Family Size, Interaction, Affect and Stress

Abstract

This paper brings together previous research on the relationship of family size to family relationships and attitudes. It reduces the rather diverse findings to four propositions dealing with affect, interaction and stress. It submits these propositions to additional tests utilizing secondary data from two large surveys. Finally, these data are shown to support some and question other generalizations of group size obtained from research with laboratory groups. Substantively families of three or four children rank lower in all of the analyses than do families with one or two children, even with social class constant. Large families with five or more children rank lower than one or two-child families in all analyses but in some analyses they rank higher than families with three or four children.