People limit the size of their families for many reasons — environmental worries, social norms — but financial and logistical considerations play a big role. Children can be pricey. The cost of infant day care in a large city can easily top $400 a week or $20,000 a year, making even one child daunting when median earnings for a woman working full time are about $42,000 a year. As for logistics, parenting standards have gone up; time diary studies show that both mothers and fathers have spent more time with their children in recent decades than in the 1960s. If one or two children seem to take all our available time, we marvel at those with more. Have they manufactured more hours in the day?

[Family size isn’t always a choice. NYT Parenting readers share their stories.]

Certainly, big families have their strategies. Kaethe and Jonathan Ward live in Milwaukee with their six children (13, 12, 10, 8 and 4-year-old twins). “We intentionally live close to school, church, my husband’s work is pretty close, plus the Y where we go, parks, libraries,” said Kaethe Ward. “We don’t spend much time commuting at all. That makes a difference.” Older children can be sent across the street to the grocery store, and do their own laundry.

“It’s a good way to teach natural consequences,” said Ward, who works part-time at her twins’ school. “I don’t have time to worry about a favorite shirt not being clean in the morning.” Simple meals win out. “Everyone’s happy with lots of soups and bread,” she said. “Or anything customizable: burrito bowls, pasta.”

Families like the Wards, with up to six children, often swear by the relatively economical eight-seater Honda Odyssey minivan (the Wards drive two). Past six kids, families sing the praises of the Ford Transit, more commonly employed as an airport shuttle.

That’s what designer Lisa Canning, an HGTV television personality and author of “The Possibility Mom,” who just had her eighth child, drives. The family recently moved from Toronto to a walkable Florida neighborhood in part for the logistics; it’s easier to keep track of flip-flops than eight pairs of mittens, boots and hats.

She and her husband, Josh, prioritize a weekly Wednesday date night, but schedule it after the kids (all ages 10 and under) are asleep or in their rooms. This makes finding a sitter easier. “The person just has to sit and be a responsible adult in the house — many people will do that,” she said.