Personally, I think four is the perfect number of children for our particular family. Four is enough to create the frenzied cacophony that my husband and I find so joyful.

Waldman frames family size not as a matter of social expectation or abstract ideals, but as a temperament-specific choice: “perfect” is relative to the people living it. By calling the household soundscape a “frenzied cacophony” yet “joyful,” she overturns the common assumption that parental happiness requires calm, order, or quiet. The line suggests an embrace of abundance—of noise, conflict, and constant interaction—as a positive good, and it implicitly defends large-family life against judgments that it is necessarily chaotic in a negative sense. It also highlights partnership: the joy is shared by “my husband and I,” presenting parenting as a joint appetite for lively domestic intensity.