Having a family is low-status when you're young but potentially high-status when you're older. When my five children were very young people treated me like a welfare mom. We were well-off and I had my doctorate before I turned 30, but strangers in the grocery store just assume you're dumb and poor if you have kids when you're young.

Humans have a pecking order, just like chickens. Younger women who have small children are just about at the bottom of that pecking order. It's a biological thing. You wouldn't believe the comments and nasty things people say to you when you're pregnant or in public with very small children. Things they wouldn't dare say in front of your husband. There is something obviously vulnerable and fragile in a young mother. Weak people in particular love to feel powerful, so they peck and scratch at heavily pregnant women, or women with toddlers and babies in tow. It was mostly older people who harassed me when my kids were young. The men would comment on my breasts or my fertility in crass ways, and the women would be cruel and discouraging. Hateful.

As soon as my oldest was 12 or 13, however, there was a noticeable change in the pecking order. All of the sudden people were more respectful--I was treated more like a community leader and a matriarch. I think it is actually high-status to be a mother of many children, even outside of religious groups. The status just comes later, after it's clear to people that you've done a good job raising your family, and you've kept your marriage together.