# Is the average woman capable of having 19 children? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [November 8, 2016, 1:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-average-woman-capable-of-having-19-children/771035 "2016-11-08T01:23:53Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Aspidistra](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aspidistra/32/3894_2.png) [@Aspidistra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aspidistra)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2016, 12:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-average-woman-capable-of-having-19-children/771035/21 "2016-11-08T12:53:33Z")
> [@Isilder](#): > > … because they had to breast feed that long, because hunter gatherer food is not good enough for an infant… …because they whacked any excess infants on the head… ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2016, 1:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-average-woman-capable-of-having-19-children/771035/22 "2016-11-08T13:53:45Z")
> [@slash2k](#): > > There are precious few societies where women had no role in child-rearing to take them away from producing more. Perhaps the closest version would be very wealthy women in medieval and early modern societies who could rely upon wet nurses and servants, freeing her up to have more kids, but even there health care and marital separations would have acted as brakes. I must - partially - disagree: breastfeeding aside, it was the task of older children, preferentially girls, to look after younger ones. My grandmother was a doctor in Ireland for a time around the start of the 20th century, and the toddlers were placed in the care of the 6-year old girls. Of course, this helped the girls learn for when they became mothers themselves. This practice continues to this day in certain communities: I remember seeing a similar comment here from someone who had escaped a religious cult. ---
**Author:** ![Fotheringay-Phipps](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/d9b06d/32.png) [@Fotheringay-Phipps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fotheringay-Phipps)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2016, 2:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-average-woman-capable-of-having-19-children/771035/23 "2016-11-08T14:18:39Z")
It’s hard to know what the “average” number is. I would say it’s less than 19, because there are societies where the people don’t believe in birth control and very very few of them have 19 children. Some have fertility issues and or health problems and have lower numbers, but a lot have high single digits to mid teens. Possibly because those societies also tend to believe in breast-feeding, which suppresses fertility. > [@Shagnasty](#): > > Here is a list of the women that gave birth to the most children. Notice that it is only one page and the list stops at 20 which is just short of 19. > > The list of lottery winners would fill a very large book and a list of current billionaires is many times longer. In other words, having 19 or more children is even more rare than other ultra-rare events. I think it is safe to say that 19 is in no way ‘normal’ no matter how you look at it. > > [List of people with the most children - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_with_the_most_children) This list is clearly incomplete. How does anyone writing up that page have a comprehensive list of anyone in the world who had 20 or more kids? They probably did some sort of google search and came up with everyone who got written up in the media, but there could be any number of others. Such as … I personally know a couple who had/have 22 children. They lived in my neighborhood when I grew up, the mother was my kindergarten teacher, and my first cousin is currently married to one of the 22 kids. They’re not on this list. There could be any number of others. ---
**Author:** ![Waxwinged](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c2a13f/32.png) [@Waxwinged](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Waxwinged)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2016, 2:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-average-woman-capable-of-having-19-children/771035/24 "2016-11-08T14:29:42Z")
As someone who’s had regular unprotected sex for 5 years and who became pregnant only recently, I’d be surprised if it was anywhere that high. \. ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2016, 2:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-average-woman-capable-of-having-19-children/771035/25 "2016-11-08T14:37:05Z")
> [@purplehearingaid](#): > > One of my BIL mother had 14 babies! That is a lot of babies to me. Was that all at once, or over several pregnancies? ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2016, 2:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-average-woman-capable-of-having-19-children/771035/26 "2016-11-08T14:59:31Z")
Fotheringay-Phipps writes: \> This list is clearly incomplete. All Wikipedia lists have a significant probability of being incomplete. The article wasn’t created through the research of a single person but of dozens of people. If you count the research done for the books and articles that it was based on, it was created through the research of hundreds of people. A list like this has existed long before the creation of Wikipedia (or even before the creation of the Internet). I certainly remember hearing about the Vassilyev family decades ago. ---
**Author:** ![Fotheringay-Phipps](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/d9b06d/32.png) [@Fotheringay-Phipps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fotheringay-Phipps)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2016, 3:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-average-woman-capable-of-having-19-children/771035/27 "2016-11-08T15:10:05Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > All Wikipedia lists have a significant probability of being incomplete. The article wasn’t created through the research of a single person but of dozens of people. If you count the research done for the books and articles that it was based on, it was created through the research of hundreds of people. A list like this has existed long before the creation of Wikipedia (or even before the creation of the Internet). I certainly remember hearing about the Vassilyev family decades ago. The more likely something is to have attracted media attention, the more likely it is to be included in a Wikipedia entry on the subject. Some types of facts lend themselves more to media coverage than others. You heard about the Vassilyev family because a couple (allegedly) having 69 children is remarkable enough to attract media coverage. (According to the story, the Empress herself took an interest in them.) If you have someone with 69 kids there’s a very good chance that they make it into Wikipedia. If you have someone with 22, much less. Point being, again, that there could be any number of people with 20+ kids who are not in that entry, and it’s not really possible to know how many such people there are. So you can’t make any sort of analysis based on the number of people on that list. ---
**Author:** ![cmkeller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cmkeller/32/118_2.png) [@cmkeller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmkeller)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2016, 3:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-average-woman-capable-of-having-19-children/771035/28 "2016-11-08T15:26:04Z")
Broomstick: > [@](#): > > Go back 100 years, or 120 and women generally didn’t start menstruating until their middle or even late teens. In the past people weren’t as well nourished and generally didn’t reach sexual maturity as quickly as they do today. Where do you get this from? Certainly in the time of the writing of the Mishnah and Talmud, approximately 150 CE - 470 CE, in Israel and Babylon, it was pretty much expected that girls would get their first periods around their twelfth birthday, with younger being acknowledged as possible. ---
**Author:** ![RivkahChaya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rivkahchaya/32/8919_2.png) [@RivkahChaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RivkahChaya)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2016, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-average-woman-capable-of-having-19-children/771035/29 "2016-11-08T15:29:12Z")
> [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > I do not have a citation, but I was under the impression in hunter gatherer societies children were born about 3-5 years apart. That means if a woman started having kids at 15, she would have about 4-8 total in her life. > > But that is in situations without medical care, and with limited resources. Plus I’m not sure how valid that claim is anyway. > > Doesn’t a woman hit menarche in her early teens and reach infertility in her late 40s? The older you get, the harder it is to get pregnant but there are ways around it too. That gives about 35 years of fertility. I wish women hit menopause in their late 40s. I’ll be 50 in two months, and I’m regular as a German train. I used to do interpreting for an Orthodox Jewish group. They had babies about 2 to 4 years apart, because they tended to breastfeed for a couple of years. I can tell you from experience that even if you breastfeed long term, your period will return after about 18 months. Families where the parents were in their late forties, and the oldest child was near marriage age tended to have 8 to 11 kids. There might be one more kid in the offing. Twins were uncommon, and Jews, even Haredi will use birth control if there is a medical reason, so occasionally after the sixth kid and the second case of pre-eclampsia, the doctor (who will probably also be Orthodox) might say “This should be your last.” Some women who had to have c-sections had doctors say “Four and no more.” The biggest Orthodox family I ever personally met had 14 children, with no twins. I also knew one with 12 children including one set of twins. I knew a few young parents with 4 & 5 children, and who knows how many children they have now? but on the whole, I would say 6 kids was the mode, but if you looked only at older parents who were probably “done,” the mode was probably 8. The mean looking only at the older “done” parents was probably about 9.5. So a few outliers brought it up. Even the outliers were not as high as 19, though. I have never met anyone with 19 kids. On the other hand, Orthodox Jews tend to start around age 22, not 16. It’s possible mathematically for a woman to have 19 children, but it takes a dint of luck. There either need to be no miscarriages, or a few sets of twins, and she needs not to come down with pre-eclampsia, or become diabetic, develop kidney disease, or other things that can happen to a woman with numerous pregnancies that can preclude further ones. She needs not to be unlucky enough to die of some cause unrelated to pregnancy that prevents her from living long enough to produce that many children, and she needs not to be one of the few women with early menopause. She also needs no fertility issues, and a partner who doesn’t have fertility issues. She needs to start young, and she probably needs help with childcare, because exhaustion can suppress menstruation. That’s assuming no fertility drugs are involved. ---
**Author:** ![RivkahChaya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rivkahchaya/32/8919_2.png) [@RivkahChaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RivkahChaya)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2016, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-average-woman-capable-of-having-19-children/771035/30 "2016-11-08T15:32:17Z")
> [@Waxwinged](#): > > As someone who’s had regular unprotected sex for 5 years and who became pregnant only recently, I’d be surprised if it was anywhere that high. \. Anecdote War! I got pregnant after two weeks of unprotected sex. My husband had just gotten back from Iraq, so maybe that helped. 'Course, that’s still a 2.5 year average. ---
**Author:** ![Shagnasty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2016, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-average-woman-capable-of-having-19-children/771035/31 "2016-11-08T16:17:06Z")
> [@cmkeller](#): > > Broomstick: > > Where do you get this from? Certainly in the time of the writing of the Mishnah and Talmud, approximately 150 CE - 470 CE, in Israel and Babylon, it was pretty much expected that girls would get their first periods around their twelfth birthday, with younger being acknowledged as possible. I can’t comment on the specific time and place you mention but it is true that the average age of menstruation has drastically fallen over the last 150 years. 14 1/2 - 16 used to be the norm while it is down to a little over 12 in some developed countries today. > **[Adults at 12? Trends in puberty and their public health consequences](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2465479/figure/fig1/)** > > Adults at 12? > **[Adults at 12? Trends in puberty and their public health consequences](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2465479/)** > > Adults at 12? ---
**Author:** ![coremelt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/4491bb/32.png) [@coremelt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/coremelt)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2016, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-average-woman-capable-of-having-19-children/771035/32 "2016-11-08T16:30:52Z")
There’s only one way to find out! i’ll need around 50 women who just turned legal age of consent. You’ll have the answer in about 40 years. For science ! ---
**Author:** ![watchwolf49](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e9c0ed/32.png) [@watchwolf49](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/watchwolf49)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2016, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-average-woman-capable-of-having-19-children/771035/33 "2016-11-08T16:59:41Z")
Is there any truth to the urban legend that a woman’s sex drive drops off the more children she has? If so, then perhaps the OP should take this into consideration the next marital counseling session … ETA: **coremelt** will need a double-blind control group … do we have another 50 women of age to consent … ---
**Author:** ![Waxwinged](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c2a13f/32.png) [@Waxwinged](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Waxwinged)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2016, 5:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-average-woman-capable-of-having-19-children/771035/34 "2016-11-08T17:48:10Z")
> [@watchwolf49](#): > > Is there any truth to the urban legend that a woman’s sex drive drops off the more children she has? . May have more to do with her lack free time/energy to do anything other than collapse into bed at the end of the day… ---
**Author:** ![jtur88](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e9c0ed/32.png) [@jtur88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jtur88)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2016, 5:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-average-woman-capable-of-having-19-children/771035/35 "2016-11-08T17:48:46Z")
Even more so than ever before. Aside from the fact that nutrition is much better now and women don’t need to do manual labor during and between pregnancies. Breastefeeding is no longer essential, so weaning can occur immediately, restoring fecundity. Medical treatment is available and routine to assure full recovery after each childbirth and to mitigate any adverse effects. Taken to an extreme, the existence of fertility drugs means any woman can have multiple births, as many as 5 or 6 at a time, yielding the possibility for any normally healthy woman to have maybe 50 children. Remember that the mammaliann female evolved to give birth to babies. and to have a high probability of survival and repetition. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2016, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-average-woman-capable-of-having-19-children/771035/36 "2016-11-08T18:11:45Z")
> [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > I do not have a citation, but I was under the impression in hunter gatherer societies children were born about 3-5 years apart. That’s about right, and (oddly or not) a bit more frequently than chimps do. ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2016, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-average-woman-capable-of-having-19-children/771035/37 "2016-11-08T19:26:50Z")
Another benchmark is Lillian Moller Gilbreth, who had 13 children (including one late-term stillborn, a trauma-induced miscarriage) in 16 years 10 months, beginning at the relatively late age of 27. This is, of course, a couple that set out to have 12 children as expeditously as possible, so there is some five “fallow” years in that timeline despite their efforts. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2016, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-average-woman-capable-of-having-19-children/771035/38 "2016-11-08T19:38:56Z")
> [@Quartz](#): > > I must - partially - disagree: breastfeeding aside, it was the task of older children, preferentially girls, to look after younger ones. My grandmother was a doctor in Ireland for a time around the start of the 20th century, and the toddlers were placed in the care of the 6-year old girls. Of course, this helped the girls learn for when they became mothers themselves. This practice continues to this day in certain communities: I remember seeing a similar comment here from someone who had escaped a religious cult. I didn’t escape any religious cult and being one of the oldest cousins of a big pack thereof would often put me and the other “eldests” in charge of more kids we’d care to count. At public locations it wasn’t unusual for 3 or 4 of us to find ourselves in charge of more than 20, of which we were related to maybe half. Older children tend to become caretakers for their youngest siblings automatically and this is encouraged by the parents, among other things because it’s a great way to stem jealousy; once a child is in that caretaker mode, having more toddlers in the herd doesn’t make much of a change. It’s the same reason I’d get “invited” to the same birthday parties my brothers were: having me there meant the mothers could sit down and have cake while I made sure their sons didn’t kill themselves or each other. ---
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2016, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-average-woman-capable-of-having-19-children/771035/39 "2016-11-08T20:14:41Z")
I come from a long line of Mormon, large – often polygamous – families, and grew up in Salt Lake City in the 60s and 70s when they were having almost unlimited numbers of kids. Women/girls were getting married at 18 or 19 and families were mostly not using birth control. My mother is one of six children. One aunt had nine kids, one had seven, another six, the uncle and our family had five and an outlier got a **divorce**! and only had one. My mother had health issues because of have five pregnancies in less than 4 1/2 years (including a miscarriage) and wasn’t able to have more until my younger brother was born 5 1/2 years later. They were planning on another cluster but my mother’s body couldn’t take it. These types of numbers were quite common when I was growing up. Most of the families with really large numbers of kids were in the eight to nine, rather than above 12. I suspect that it really is an extraordinary event. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2016, 11:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-average-woman-capable-of-having-19-children/771035/40 "2016-11-08T23:51:48Z")
> [@Isilder](#): > > … because they had to breast feed that long, because hunter gatherer food is not good enough for an infant… > > Now those large families… europeans with their cows milk and enforced weaning schedules… It actually IS possible for a woman to become pregnant while still breast-feeding. It’s pretty hard on her system, but it can happen, has happened, and women have successfully pulled it off. Not recommended, though. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-average-woman-capable-of-having-19-children/771035.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-average-woman-capable-of-having-19-children/771035.md?page=3)