History has seen some characters push the boundaries of parenting. In a handful of rare instances, these superparents were so prolific that they even managed to leave huge footprints in the world’s gene pool that continue to this day, centuries after their death.
But how many children can a person have in his lifetime?
Let’s start with the fathers first. It is potentially possible for men who do not experience the time and biological effects of pregnancy to have more children than women.
When we look at prolific fathers in history, the name that undoubtedly comes to mind would be Genghis Khan, the feared founder of the Mongol Empire, who lived from 1162 to 1227 AD, that is, until he was 65 years old. Genetic evidence suggests that about 8 percent of the men (the equivalent of more than 16 million men) currently living in parts of Asia from northeastern China to Uzbekistan had an unusual Y chromosome lineage likely to be linked to Genghis Khan himself. is showing.
It would take so many children to leave such a heavy genetic mark on the world. Legends say that Genghis Khan had some 500 concubines, mostly noble ladies and princesses, from conquered tribes and lands, and fathered hundreds of children. While this is nearly impossible to verify, some historians believe it to be true.
But for all his children, a single Moroccan Sultan may have broken the mighty Mongol’s record. Studies estimate that Moulay Ismael (1672–1727) fathered approximately 1,171 children from 500 women during his 32-year reproductive period.
In the modern era, cultural change and social changes mean that people often have fewer children. But at the same time, advances in biotechnology are opening up more opportunities for people who want to reproduce.
There are reports that sperm donors have contributed to the birth of hundreds of children through artificial insemination. In 2016, an “unlicensed sperm donor” claimed to be the father of 800 children in the UK. He reportedly met people via Facebook and charged them £50 for a sperm “magic potion pot”. Of course, this story is also difficult to verify, but there are many sperm donors who claim to have had a similarly high number of children over the past 50 years.
What about women?
In the case of women, the odds of having multiple children are naturally significantly lower.
The world record for being the most prolific mother of all time belongs to Valentina Vassilyev, an 18th-century Russian peasant. She is reportedly the parent of 69 children with her husband. All of these children were born with 27 pregnancies, where she gave birth to 16 twins, seven triplets, and four quadruplets.
However, there are some doubts as to whether this is statistically and biologically possible. Without modern medicine and sanitation, pregnancy is extremely risky. It is not impossible to give birth 27 times in rural Russia hundreds of years ago, but we can say that the odds are quite low.
Infant mortality was high in the 18th century, and only 67 of 69 children are said to have survived childhood. How a villager working on a farm will take care of about 70 children may also be a matter of curiosity.
In the 21st century, where claims are easier to verify, there have been some extremely productive mothers; most notably a Ugandan woman named Mariam Nabatanzi. She was the mother of 38 children by age 39, according to a 2019 Reuters report.
Just as with men, it’s possible that biotechnology is allowing women to be more productive mothers. Assisted reproductive technologies mean that the extreme limits of female reproduction may be much higher than previously thought.
Theoretically, fertility drugs could be used to stimulate the ovaries to release more eggs than usual. These eggs can then be removed and fertilized with sperm in a petri dish and then surgically implanted in the wombs of an army of surrogate mothers. The average girl has about 300,000 to 400,000 eggs by the time she reaches puberty. If it’s possible to “use” all those eggs, that means a lot of kids.
Of course, this thought experiment remains largely theoretical for now, and such progress would raise numerous ethical and practical problems. Still, it’s clear that biotechnology has the potential to dramatically change the way we view reproduction and the boundaries of parenting.
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