“Among Golfing Friends, Three Children Is Standard”: Parenthood Among the Wealthy

“Among my golfing friends, three children is standard.” The remark captures the world explored by Rzeczpospolita’s Plus Minus: affluent parents who say a large family does not necessarily mean abandoning a comfortable life.

Artur, an architect, recently moved with his family from a four-room apartment in the capital to a new house. The old flat had become too cramped, he says, and he could no longer see how to arrange the available space. In the new home, each child has a room: one for his older daughter, one for his son and one for his younger daughter.

The house also includes a living room, an office upstairs and a bedroom for Artur and his wife. A nearby room currently serves as storage, but he says it will soon become another children’s room. The arrangement reflects the article’s central point: wealth does not necessarily create the wish to have children, but it makes it possible to reorganize daily life around them.

The article presents its affluent subjects as people who can respond to a growing family with more space and greater flexibility. For them, having numerous children need not mark the end of convenience. Their resources allow them to reshape their homes and routines instead.

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There was not enough space there. I could no longer envision what to do with it.