I was one of four children. My mother was the youngest of about nine kids.
I have had several friends from rather large families... one from a family of eight or nine kids, and one from a family of 12 or more (and counting), plus others I can't remember off-hand.
With some of these friends who came from large families, they have told me of having grown up with the feeling of never having received very much parental attention. After all, no matter how much the older kids help out with the younger kids, there are only 24 hours in the day for both the mother and the father.
So... there are pluses and minuses at both ends of the spectrum... not to mention how much wear and tear it takes on the mother's body just to produce those kids, and how much wear and tear it could take on the father's body in order to produce money to support those kids.
To each his (or her) own, I suppose.
It's interesting, but this idea of the parents spending time with their kids is brought up a lot with this generation. Until we, that is baby boomers, were small, our parents didn't have a whole lot of leisure time, anyway. Fathers went off to work every day, and mothers spent most of the time cooking and cleaning because they just didn't have all the modern conveniences. Some families were involved in sports with their kids; I know my parents spent hours working the concession stand at my older sister and brothers high school home basketball games, and countless more hours driving back and forth to away games. My younger sister and I took dance lessons, and even had art lessons for a couple of years when we were in grade school.
But I don't ever remember spending time with our parents just for the heck of it until I was an adult. I don't remember my Mama reading to us when we were little, or spending time with us on homework. I certainly don't think any less of them for not doing so. They raised me right, even if they weren't hanging out with me.
I believe this idea of 'spending time with each child' came about as a result of the push to limit children, and the idea planted in folks heads that they'd be ruining their children for life if they didn't give them 'quality time'. Some folks wanted to blame their faults, shortcomings and poor choices on that, I guess, but I knew many kids from large families, and some from small families. I didn't see any difference in how they turned out based on their family size. Some from the large families made good choices in life, some not so good, even in that same family. Same goes for the kids with few or no siblings.