I always said that I wanted to have three children and I have fulfilled what I said when I was young, it was, for me, the perfect number of children. But nevertheless, three children turns out to be the worst number when it comes to stress. Come on, it would be better to have stayed with two or have one more, according to data from a survey conducted in TODAY Moms.
A curious survey that seems to show that the more children you have the lower the level of stress and with which we can know, more or less, what is the ideal number of children to have today.
Mothers are quite stressed in general
The survey was conducted with 7,164 US mothers with different number of children and all were asked what was their level of stress at the time of answering the survey, scoring from 1 to 10, the 10 being a point where they were completely overflowed. The Average score of all participants was 8.5, from which it is derived that the majority of mothers have a very high level of stress.
The reason? Well, we should say the reasons: economic, the difficulty in reconciling family and work life, difficulties in the home, which often have a husband who looks more like another child than a responsible couple and, above all, the pressure that the mothers themselves put on themselves to be as "perfect" as possible and avoid the judgment of other mothers.
Breaking down these data a bit, it turned out that 46% felt that husbands caused more stress than their children; 72% said they stressed the pressure on themselves; by asking them what was the most stressful factor 60% said it was the lack of time to do everything; and another 60% said it was more stressful to educate girls than to educate boys (this seems extremely curious to me).
And how many children do you have to have to be less stressed?
According to the survey, since the first child is born, stress is increasing until the third child is reached, which is when the highest point is reached, at the time of greatest stress. Three are enough to know you capable of spending time, but too many to do everything right with them, and it does not give time for everything, you have the feeling that you disappear as a person and that the only thing you do throughout the day is plugging holes for the boat does not sink. And sometimes you feel that others don't realize those holes!
However, once the room is reached, stress begins to decrease for a very simple reason: for survival, the parents realize that it is absurd to keep trying to keep everything under control and let the water of the boat enter and wet the feet of their children ... at that point the children say "Water enters!", and they find out like this that they have to do more than they do to avoid sinking.
Come on, that after four the parents experience is such that they feel more secure in their decisions, they are very clear that it is not necessary to be controlling when and how much the baby eats or stops eating, or when it poops, or even what day it is for him to be a doctor, that if the day passes he will go another. They realize that nothing happens if the children take their homework to school with a failure in some division, that the children's lunches need not be photographed and that if the crafts they have done are horrific compared to the what (the mothers of) the other children do, the world does not end.
The children they become much more autonomous by force, they play a lot with each other, they become a magnet for other children (only if one comes to play there are already five and that gives a lot of play) and the parents, as I say, although stressed, realize that life can go on, for survival, without them having everything completely controlled.
But this, of course also depends a lot on the way of being of each couple and each family. What do you think is actually the best number of children?
Photos | iStock
In Babies and more | How many children would you like to have? A question to ask before starting a life together, The ideal number of children today is two, at what age should you be a mother for the first time if you want to have one, two or three children?
