This Mom Says That Having Three Kids In The '90s Is Having Five Kids Today
She also made some other funny comparisons.
The average number of children per family has decreased significantly in the United States over the past couple of decades, and globally since the mid-20th century. In the U.S., the number of children per family was around 1.94 in 2023, a decline from 2.33 in 1960. The overall average family size in the U.S. has also shrunk, falling from nearly four people in 1960 to about three people by 2021.
There are a million reasons for this decrease (mainly the rising cost of everything), and when we see a family with four or five kids, it’s truly baffling. How are they doing this?! One woman went viral on TikTok for doing a funny comparison of families today vs. families when we were growing up in the ‘90s, and she is so spot on.
“Having one kid today is having two kids in the 90s. It's not that much. We're good here. We're good. We can handle this,” Jasmin begins.
“Having two kids is like having the new three kids. Having three kids is the new five kids. Because today when you have three kids, people are like, ‘Wow, you have a lot of kids ... you have a big family.’ Whereas if you only would have had three in the 90s, people would have been like, ‘When's the next one coming? You having more?’”
The numbers only get larger the more kids you end up having, according to Jasmin.
“Okay, four kids. You're like, ‘That's the new six kids.’ Four kids, people are like, ‘Whoa.’ It's like, Five kids? Like seven. Six kids...That's the new eight for sure. Whereas for some reason when I was a kid, I remember people having four to six kids. No problem today. It's like, everyone's like one to three max.”
One user commented on the video and wrote, “One child in the 90’s is 2025 child free.”
“As a parent of 3 kids yes. And too many people feel too comfortable acting like it’s completely unreasonable,” another said.
The OP replied, “I feel this! I have 3 as well and I get comments every time I’m in public like I have 10 kids??”
“I have 2 and people constantly ask if we are going for 3. I’m like do you want to gift me $100k? Maybe I will lol” another wrote.
That 100k remark is no joke, and it’s actually...not even close to the cost of raising a kid today.
A 2023 study by LendingTree estimated that the average annual cost of raising a child has climbed to $21,681, a 19% increase from 2016, bringing the total estimated cost per child to $389,000 over 18 years.
A child born in the year 1982, on the other hand, would have cost a middle-income family an average of $198,765 (or rather, $80,926 adjusted for inflation), according to a New York Times article published in 1983. It's not a huge difference, but raising a kid today is still close to $35,000 more pricey than it was in the 1980s.
