By the Numbers
Who's the happiest? The fattest? The most caffeinated? We polled 500 parents of one to four-plus children to find out.
- Weight Gain
Of the respondents to our survey, only 2 percent of mothers with one child are 20 pounds heavier than they were prebaby, as opposed to 21 percent of moms of two, 27 percent of moms of three, and 33 percent of moms of four or more.
- Alcohol
Among respondents with more than three kids, 22 percent said they have at least one drink every night, compared with 10 percent of those with one kid. (Parents of three, oddly, drink less often than parents of two.)
- Coffee
Twenty-nine percent of parents with more than three kids have three or more cups of coffee a day. Of single-child cohorts, 9 percent said they drink that much.
- Marital Satisfaction
The percentage of parents who rated their marriages "satisfactory" or "as strong as ever" was higher in the two-kid families than in any other size.
Illustrations by Marc Alary
