You have helped me already. I did not think about inserts and buffering. I assume table buffering would have an effect(as opposed to row buffering)
Here is the structure of the child table, it has 5 indexes:


Structure for table: L:\SHARED\STMTAX.DBF
Number of data records: 173253
Date of last update: 11/10/00
Code Page: 1252
Field Field Name Type Width Dec Index Collate Nulls
1 STM_ID Integer 4 Asc Machine No
2 OCTOBER Currency 8 4 No
3 NOVEMBER Currency 8 4 No
4 DECEMBER Currency 8 4 No
5 TAX Currency 8 4 No
6 INITIALS Character 3 No
7 ENT_DATE Date 8 No
8 LOAD_DATE Date 8 No
9 LOADED Logical 1 No
10 EMCODE Character 1 No
11 SYSTEM Character 3 Asc Machine No
12 LOCATION Character 3 Asc Machine No
13 ST Character 2 No
14 CNTY Character 3 No
15 UNIT Character 3 No
16 TAXYEAR Character 4 No
17 WCODE Character 7 Asc Machine No
18 PAYMT_NUM Integer 4 No
19 DISC_ID Integer 4 Asc Machine No
** Total ** 91