Deseret News publishes article outlining Pakaluk's study on why some women choose to have 5+ children
"To understand America’s falling birthrates, Catherine Pakaluk, a social scientist and economics professor at the Catholic University of America, turned not to childless women but to the outliers bucking the trend—the women with children, and lots of them.
To her, this made sense, just like you’d go to get fitness advice from someone who’s fit. She wanted to know what’s driving women to have large families when, to so many others, motherhood seems so incredibly difficult today.
Pakaluk had flyers put up in churches and community centers across the country, seeking women who had five or more children and could explain their reasoning behind this increasingly countercultural decision. From about 500 women who responded, Pakaluk and her colleagues from the Wheatley Institute at Brigham Young University, which funded the study, interviewed 55 women from all parts of the country."
Learn more about Pakaluk's findings and read Wheatley Assistant Director Emily Reynolds' commentary on motherhood in the full Deseret News article.