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A random observation I just noticed is that nearly every family we see only has a single child. I also can't think of many characters who mention siblings. Picard is the only exception that I can think of.

So this leads to a question. Is the population of the Federation in decline?

Adam Reynolds wrote: ↑2020-02-25 04:51am A random observation I just noticed is that nearly every family we see only has a single child. I also can't think of many characters who mention siblings. Picard is the only exception that I can think of.

So this leads to a question. Is the population of the Federation in decline?

The O'Brien's had two kids, Molly and Yoshi. Ben was expecting a second child at the end of DS9.

Sisko has at least one sister, whom he mentions looking forward to visiting. Kirk has a nephew. Jadzia had a sister who gave her a set of really ugly glasses that she gave to Quark, and Ezri had two brothers. Janeway had a sister, as did Chakotay. Worf had an adopted brother.

I'd say that siblings were a tad more common than than you recall.

The episode where we meet Dr. Soong, had a set of brothers in it as a plot point.

And honestly our sample size isn't really repesentive as 99% of the characters we see from the federation in any detail are "Career Starfleet" in the series before Picard and there's too few episodes shown of Picard for it say anything about the family sizes in the Federation.

I'd say Starfleet officers are less likely to have huge families

Encouraging Starfleet officers to bring and have families was the point of the Galaxy class Design.

Solauren wrote: ↑2020-02-26 07:28pm Encouraging Starfleet officers to bring and have families was the point of the Galaxy class Design.

... Which, notably, seems to be an experiment that was not repeated-- we don't see any more super huge starships until like the Enterprise-J and well that's a far-future ship. I haven't seen Picard, so I can't say if they have anything in that size range in that period.

Galaxies are certainly used in the Dominion War, but they required improvement to be more efficient in combat, and the War itself was instrumental in shaping Starfleet ship design doctrine in rather the opposite direction.