Count amount of relations in Laravel

I have an eloquent model User which is in 1:N relation with itself (a single user can refer multiple users, and a single user can be referred by a single user only).

/*
 * Get the user's referrals
 */

public function referrals()
{
    return $this->belongsToMany('App\User');
}

/*
 * Get the referred user's parent referral
 */

public function parentReferral()
{
    return $this->belongsTo('App\User');
}

Does Laravel provide a native method that will count all the belongsToMany relations?

(A simple way I can do this is just get the parent user's id and manually count all the appearances, but I wish to know if there's a method given by Laravel that I can use on the object)

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