How do you decide how many kids to have? *plus pics of my cute sim family* «123...Next Go

Parka12

So my current game consists of a lesbian couple with two daughters. One of them is a successful doctor and the other is pretty much just a stay-at-home mom who used to be a teacher. I was planning on them having four kids but these two are already such a handful! I don't think they've had sex since the second child Kate was born! I wanted them to have a set of twins to complete their set of four kids but now I'm thinking that the two women will be exhausted. Should they have more kids? Kelly (the doctor) is family-oriented so sooner or later she's probably going to nag me for them anyway. Maybe I'll just hire a live-in nanny. Here are some pictures of the family because they are super cute and I have to share

This is the first-born daughter Mia (isn't she adorable?)



Second daughter Kate, who just aged up


The moms


How do you guys decide how many kids to have? When to stop? And do you think I should give them more kids or just raise these two girls? I do kind of want them to have at least one boy though I can't decide what to do!

TreyNutz

I have a horrible habit of indulging in my sims' every wish to have a child. With one or both usually Family Oriented that invariably ends up with a large family. When my last game ended the couple had had 15 or so children (family tree here). The couple in the game before that had about 51 (mostly due to abusing wishes for a large family). I was going to go to 100 but Error Code 12 shut that particular game down.

I don't usually make the decision on how many kids; I let them make it through the wishes they get. With the long life spans I play it just leads to a very full house.

Parka12

TreyNutz wrote: »

I have a horrible habit of indulging in my sims' every wish to have a child. With one or both usually Family Oriented that invariably ends up with a large family. When my last game ended the couple had had 15 or so children (family tree here). The couple in the game before that had about 51 (mostly due to abusing wishes for a large family). I was going to go to 100 but Error Code 12 shut that particular game down.

I don't usually make the decision on how many kids; I let them make it through the wishes they get. With the long life spans I play it just leads to a very full house.

Ah I see you're not a control freak like I am If my sims roll a wish to have more kids and it's not when I'd like them to, too bad! You're waiting until your life is in the right place to have a kid. That's my way of playing haha. 51 kids is crazy!

igazor

The correct answer is to calculate the number of kids to raise, either at the same time or spaced out, that will just barely give your parent sims nervous breakdowns. Then add +1 to that. Same as in real life, actually.

kiara07

That's an interesting question!
I usually decide how many kids they are gona have before they are even married but my average is 2 or 3. I dont like to have many kids because it's not very realistic and I get attached to my sims when there are less children, I even noticed I seem to prefer the first born.
I've never even accomplished that LTW to raise 5 children from newborns, I did have 5 children once but the last one was adopted as a child.

If my sims have the family oriented trait I just ignore their wishes because they would have a kid every week if they could, but if my sims dont have that trait and roll for a wish to have a kid I migh reconsider my original number of children planned. In fact that happened recently, I am playing Palmira Medina from Isla Paradiso and both she and her husband are workaholics and I had planned for them to have only 1 child, but she had a wish to have another kid and I let her. But I wont let her have more And in my family in Sunlit Tides both my sims are in the athletic career and they only have 1 child like I planned. If my female sim rolls another wish for a child before she is an adult I will also let her have another child.

Yeah that's another thing, my sims only have children as young adults, or in the very beggining of adulthood, after they are 45 no more children!!

Autumn_Cats

Hmmm depends it both sims 4 and 3 I kinda just like having a good amount of kids, because one is boring and one hundred it too many so around four, three and two

Mikezumi

As long as my sims keep wishing for them and they are of an age to bear children, I give them what they want.

My last save was a genetics game so I think my sim had 18 or 19 before I started my current save. The couple in my current save have 6 so far and, because I am playing on the long lifespan, still have plenty of good child bearing days left in them. I can't say when I will stop.

I generally play on normal lifespan and my sims tend to have 5 or 6 in that time.

Buttersims

Dice roll. I usually aim for three though, but if I get twins and triplets it's fine. So currently my sims have three children - Larry was adopted through him living with Brenda and his parents left him, daughters Rori and Saskia are born from Brenda and hubby Simon. So Brenda is now free from being pregnant all the time and she can focus on her work ... which is quite time consuming, with five horses to take care of, two children, a huge garden. So in her case it's better to only have her two lovely daughters. If I do let my sims have more than three kids things just get overwhelming for me, lol! it's rare that I stuff the house with kids, and it's usually for a rags to riches game. I have a rule that the youngest child always becomes the heir, and then it's another dice roll

TadOlson

I will base it on how much money they have,how old they are when ready to start their families and how much space is in their home.It also depends on how big their lot is and how much they saved up in their young adult years.They'll usually wait out the YA stage and move to being adults before starting to try for their first baby though I'll sometimes do YA pregnancies to pretend they had an unplanned pregnancy from their birth control measures failing.It's usually the youngest or next older becomes the heir unless they had their first child very near to becoming elders.

sillyangel0906

I always play legacy style so I like to have big families and I like to have a good choice of genetics. So most of my families have at least 3 kids, sometimes 4 or 4 depending on if there is space in the house.

WillowG145

Depend in what I'm playng: I like to have more than one kid to choose to continue the legacy, but if I'm playng a supernatural legacy (the heir must be a werewolf or a witch) I usually stop when I have the heir I need. But sometime I can decide to add an adopted kid or make imaginary friend Real.
It depend on my mood and the wishes of my sims

snslye

I think it depends for me too. If I'm playing Legacy, I usually have the 1st generation Sim have 1 or 2 kids. Then I usually make the oldest (9 out of 10 times I have it be a boy) child have about 2 or 3 with his wife and then 1 with a mistress (not everyone's perfect, everyone's got some Jerry Springer stuff going on in their lives), and then the other 1st borns of each generation is about 2 or 3. Then I go around the town to look for other Sims that are somehow linked to my Legacy family (weather it's through marriage or blood) and I see what's going on w/ them, if they are married and have kids. If I feel I want certain relatives to marry and have kids, I'll have them marry close to the family tree (but as long as they're not related somehow through blood. Ex: Legacy Sim from generation 3, his wife has a sister. I'll have the sister marry the Legacy Sim's brother or cousin or something.) And usually I just have them have 1 child so the family tree doesn't become TOO, too overwhelming. Because, after about the 4th or 5th generation Legacy Sim is born, I will move in my Sims that I base off of me,my husband, and our kids. I have 4 kids in the game. I've always wanted 4 in real life, and I'm actually making that happen as I am currently expecting #4 My other 3 are currently in my saved game. And because we don't know of a name yet for #4, I just wound up naming him Link (my husband and I love classic games, but however, I don't REALLY want to name our potential son Link. My husband does lol, but I was like nooo. But until we actually pick a for real name for our for real child, their Sim is Link. If my Sim popped out a girl, I probably would have just picked Zelda. But anyway. I'll have one of my kids marry that 4th or 5th generation Legacy Sim that I left off of. They then have 2 or 3 kids as well. So you can see why I try not to let the Legacy family tree get too overwhelming. I think it really just depends on how big you want your family tree to get, and how quickly you want it to happen. I've learned over how many times I've done a legacy family (in my current saved game, I'm on my 4th Legacy family. The first 3 were with the same Sim I started it all with but I did things differently each time. This time, I made a completely different Sim to do my Legacy with). The 1st time, I had him steal Morgana and they had 5 kids like she wanted. But It got so overwhelming so quick then before you knew it, just about everyone in Sunset Valley was related in some way by the time I got to the 3rd generation that I ended up having 2nd and 3rd cousins marry, because there just was no one else. So each time after that the amount of kids decreased.

ChampandGirlie

I determine how many kids they want to have. I tend towards smaller families, having 3 kids is the most that I've done yet in this game. My sims tend to be in smaller houses. Since I'm playing a rotation and I'm including most of the children in future rotations, I don't really have an interest in having really big families.

Each of my sims has a general idea of how many kids they want. It's one of the things that makes a long-term compatible match between romantic partners. They both want two kids and want to raise them in the same way in the same neighborhood? That means they have similar goals and are good for each other. They want a big family or they don't want kids or just want one? I do this with other things but they tend to pair off with sims who are on the same page. Sometimes they'll be a bit undecided and figure it out as they go. I haven't played too many really incompatible sims in serious relationships, so that would be different.

Anyway, I don't find it boring to have just a kid or two. My smaller families are still really close most of the time. As for whether you sims should have more, what do you think they want? I, myself, don't base this strictly on whims. If you'd like to see a boy or twins in their game, go for it. Have the pregnant sim eat carrots or get a fertility massage or listen to lullabies while pregnant. It'll probably be chaos but sometimes chaos is fun.

Avatarit

I think the decision should be taken one a time for every child (speaking of real life:)).
In general, I like big families and big households in the game. I like the "cute bundle of joy" idea, and it's usually very fulfilling for the sims, especially the family-oriented ones. But there is a point where it's becoming impossible, even with one parent at home. It also depends on the age-range of the other kids. Teen could be very helpful to the parents.

For example: I started to play with the Funke family from the family bin. They start as a family with 2 children and one toddler. I really enjoyed playing with them so I made them have another baby. and it was so great and fun that I made them have another baby shortly after! At the moment they are 5 (2 kids+3 toddlers). I made the father a stay-at-home-dad for a while, he's a good parent, but taking care of the kids all day without going out anywhere make him feel "stir crazy". And the "Have a baby" wish keeps coming, but at that point I decided they must stop at least until the big brother will become a teen, and the big toddler will become a child. That way it will be more balanced. And even than I am not sure I will let them have more babies.
Another example: There is a family that was sort of game-generated but I modified a little. anyway, they started as a family with 1 child and 1 toddler. at some point I made them have another one. time passed, the child is not teen yet, the baby became toddler (=so it's 1 child, 2 toddlers). I thought it was a good time for another baby - and SURPRISE - thay had triplet!!! at some point I had to (temporarily) split the babies to other families until some of the kids will grow up because it's really impossible to play like that. (very challenging, but it's a nightmare for the parents and also for the babysitters).

EmmaNiji

I tend to make my sim's lives' very eventful and chaotic, PLUS, I also fulfill all their wishes. It gives them more personality. Strengths and weaknesses. If they want more children, I say give it to them

Waterdragon

I really like to play with genetics, so I mostly end up with a full house, depending on how many couples I have in that household, 4 - 6 children. I don´t think, raising them is very difficult, for me it´s difficult to decide, what to do when they are grown up! I mostly abandon the save at that point, because I can´t move anyone out!
In my legacy it´s always three children.

kodachrome35

TreyNutz wrote: »

The couple in the game before that had about 51 (mostly due to abusing wishes for a large family).

Wow, 51 kids??? I start hating toddlers and needing a break after 2 or 3, haha.

I "release" most of my family's children out into the rest of the neighborhood and just stick with one to focus on for the next generation. Since I don't allow game-created Sims into my town, my neighborhood's family trees are very interconnected, and everyone's related to someone else in some capacity in town. To avoid too much consanguinity (and for my own sanity while raising them), I limit the number of kids to 2 to 3.

elanorbreton

I try and vary it.

One of my all-time favourite games, I started in RV with the Jones's and they had five kids who all grew up and married different service sims. The trouble with having a lot of kids though is that your town will soon become very populated by members of that family (well, a few generations down the line), plus - if you like to play them all it ends up being a lot of families to rotate around. But I guess it depends on your style of play.

These days I am usually more reserved and restrict them to 1 or 2. Maybe 3 at the most. Of course, sometimes fate will intervene and you can be going for baby number 3 when you end up with triplets instead

Rflong7

Hi

I always start off with 2. I like families with 2 kids... and then I kinda get bored and make them have another until the family is full and then I tell myself I'll never let them have so many kids again. Then it happens again. XD

ShojoDagger

igazor wrote: »

The correct answer is to calculate the number of kids to raise, either at the same time or spaced out, that will just barely give your parent sims nervous breakdowns. Then add +1 to that. Same as in real life, actually.

@igazor Lol!

Like other posters, I mostly let my sims decide, either through wishes or thru a mod that lets them try for babies autonomously.
I only stop them from procreating when the house gets overstuffed & there are too many kids to keep track of. they age up to elder & can no longer conceive. In my McIrish Clan game River & Sandi have over 20 kids total. (plus some grandbabies!)

@Rflong7 "then I tell myself I'll never let them have so many kids again. Then it happens again." Me too!

The interesting thing about my oversized families is that I'm an only-child IRL. *shrugs*

DivieOwl

Mostly my sims have 3+ kids. After 3, if both sims wish for another kid, I'll grant them their wishes. Also, if only one sim wishes repeatedly for another kid, I usually relent. Some families do only have one kid cause that's the type of sims they are, but generally 3 or more, depending on their wishes.

JoAnne65

There are numerous times I decided to have a third kid because the first two were clones. And twice my game decided to bring another child into my heir's family (when I wasn't playing them; those days of ingame, modless SP are over unfortuntely, I liked that). Other than that, I don't really know when I decide. Sometimes they have one, sometimes six and everything in between. Whatever I feel like while playing.

MidnightAura

It depends on the family. If I'm playing legacy style which Is most of the time then they have at least 2, then it depends on parents ages, income and where they are at in careers if any. I have one household with 5 kids and that's pretty tough as they are all children and toddlers.

AthenaOnyx

I try to stick with 2 children per family with exception being those that wish to have a large family. But, I typically forget this and end with every family have 5 or 6 kids.

KevinL5275

I've never thought about this because I usually move on to a new family and game once my originals die. And I havent been playing long enough to get passed 3 generations. So how do you keep the town from being over-populated with your family genetics if they have 5+ kids? Is there a way built into the game, or with mods, to move the kids to another town and keep playing the current family? I don't want to do a total annihilation because you can still "call long distance" or send letters to each other in other towns.