Another benefit of big families

It's easier to travel when a lot of people tag along

Credit: Katherine McCormack and Unsplash

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A preface on car seat laws:

In recent days, JD Vance went semi-viral for 2023 comments in which he said car seat laws have reduced the number of kids people have. I strive to keep this blog apolitical and have nothing to say here about the current presidential race. But because Vance’s comments got some attention, I thought it’d be worth pointing out that I’ve actually written about this very topic, car seat laws, twice. I first explored the issue for the Deseret News in 2022, then did so again here at Nuclear Meltdown in 2023. The latter post cites the research that Vance appears to be referencing.

I considered writing an entirely new post based on Vance’s comments, but I’m not sure there’s much more to say; the gist is that ever more expansive car seat laws have cascading financial consequences for families (e.g. buying bigger cars). What’s really interesting about the research is that it found car seat laws actually prevented far more births than they saved lives. I don’t have much hope that car seat laws will become more relaxed — most of the comments on the Deseret News article strongly disagreed with me — but I do think this issue illustrates the way well-intentioned and ostensibly pro-family policies can actually produce anti-family outcomes.

And now thoughts on big families and travel:

A few weeks ago, I wrote about travel and mentioned that my nuclear family has done a number of trips with extended family. After that post, I received a question asking how we manage costs on trips that include multiple nuclear units. I thought it was an interesting question, so I wanted to take some time to discuss it.

But also, as I pondered the question I kept wondering why these trips work. Why is it that my family keeps having a sufficiently good time on trips that we do them together again and again?

I don’t think my family is uniquely magnanimous or affectionate. But as I pondered why these trips work, the thing I kept coming back to again and again is that my family is uniquely large. I’m the oldest of eight biological siblings and two step siblings, and some of my in-laws are integrated into the group as well. And I think the largeness of the group does two things. First, it helps defray costs and make travel more affordable. And second, it means there’s a rotating cast of travelers so it doesn’t really matter if you miss a trip here or there, or make a smaller or larger contribution; in the end, across many trips, everyone gets to be a part of the bigger group. To follow up on an argument I made a year ago, there are some real benefits to big families — and travel makes those benefits apparent.

But first, let me briefly address money.

I’ll use a recent weekend family trip to Bear Lake, on the Utah-Idaho border, to illustrate. For this trip, six nuclear units in the Dalrymple tribe rented an Airbnb together. We also rented a wave runner, and split up meal-making responsibilities. The short answer here is that we just did our best to divide costs equally. One sister, for example, booked the Airbnb and we Venmoed her. We split the cost up by room, so someone without kids who only needed one room would pay half as much as a family needing two rooms, and so on. Pretty standard stuff.

This works because there is some flexibility. My family volunteered to make breakfast for everyone, which only cost a few dollars (for pancake mix and some syrup). But one of my sister’s families barbecued for dinner, which is quite a bit pricer, especially for such a large group. And because it was just a weekend, some people didn’t make any meals. But no one seemed to mind. One of my sisters and her husband gave me a ride up (we came late) and I paid for a little bit of extended time on the wave runner. In the end we didn’t sit down with an Excel spreadsheet, but it felt to me at least like things ended up being fair enough. The fact that we did another little weekend trip just a few weeks later suggests to me that no one secretly felt ripped off¹.

This sort of makes it sound like we’re all rich enough that we don’t have to worry about money. And there is certainly a base level of financial stability required to go on even small trips — stability we’re very fortunate to have.

But this is also a good way to circle back to the idea of big families. Because while renting a house or a wave runner can be expensive, splitting these things six ways makes them quite cheap. I probably don’t like wave runners enough to spend several hundred dollars renting one for myself for an afternoon. But I would spend several tens of dollars.

So aside from good company, this is the most surface-level benefit of traveling with a huge family group: costs are distributed. And because costs are so distributed, there’s less need for people to nickel and dime each other over everything.

But there’s also something deeper to this idea.

One of the metaphors I like to use here at Nuclear Meltdown is that of the family village as a ship. The ship keeps sailing ahead even as individuals disembark or return. The group is bigger and more permanent than any one person.

Traveling together offers a chance to see this metaphor in action. So, the Dalrymple family went to Bear Lake together, but in practice is was really only about half the extended tribe. A later trip involved a slightly different cast of family members. It didn’t matter so much that some people went on one trip and others on another; it was the group that did these things. In fact, doing them is what made the ship real, in the sense that it’s only through doing things together that the individuals conceive of themselves as a group².

This metaphor is also a useful means of understanding the way responsibilities evolve. When I was younger and many of my siblings still lived at home (but I was an adult and married), my parents occasionally rented a beach house for everyone. Now that we’re all adults, however, it’s more common for one of the siblings to organize a trip and for everyone to pay their own way. Parents (now, grandparents) are still invited, but there’s no expectation that they’re solely in charge or financially responsible. They’re simply another nuclear unit.

In practice this means more trips because costs are distributed and you don’t need to wait for a wealthy relative to offer a free vacation. I think it also leads to a more democratic planning process and greater investment from all participants.

But also, what’s really happening is that a younger generation is gradually assuming the mantel of family leadership and relieving the older generation. The younger generation is learning how to steer the ship. And I guess I think that’s kind of a cool thing that was encouraged by the size of the family; there are so many siblings that it would be a huge financial burden for anyone to pay for everyone.

This is not a call for everyone to have huge families. I myself have only three kids, and so one of the things I’m trying to do is simply rehabilitate the reputation of big families. It can be tough growing up in a very full house, but I’ve found that after everyone hits adulthood it’s wonderful to have a huge group of siblings, in-laws, and nieces and nephews around. We know our siblings far longer as adults than we know them as kids, and I think the value of adult sibling relationships is generally under appreciated.

But the other thing I’m trying to do is understand how groups work. Can there be a unified theory of village building in a disjointed and individualistic era? How do you form a village and keep it together? My experience suggests that traveling in a big group might be part of the answer. And I wonder if that lesson might even apply to any group, whether the people are related by blood or not³.

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1. When it comes to activities like eating out, typically everyone just pays for their own nuclear unit. However, on these big family trips we tend to make food at home, and also everyone seems to bring so many communal snacks and pile them up on the counter that we more often have a problem of too much food rather than how to equitably divide food resources. On other trips where there have been more things like museums etc. to do, we’ve similarly just had everyone pay for themselves.

2. This gets back to the “corporate family” idea I like to talk about here, which in the most basic sense involves a family working together at something. For those of us without actual corporations, I think travel can be a rare chance to build that group identity.

3. I’m going to have to do a part two here teasing this idea out, because of course many different groups include journey stories in their founding mythologies. Think of the exodus in the bible, or the various stories related to the beginning of the U.S. (e.g. the Pilgrams). And of course there are individual pilgrimages in many traditions that serve to bind people to a larger culture. But I have family coming into town for a wedding this weekend, so I don’t have time to write more on this right now. Stay tuned!