Large families surprisingly common

It's somewhat unusual to find families with 10 or more children these days, although they do exist.

In Southeast Missouri, particularly the Bootheel area, it's more common than you would think, said Shelba Branscum, chairwoman and professor of the Department of Human Environmental Studies at Southeast Missouri State University.

She's been amazed at how many students, even to this day, come from families with seven to 12 children. Last year, Branscum had a student in her early 20s who came from a family with 15 kids.

"[There have] always been large families. It's just they're not real common. I would be willing to guess it's a more rural kind of thing," Branscum said.

How families are put together is another interesting topic, she said. There are always variations.

Branscum said she had a man in his upper 80s in one of her classes who had been married four times and had 23 children.

"The wives had come and gone," and he raised the children, she said.

Branscum said there isn't a lot of research on what she calls a super-size family of 10 or more. There have been many studies on only children and families with two or three kids, however.

The average number of children in 1900 was 7.4, but that has declined through the years to somewhere around two or fewer, Branscum said.

Twenty percent of all women ages 15 to 44 have had two children, according to Profile for America Facts for Features on the U.S. Census Bureau website. About 47 percent had no children, 17 percent had one, 10 percent had three and 5 percent had four or more.

rcampbell@semissourian.com

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