NYT on Large Families

My friend Meagan Francis was in the New York Times yesterday on a story on society's fascination -- and often hostility toward -- large families. She's only got four (soon to be five), but she wrote a book about large families so she's an expert.
The comments, naturally, are largely nasty.
Most of the folks quoted about their big families say that eyebrows start to raise after they pass three kids. But I must say that I have faced a lot of surprising reactions about our decision to have merely a third. A lot of people have told me I am brave, which really makes me wonder if they heard me right. We're having a kid, not landing a jet in the Hudson. (Speaking of which, I have a new post up on that travel blog asking whether you'd be willing to brave USAir's customer service in order for a chance to fly with Sully.)
One of my friends, the mother of four, said that when you have two, "you have a lovely family." With three, you're told, "You have your hands full." (I've been told this plenty of times with just two, but my two are a handful, aren't they?) With four, you get, "Are they ALL yours?"
Really, people, it's nobody's business how many children you have, and I don't think it's nice to question people's family-planning decisionmaking any more than it would be nice to say, "Really? Do you need two cars?" Or "Did you really think those pants were a good idea?"
You might say that people who have more kids are using up too much of the resources, but come on, really? For one thing, we're all using up too much of the resources, simply on the basis of our American lifestyle. I think anyone who wants to lecture others about their consumption had better have a zero carbon footprint themselves. Is it selfish to put 12 children through the public schools instead of two? Well, the schools are there to train the citizens of the future, not to provide the parents with some kind of super funtime. And it doesn't really make sense to worry about how many of those future citizens have the same parents.
And then there is the big picture. So many Americans choose not to reproduce these days, that our population would not be growing were it not for immigration. Cultures that fail to maintain a population of younger people end up getting top-heavy.
Octuplets on purpose, by the way? Still crazy.