Italians: Old World vs. New World

One myth from my culture is that every single Italian family is huge. While it is true that my family is one-hundred-percent Italian, there are not that many of us. My maternal grandparents only had two children, my mother and my uncle. My uncle is not married and doesn’t have any kids, and my mom is married with three kids. My paternal grandparents had four kids, but those four kids only had five children, counting my brother and I. That’s four grandparents, who had six children, who in turn had six kids. I don’t think there are any more children coming any time soon. So although there is a myth that all Italians have huge families, it is not necessarily the case. Even other Italians think this. I believe that this myth is self-propagated due to the very old-world view that you should have as many kids as you can because of the hard times. There was a belief that the more kids you had, the higher the chance that at least one will survive, and also that more kids meant more people who could work to support the family financially. I believe that this myth was truer in the past, but that it is becoming less and less true due to modern times and ways of thinking.