Poll of the Day > Why do so many shows/games show a couple having only one/two kids?

(+) Yeah! (+)

In order for population growth to occur about an average of 2.1 children needs to be born per couple. 2 children would simply result in a sustained birth rate with slightly decreasing population (as kids and adults die off before two kids) and 1 would be cataclysmic since that would be a 50% population deduction (and more after accounting for people who die before having kids). So... why are there so few parents per kids in this stuff? I know it's not required and a lot of things don't even show people becoming a couple, let alone having kids, but when they do I'm always a bit baffled by the low birth rates.
---

So there will be fewer zombies to fight off during the apocalypse.
---

HelIWithoutSin posted...

So there will be fewer zombies to fight off during the apocalypse.

I must admit, I didn't expect this answer and chuckled slightly.
---

Unbridled9 posted...

1 would be cataclysmic since that would be a 50% population deduction (and more after accounting for people who die before having kids).

Not quite correct since there's multiple generations alive at once.

Besides, you're reading too much into it. The answer is very simple, money. It's a lot cheaper to pay one or two child actors rather than four or five.
---

The average birthrate for most modern technological nations hovers somewhere around 2 (which means that, for every couple that has three kids, another has 1. For every person who doesn't have kids, someone else is having 4. And so on). It's why nations like Canada and Australia are actually incapable of replacing their lost population, and almost rely on outside immigration to remain stable or grow. The US actually sits pretty firmly on the stability curve.

At the risk of sounding racist (but it's science, so fuck you), that birth rate tends to decrease the "whiter" the population is you're looking at, while certain ethnicities in certain areas having higher birth rates than others.

Affluence and education also tend to skew the numbers - the more money a couple has, the less likely they are to have children. The more educated a couple is, the less likely they are to have children.

So when you're talking about TV shows, which are predominantly about affluent or semi-affluent white families, and which are written by predominantly affluent and educated white writers, one or two kids pretty much IS the norm.

It also works narratively, though - one kid works best if you mostly want to focus on the couple, but have the kid there to have them deal with parental issues. Two kids tend to create a contrast (one older, one younger - and often with one of each gender to allow for both types of stories and to create stereotypical social tension between them). Three kids tend to alter the dynamics even further, but also pull focus off the parents entirely. Anything more than that and you're starting to deal with needless complexity, unless you're specifically trying to make a show with an overly ridiculous number of kids as the main premise, like these shows everyone on this board is way too young to remember:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight_Is_Enough
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_the_Ten_of_Us


Ultimately, in real life, one- and two-kid households are pretty common (nearly everyone I've been friends with in my entire life has either been an only child or only had one sibling), so it's not as if a proliferation of them spells doom for the future population. Especially when countries with declining birth rates are always counterbalanced by countries with excessive birth rates (ie, Canada doesn't produce enough kids to replace its losses, but nearly every single African nation technically produces more kids than they need - Australia has literally pushed for legislation to encourage couples to have more kids, while China actively established laws to limit population growth. And so on).

And again, even in the US, you can see that in microcosm. "White" families are generally producing fewer than 2 kids on average, so they're decreasing as a demographic, but Hispanic families have a higher birth rate (bolstered by immigration) which is expanding their population, which is why so many studies predict they'll be the "majority" demographic in the US by 2050 (give or take).

The world as a whole is still producing enough kids to grow the birth rate (possibly irresponsibly so), but the most affluent and educated areas of the world tend to produce less. At the moment most of Europe is in decline (as is much of Asia, apart from India), while the Americas tend to be more or less balanced, and Africa is pretty much at max production.


---

Because no one wants to have kids anymore or can afford to have kids anymore.
---