Farm and rural families tend to have a lot of kids. Part of this is the free labor that country kids provide their parents; when I was a kid, while my townie schoolmates were sleeping in on a summer vacation morning, the Old Man would be booting me out of bed no later than 7 AM, saying, “Come on, we have chores, and we’re burning daylight.” I was from a small family for that size and place, being the youngest of five. I used to go out shooting squirrels and ruffed grouse with a classmate who was from one of the big families in Allamakee County in those days; he was 12th of 17. I once asked him what that was like; he laughed and told me, “I’ve got underwear that’s older than I am.”
As I recall that kid did pretty well later in life; he went to a tech school, got certified as a machinist, and, last I knew, was working down in Omaha for some manufacturing outfit. The big family…
