Is the average woman capable of having 19 children?

[eclectic_wench]

@Dr_Paprika

Having 5+ babies is called grand multiparity. Having 10+ children is called great grand multiparity. It’s been a while since I did obstetrics, but fewer than 1 on 200 mothers have 5+ kids and 19 would be rare. In addition to perpetual pregnancy, it is medically rare since the risk of many problems increases with many births, including malformations, malpresentation, hemorrhage, anemia, perinatal mortality, etc. Pregnancy uses a lot of iron, babies are hard on the uterus and pelvic muscles and multiple deliveries can cause incontinence and prolapse, it can take months for the mother to regain the large amounts of iron needed by the placenta… And few families want so many kids.

Yep, that’s the other thing you have to factor in - how many pregnancies the average woman’s body can take before it’s no longer capable of sustaining them. Sure, some outliers can handle 19, but there are also going to be the outliers on the other side who sustain damage the first or second or fifth time that makes further pregnancies impossible.

Also, around 20-30% of births in developed countries are by C-section. In the US, it’s one in three. After two or three of those, you shouldn’t aim for a vaginal delivery because of the risk of uterine rupture, so you’re stuck with more sections - and after enough (RivkahChaya mentioned four, which is what I remember too), your risk of rupture goes so high that pregnancy just isn’t safe. And the rate of complications necessitating sections goes up with age. So if this average woman has two sections in her first ten births, she’s on borrowed baby-time after that. If she’s in the US and has three sections in those first ten pregnancies, then she’s down to one more pregnancy.

[slash2k]

@RivkahChaya

Orthodox women in the US and Israel marry around age 20, breastfeed, are part of tight communities where there is lots of help available, enjoy good nutrition and healthcare, and still have about 4.1 children per adult-- 8.2 per couple, in other words. That is a US statistic, and includes Haredi, Modern Orthodox, Chabad, and Chassidim.

Breast-feeding, by itself, acts as birth control, though, on average suppressing ovulation until around 8-9 months after birth, and usually longer in cultures where babies are exclusively breastfed for more than six months. For a woman with 8 kids, that’s another six years or more during her most fertile years when she won’t get pregnant. Further, having “lots of help available” isn’t quite the same thing as “having no responsibility at all.” Orthodox culture is closer to the situation I asked about, but still isn’t quite the same.

@RivkahChaya

Personally, I was miserable when pregnant, and at any rate, I needed a c-section, and probably would have been constrained by the “No more than four” rule of c-sections.

Yes, c-sections do act as a constraint. However, most researchers seem to think that the American rate (one in three) is way higher than is medically appropriate; the World Health Organization suggests that rates of 10-15 per 100 births yield the best outcomes, and that increasing c-section rates above that level are associated with HIGHER maternal and infant mortality. (cite) That suggests that an average woman with ten kids should have had one or maybe two c-sections, not 3 or 4.