“Are they all yours?” “Boy, you sure have your hands full!”  “Don’t you know what causes that?”

Shannon Foley has heard it all, especially from complete strangers. Foley, a mother of five in Athens, Ga., gets all sorts of reactions when she’s out in public with her family.

It’s so predictable that she compares it to a Bingo game, complete with rote responses she’s used to doling out, including the zinger, “I just fed them once and then they started following me around everywhere I go!”

The Foley family is just one that represents the changing size of the American family. Simply put—and illustrated by recent data—Americans are having more children. It’s not just the famous Duggar family who is adding to their brood (although they certainly stand out, expecting their 19^th child; to read our interview with Michele Duggar about breastfeeding, go here.)

“Bigger families used to be associated with lower education levels and certain religious minorities,” says Doug Bachtel, a demographer and professor in the College of Family and Consumer Economics at the University of Georgia. “The theory goes that the lower the education attainment level, women don’t have many opportunities, and all that’s left for them is being a wife and mother. But that’s changed.”

While the 2010 Census will be more illuminating, already “there is some survey data that shows family size is increasing,” he says.

“In American society, we used to be a very rural society, a nation of farmers,” he says. “Gradually, we became more urbanized. Rural women historically have had more babies than urban ones.” That’s because rural families, who live where “you know all the people and are related to a third of them,” have added pressure to get married and have children because of their proximity to kin, he explains.

“Urban women have less pressure to have these bigger families, but that appears to be changing a bit,” he says, adding that families with three children have become the norm.

Bachtel says that several things have happened: people are living “the American dream…to work in the city and live in the suburbs,” giving them room to spread out. Celebrities are having big families. There are laws in place to ensure women with big families keep their jobs.

And even though we hear a lot about population overload, that “doesn’t hold all that much in the United States,” says Bachtel. “When you’re talking about the huge populations, you’re talking about India and China and the developing world.”

Decades ago, “People looked down their noses at big families,” he adds. “Now, big families are cool. Before, they weren’t cool. You’d be at a party or work or something and someone would say, ‘I’ve got 3 or 4 kids,’ and you’d say, “What are you raising, your own football team?’ It’s not uncool to have a big family. In fact, it might even be hip. You could be viewed as a trend setter.”

If you ask parents of a large family whether they feel like trendsetters, they might enjoy a hearty chuckle at your expense, depending on the amount of sleep they’ve gotten the night before. Bachtel offers another reason why some people are having more children: “Perhaps this is a growing appreciation and desire for children,” he says.

We talked to parents who are part of this growing trend. Here’s a peek into the life of those American families with more than 2.5 children.

Kathy Lopez, mother of four (ages 7, 5 and 5—yes, twins!—and 2)
“Honestly, I hadn’t even really thought about having children,” says Kathy Lopez. “Motherhood took me by surprise and knocked me on my ass.”

When her eldest was around 16 months old, she found herself pregnant again—“thanks to user error with shoddy birth control”—this time with twins. When the twins were 3, she discovered she was pregnant again (“Thanks, contraceptive film,” she jokes, “you’re always there for me!”).

Lopez, a massage therapist and nursing student, lives near Philadelphia with her family—husband Carlos is a consultant for pharmaceutical companies.

“Each and every single baby, each and every pregnancy and each and every nursing experience is unique,” she says.

She decided to “wing it in labor” and gave birth to her eldest son in a freestanding birth center with a midwife. However, the twins were born prematurely (but vaginally) after an induction—there had been indications of Twin to Twin Transfusion Syndrome—over 30 people were in the room.

“It was a teaching hospital, and in addition to all the folks there for me, there was a team for each baby,” she says. “An obviously childless resident stood between my feet and kept yelling when I should breath and when I should push with her eyes firmly on a monitor.”

The twins are both “healthy, vibrant kindergartners” now, she says, but when they were born, one weighed just over 3 pounds and stayed at the hospital for 19 days. Caring for a toddler and preemie at home, Kathy could only visit her once a day and nurse her a handful of times during those weeks. Once she came home, she eventually learned to nurse (and both twins nursed until just after their third birthday, when Kathy was pregnant again), but it was rough.

“Nights were difficult—my husband still had to function at a day job and has weird bouts of insomnia, so I tried to shoulder nighttime parenting for all three kids on my own,” she says. “I’d fall asleep with the twins in an arms’ reach co-sleeper, and wake up in the morning with their bottles empty and both of them curled up in the nook under my right arm.  I remembered nothing.”

Kathy went back to basics with her fourth child: just one midwife, who watched as Kathy birthed her baby while squatting on top of the hospital bed. These days, she says, the youngest is known as “Queen Super Baby” by her older siblings.

Living simply and sustainably is a requirement: “Being broke surely helps!” she says. Her husband is a vegetarian, she’s  “been crunchy at heart for a long time,” and the family does a lot of second-hand shopping, uses public transportation and supports a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture).

“Once or twice I’ve had to correct people who’ve made comments about other people who ‘shouldn’t have kids if they can’t afford them,’ because we certainly can’t afford four kids.  I did hear a while back about wealthy families in New England seeing more kids as being a status thing, and I just laughed and laughed and laughed.  Suckers.”

Lopez sees parents having more children, but does not see any kind of appreciation for children, as Bachtel suggests, reflected in American culture. “Instead we still have the hyper-sexualization of youth, we have a society that willingly shanks mothers left and right—for their parenting decisions as well as things like maternity leave, breastfeeding support, affordable daycare options,” she says. “I think that people have babies because they want to love and to be loved.  I think that people have babies because they have a biological urge to replicate the species…I think that parents are hoodwinked by how hard it is to be a parent in non-family-friendly American society.”

Lopez has her share of challenges. “I am surprised and shocked by sibling rivalry, and of the completely nonsensical nothings that will get someone crying.  It’s ridiculous.  There are a lot of logistical challenges—who needs to be where at what time, and how are they going to get there?… Financially, it’s challenging.  I wish we could buy them each a Nintendo DS or that we could get a Wii or that we could send them to summer camp or go to amusement parks together.  It’s also challenging when they all need my husband and I so much —our love, our attention, our approval—and we are just exhausted and spent.”

But there are unexpected joys, too: the frenzy of excitement surrounding holidays and birthdays, and the everyday moments that show the children’s developing bond.

“The four of them can laugh together and entertain each other in ways that are really awesome to watch,” she says.  “Recently, one of the twins dropped a plate on her foot and hurt it pretty badly.  I put her in the van to go home and went inside to get something, and when I came out, my son had clipped into the seat next to her.  He let the other twin sit in his seat, something she normally is desperate to do, and was sitting next to the injured twin, holding her hand, telling her stories about times that he got hurt and talking to her about what she could do to make it better.  That night they slept in the same bed, and the next morning they woke up fighting.  Fascinating stuff!”

Kathrine Whitehead, mother of eight (ages 13, 12, 11, 10, 8, 4, 1, 3 months)
When the Whiteheads go out in public, they are used to the double takes.

“You can see them counting the children,” says Kathrine Whitehead.

“I don’t remember specifically thinking that I wanted a large family, but I did say it in an interview during the 1985 California Miss pageant for which I won the title,” says Kathrine, who, along with her husband Travis, is an emergency room physician in Rome, Georgia. “So it is on tape for posterity. Travis also didn’t specifically think that he would have a large family, but it just became natural once we were married.”

The Whiteheads are Catholic, “and Catholics are known for their large families,” she says. “However, we feel that it is more a biblical stance than specifically a Catholic one. It is quoted many times in the Bible that we are to fill our quiver, that children are a blessing from God and that a marriage represents a union to bring children into the world.”

She says that some people have called them irresponsible for having so many children, or warned them that they won’t be able to put them through college. “It isn’t such a popular position to take in the medical community either, especially when we bring up our religious beliefs as the foundation of having a large family,” she adds.

But, “Every child is special and different, and it is hard to say that we don’t want to be blessed by these wonderful gifts from God,” she says. “We love our babies and our older children with all of our hearts and couldn’t imagine life without them.”

The Whiteheads have help; Kathrine’s parents live with the family for half the year, and Travis’ parents offer a month-long “Camp Whitehead” experience for the children every summer.

A brief history of Kathrine’s pregnancies is harrowing. She’s experienced C-sections, natural births, two miscarriages and a stillbirth.

“What I learn each time is what a miracle birth is and I don’t take any pregnancy or birth for granted,” she says. “I appreciate every minute of the pregnancy, and I have never wished for it to be over. Every kick, every flutter, every hiccup that I can feel when I am pregnant is like a special bond between me and the new baby.

“It seems like I am starting all over again on each child, if you can believe it,” she adds. “I guess it is because every child is different.”

Her eldest son is autistic, a condition she says has been helped by being around the other children constantly.

“We have learned that this is part of our mission in life,” she says. “Taking care of patients is our calling, but so is parenting…We feel so blessed to have wonderful jobs, but also that we have such a wonderful home life too.”

Rhonda Purdy, mother of five  (ages 22, 19, 17, 5 and 3)
“I don’t know if I ever thought about a number growing up, but I knew I wanted to be a mom,” says Rhonda Purdy, a certified nursing assistant in Seneca, South Carolina. “That’s the one thing I always wanted to be. ‘The Waltons’ was my favorite all-time show.”

She and her husband stopped at three children; “I wanted to be able to provide for my family and have a few extras,” she says.

But then, she found herself taking in two young girls whose mother, a relation of Rhonda’s, was no longer able to care for them. And then Rhonda and her husband separated.

Essentially, Rhonda is a single mother of five children—and one who works three jobs to make ends meet.

Rhonda’s two sisters are also mothers: one has two children; the other, who is part of the religious Quiverfull movement, has five. When the sisters and their children spend time together, “We’re a crowd,” she says.

She takes great joy being surrounded by so many different personalities, she says, even when it’s a challenge. Perhaps most rewarding is watching the two youngest children blossom in a safe environment, feeling the love of a true family.

“The girls are our family too, and now they even say, ‘That’s my brother,’” she says. “You take care of each other because that’s all you’ve got at the end of the day.”

She stresses the importance of non-material values on her children. “I was always pretty thrifty on certain things,” she says. “The priorities should be instilling in them family and loyalty to family, and not so much material things or worldly things.”

While her children have learned how to share and work as a team, Rhonda has learned plenty from them, too: “I’ve learned that you can’t push people…they have to want it for themselves,” she says. “As you get older, you realize how much change there is in life….there are hard calls all the time…I can’t even name all that I’ve learned. It’s so much. And the girls bring a totally new thing.

“I feel God has given me these girls as a gift,” she says. “They are teaching me, every day, something different…Every ounce of my life is dedicated to my kids.”

Shannon Foley, mother of five, and one on the way, due any day as of this writing (ages 12, 9, 6, 4, 2)
Many of Shannon’s friends also home school their children, and it’s not unusual to see other large families in their social circle. “Even amongst those home schooling families who are not religious, larger families seem more common than amongst the general public,” she says.

She has a theory explaining the growth of families.

“The fact of the matter is that no one at this point can afford college for their children, so what difference does it make if you have two or four children?” says Shannon, who stays home while husband Pat works as a bookseller. “I think many of us who grew up in suburban cultures, focused on achievement and consumerism as the primary goals of our parents, have grown up into adults who see the emptiness and futility of that lifestyle,” she says. “We came to adulthood feeling essentially alone and unconnected, and perhaps family size trending larger is an attempt to offer a different experience for our children.”

That experience is often a frugal lifestyle, which is out of necessity but has the added benefit of being eco-conscious.

“From a practical point of view, most larger families are more financially strapped and so tend to refurbish, fix, and creatively reassign purpose to many things others merely discard,” she says.  The Foleys make their food from scratch and stretch it, eat less meat, combine errands and activities to save fuel, and conservatively use water and electricity.

“I like that these things are just part of our way of life, so that these will be habits with which my children will enter adulthood,” she says.

The Foleys didn’t plan on having so many children; in fact, Shannon says that nurturing babies and small children doesn’t come naturally, so she favors the hands-on, attachment parenting style that keeps the little ones very close in those early years. They favor natural family planning—Shannon is Catholic—but both Pat’s ever-changing work schedule and the “challenges of having children around” have made it difficult to follow the rules for avoiding pregnancy, she says.

Her children have made her a better person, she says.

“Every single day I am brought to the brink of who I am as a person, and who I desire to be,” she says. “One of the greatest gifts of perpetually having young children around is that they are little mirrors. They reflect all of your assets and defects right back at you…I am so grateful for that gift, because I don’t think I’d have the courage or fortitude to confront myself day in and day out if my children weren’t there as a constant reminder of who I both do and do not want to be, as well as serving as a motivation to keep striving to be the very best me I can be.”

Having more children has also taught her not to sweat the small stuff, or expect a preconceived notion of normalcy.

“I now have older kids who are just wonderful people, who are smart and generous and well-behaved and well-mannered, who are liked by their coaches and instructors and friends’ parents,” she says. “So there is no fight to death with anyone about my choices about how to feed my children or where they ought to sleep as babies or what to do in regards to school. It’s easier to have confidence that every choice I make as the parent of a wee baby doesn’t have ever lasting consequences. I also think that with each child you just get way more laid back about the whole thing—knowing that so many things you thought were vitally important as the mom of one or two, really turn out to be just totally insignificant and a waste of energy…I suppose to sum up you could say that I’ve learned to follow the path of least resistance, while remaining steadfast about our desired destination.”

With so many people in one house, it’s too easy to get lost in the shuffle, even as a parent. Foley makes sure to keep her own interest alive: reading books, watching films, finding new passions, having child-free time with friends.

I think my ongoing life lesson is that life really boils down to learning how to give love and be loved in a healthy interdependent way,” she says. “Everything we do needs to be to the service of that goal…When I chose to really make sure that I was an important member of our family, that was a real turning point in motherhood for me.”