It's not okay for you to pass judgment on how many children I have

A Pew research study backed up what any mother of a large family could tell you: people aren’t as accepting of large families now as they used to be. Since the 1970s, the number of parents who have four or more children has greatly decreased, dropping from 36 percent of women to 12 percent of women. Two-child families have climbed from 22 to 35 percent. Even three-child families have dropped.

The study found that more has changed than just the number of children Americans are having. Societal attitudes towards families have changed as well. Now, almost half of all Americans believe that two children is the ideal number to have. This was a huge increase from years past, skyrocketing from under 20 percent of Americans to 48 percent. Gallup likewise found similar attitudes on the “ideal” family size, with most respondents saying two was the best number of children to have. The antagonism isn’t just imagined.

What caused this shift in attitude? In theory, no one should care how many (or how few) children another person has. I don’t ask anyone to pay for my children. My husband and I raise them ourselves, and they’re healthy, happy, and well-behaved. Yet we are still the subject of never-ending judgment, simply because I have four.

I can’t imagine someone walking up to a parent with two children and asking if they know how to have sex, if they’re going to get off of birth control anytime soon, or if they regretted their vasectomy. I couldn’t imagine saying something like that because one, it’s rude, and two, it’s none of my business. But hey, all bets are off when you have “too many” children.