When we were dating, my husband told me he wanted thirteen children. He wasn't entirely serious, of course, and I was already in my late twenties when we married, but we figured we'd have at least several children if God allowed it.

Yet in Western culture, once you have two children, few people expect you to have another, especially when you already have a son and daughter. Our culture isn't as extreme as Orson Scott Card imagined in his futuristic novel Ender's Game--where "third" is a derogatory term for the third child in a family, but our culture does view a third child as an extra expense--requiring upsizing one's car (due to carseat requirements), possibly adding on a bedroom (because fewer siblings now share a room), and paying more for family vacations (since hotel room occupancies and vacation packages are designed for families of four).