ABSTRACT
The question of the number of children they will have is a vital, complex, deeply involving one for American couples. Couples deal with many kinds of conflicts — conflicts between their own views and those they feel society offers as appropriate, conflicts between themselves, mixed feelings within themselves. These conflicts can apply to both the question of the family size preferred and to the means for seeing that preference becomes a reality. This chapter focuses on what are the factors that lie behind the goals of family size that people set for themselves and what are the social norms they apply in evaluating their own and other people's family sizes. It also focuses on what factors affect the effectiveness with which couples apply family limitation methods, if any, to achieve their own family size goals. The chapter presents the three main variables: class, race, and religion.
