Baby number five may raise a few eyebrows
The stigma around having large families doesn’t seem to apply to celebrity couples
Within just 48 hours, it felt like the world population had skyrocketed, as it was announced that Gordon Ramsay’s wife tana, model abbey clancy, and kim and kanye’s surrogate mother were pregnant at the same time. It’s great news for each family, particularly the Ramsays, who had a heartbreaking late miscarriage two years ago.
but it’s the fourth child for the clancy-crouches and kardashian-wests, and the fifth for the Ramsays. Among less showbiz parents, that many kids might raise eyebrows. the average uk family size has remained at 2.4 children for well over a decade. but if you have fortune, staff, enormous maternal instinct or just work well with your partner, the advantages of a large tribe outweigh the chaos.
For one thing, a big family means you’re more likely to have a gender mix. Footballer steven Gerrard’s fourth child was a longed-for baby boy, lio. experts believe the larger your family, the more sociable your children will be. they’re more likely to take part in sport and less likely to watch tv – probably because you’d never agree on what to watch. they learn to think and act quickly. Interesting, though, that celeb mini-empires don’t suffer the social stigma attached to ordinary people with large families. or attract frowns from ecowarriors who feel the planet is already over-populated. It’s as though trendsetters Victoria and david beckham have established a celeb standard for the ideal family size – the only thing in Posh’s life that’s labelled ‘large’.