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Women almost never willingly birth 4 kids in the span of 6 years without very strong outside influence. My guess here would be religion based on age (first kid at ~24).

Either that or there's multiple multiple births.

If their religion demands they have so many kids so quickly it's unlikely he helps out with the childrearing activities and leaves it to his wife, I'm which case his life is probably not very different than a childless man.



Author here - Religion doesn't demand having lots of kids, though the Bible does say having lots of kids is a blessing.

4 kids 6 and younger is one child every two years. My youngest is 6 months. It's an aggressive pace but hardly unreasonable.

We wanted to have all of our kids together so they could be friends. And it makes the parenting window much shorter (25 years until they are all adults and moving out). Some people spread their kids out and have kids in the home for 30-35 years.


every two years doesn't feel that aggressive. my brothers and me are closer together. and most people i know are similar. my own kids are spread out by three years, and that's only because the doctors here said that after a c-section you have to wait 3 years before you can have another child. to me that feels quite spread out. the age difference between the oldest and the youngest is 6 years, and sometimes it's a challenge for them to get along because of that age difference.


Having kids close together is also a legitimate strategy for having closeness among siblings. Not a guarantee, but having them in a similar stage of development can help them play better together (older kids aren't always interesting in what younger kids are, also there are physical differences that can make sports no fun for older kids). There's a practical aspect here. Not for everyone and it also varies a lot based on the temperament of the children. The strong outside influence on my family to half multiple was that we were able to see a good number of examples of large (>=4 kids) families that were an example of what we wanted too.




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