There are several couples in the US (most notably the Duggars) that have lots of children; many (nay, most) for religious reasons.
I know that religion is not near as big a factor in day-to-day life in Europe as it is in the U.S., but I also know that religion isn’t the only thing that plays a role in how many children a couple decides to have.
In Europe, are families with lots of children (define “lots” however you choose) exceptionally rare?
What’s ‘Europe’?
Seriously - you’re talking about a couple of dozen countries, each with a distinct culture, distinct relationship to religion, distinct demographics… The answer to this question isn’t going to be the same for Spain as it is for Norway or Latvia. If you pick a country, it’ll be much easier to get a meaningful answer.
Here’s a link that gives you a little data about family sizes in Ireland. There are about 1500 families with more than seven kids, in a country of about 5 million people.
A generation ago, I’m pretty sure big families were much more common. Contraception was illegal because of the Catholic Church’s stranglehold over the government and society in general. Everyone who grew up here in the 80s or earlier knew at least one family with sixteen kids or so. When my husband was a kid, a woman on his street had twenty-one children. Now that contraception is available and people aren’t ruled by the Church in the same way, this doesn’t happen as much. I don’t know anyone with more than five kids.
Here (pdf) is OECD data on family size. Look at Table SF1.2.C. Only Finland, Mexico, and Turkey have more families with 3 or more children than the US.
More data here, if you’re interested.
The fact that there are some prominent examples of large families like the Duggars doesn’t mean that they’re remotely common in the U.S. The total fertility rate (the number of children an average woman would have in her life, given the current age-specific fertility rates) in the U.S. is 2.01, 2.05, or 2.10 according to various sources. A fertility rate below 2.1 is below replacement rate. The fertility rate peaked in the late 1950’s in the U.S. and has mostly declined since then: