discussed prior to my tuning in – nevertheless, I got an earful. One of the panelists questioned how Angelina and Brad’s children could get enough attention when there were “so many” of them, and also commented that their 10-month-old baby might somehow be negatively impacted. (Keep in mind that she’ll be 13-14 months old by the time their new son comes home).

The panelist’s suggestion that four children constitutes “so many,” coupled with the message that children in families that size necessarily suffer, touch on something that I’ve been wanting to cover for this blog for some time: family size. I’ll acknowledge right off the bat that I’m possibly not the most objective adoptive parent on this subject, considering we’re preparing to welcome #10, but if it helps, there was a day when I thought we’d be a content family of four. Never in my wildest dreams could I have envisioned my family as it is now.

Mormons and large families (and our Catholic friends) seem to go hand-in-hand, at least in the punch lines of jokes. But is the average LDS family really that large compared to the average non-LDS family? Utah has the largest average family size in the nation of 3.57 individuals (not just children) per family, but keep in mind that 30 of Utah is not LDS and there are no reliable statistics on active vs. inactive members. (In other words, your name can appear on church records even though you don’t attend church or adhere to church teachings). Anyway, the national average, according to Census 2000 statistics, is 3.14. So families in Utah have .43 more members (not children) than the national average. Hmmm… Not really so striking, is it? (Note that according survey results presented at a 2002 FAIR conference, the average number of children per respondent was nearly 4, but I could find no information about sample size).

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