It never fails.
My wife and I hit that time when it’s right to have another kid.
We get excited.
We make plans.
We share the good news.
And the response from my Boomer coworkers?
I know, it’s in good spirit. But what a downer. I wish they knew what we knew.
Because now we’re firmly entrenched in an exclusive sexual minority of families larger than five…and somehow keep growing while not going broke.
Impressions won’t change any time soon. Why is that?
Where Boomers see liabilities, we’re finding benefits. Values now missing when families intentionally limit themselves to 1-2 children.
So let’s explore what they’re glossing over and the deeper benefits.
What Boomers see
Don’t get me wrong. It’s not out of malice.
Boomers grew up with a lot of siblings in small houses and little oversight while their parents worked hard to make ends meet. They missed out on material comforts.
Comforts they wanted their children to have so they could grow up with more than they did. That desire drove a broad expansion of material wealth in America.
Fewer mouths to feed meant better clothes, bigger houses, more luxurious vacations… That provided more space and better quality of life.
To have it better than their parents meant putting your head down and working.
That driven culture shows results in the way of promotions and pay raises. Which begets more material comforts.
But it doesn’t scale sustainably when your hard work becomes the single point of failure.
And many successful Boomers see having multiple kids as getting in the way of hard work.
That built into narrow channels. There was an expectation growing up of needing to be perfect.
If we just squeezed ourselves into the little hole of expectations our parents set for us, we could get our advanced degrees and go farther in their professions than they did.
Which precipitated a slow steady slide toward convenience. Convenience amplified by automation and outsourcing. A model that doesn’t work with more kids.
But with all those constraints, the kids you do have are left with a bleak future and few options to make their own way.
And because of that I grew up an only child. But that didn’t doom me to repeat it.
First things first
Let’s sit with that model of constraints for a minute. Because wanting something different is not the same as making the change.
And trying to make changes without knowing where you want to go makes it tempting to overthrow the whole system. Also not productive.
Steven Covey illustrates this in the video below.
He calls a random woman from his audience and asks her to fit several big rocks in a container with small rocks. She starts inserting the first couple easily enough, but then has to jam them in harder and harder to make any progress.
Then she realizes she has another empty container to work with. She puts the big rocks in first and pours the smaller rocks over top. In the end, everything fits.
But when people look at starting a family, it’s usually based on constraint. I have to have enough money or my spouse has to be more mature or we’ll have to move to a bigger house or how are we going to take more than the kids we have to activities when we’re already stretched for time?
And by the time you’ve talked yourself out of the constraints, your wife is in menopause.
Building your family that way ignores people’s ability to grow.
But growth is what humans can’t help but do!
So how do you start moving the big rocks to the new container versus stuffing big new ideas into all the garbage you learned growing up?
What Boomers are missing
To get something new, tap into that ability to grow.
Why?
Starting with this set of rocks transforms that fierce desire to provide something better.
It’s not a limit on material wealth. It’s looking into everything our kids can be.
Something not obvious when families shoot for only 1-2 kids.
Organically generating and raising new citizens is the easiest way to change a culture. New people who are sponges for the good example you set for them.
But how exactly do you make that happen?
Tools of the trade
Lucky for us, we live in an age of abundant information. We can choose to feel things out as an accident as our parents did.
Or we can choose to learn from people who gained their successes from large data sets.
And those processes are how to make sure you put in the big rocks first. So here’s what I get to do when I have multiple kids:
Time management
Boomers were right about one thing: kids have lots of needs. And needs don’t add up when you have more than one kid…they multiply.
It sounds daunting at first. But we live in a renaissance of time management.
The key here is being intentional about where you spend your time. Being the go-to for answering emails may result in additional income, but you don’t have to be the parent that snaps at your kids for walking in on your work time.
Setting boundaries, keeping track of daily and weekly goals, and limiting commitments to a couple big activities per day keeps your energy available for them.
That lesson from home makes your working relationships more productive. And profitable.
Which makes it easier to afford more kids!
Built in edutainment
That multiplication I mentioned?
It’s a result of all the possibilities of new personalities that you and your wife forgot you had when you were that age.
Your parents always told you you would get from your kids the same thing you gave to your parents.
It gives you a mirror into how complex you really are as a person. And the best way to work with that side of you.
When you have more than one, those parts of your personality now have each other to play with and learn from.
No screens required.
Not to mention kids are more likely to imitate gross motor skills and knowledge from their older siblings at a younger age.
Which also sets them up for better things.
Clarify your values
Have a crazy idea for how something should work in broader society? Of course we all have that from the way we were raised.
But what you weren’t told was your family makes a great test bed for whether or not that idea works. Which means you can shift away from bad ideas and try something else.
By the way, kids are resilient. You’re not ruining them as you iterate toward the best possible version.
They also need to see you make mistakes, own them, and learn from them.
That’s going to dictate how they treat each other. Which is great practice for going into the world and treating other people the right way.
And those small interactions are what change a society.
Big families change cultures
So yes, I know how that happens. It happens because we’re tapping our innate growth capacity. Making it happen is all the fun.
But it is necessary work to change society from seeking constant convenience to building something meaningful.
And because of that growth mentality versus the self-preservation of the world, we’re over here quietly outbreeding the existing paradigm.
On purpose.
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Liberty Begins At Home 
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