don't have babies

We live a somewhat different life than most folks. We have a number of cabins, -and have people from all over come to stay. -Mostly because they need a home. They stay for as long as they need, then go on to their next great adventure. A woman from Camaroon and another from France just left. Several others are here now, one from Nevada with her two very young girls, and another from Delaware. So, we always have lots of help. It's fun. And Laura (my better 2/3rds) just really likes to have babies and raise wonderful children (I mostly just stay out of the way and pound nails and paint stuff). ~And then there are always people here mostly all day/everyday, who just like (the atmosphere I guess) and like to do things. And I figure let 'em have at it.

So, because there are so many people working together and sharing and mostly laughing, and so many children always here from the neighborhood, having our own 10 kids isn't really all that big a deal. And many hands makes pleasant living and work.

~~Something else, since health of the mother was mentioned. Every woman has her own way. Everyone has their own shape. For some, it's tough.  For some, birthing isn't like in the movies. A certain amount of the process has to do with attitude. We have our babies at home. There is no drama. No bright lights. No doctors you don't know. No drugs. Just relaxing and let things happen. I talked with a delivery nurse some years ago. She said some women come in and play music. Some play rock. Some, more Earth oriented music. She said the ones that play heartbeat, Earth music have a much more gentle time. They get into the rhythm of the thing. The rock women's bodies don't know what the heck to do. So the person who expressed concerns about health, maybe part of the answer is to really want each baby, relax into the birth, let the natural play its part, and have a life of love. Then, G*D Willing, all else will follow.  

Jim Fry wrote:I had posted to this discussion 2 years ago. Back then I wrote I had nine children. UPDATE! Now we have 10. Hooray!

Congratulations, Jim! We have a big family too. It's been the greatest part of our adventure on this earth.

T. Woolf wrote:I really have to wonder about the health of a woman who has 10 children. And honestly, I couldn't imagine having children because of the stress, cost, and time commitment. It's great if you find a woman whose values are the same as yours, but many women would have a hard time dealing with more than one or two children, let alone ten. And childbirth is no picnic. I've known a lot of women who have had serious health issues and complications.  

Women have sought and found solutions to various problems as much as men have done. It's tough to do that when having ten or more children.

You don't have to wonder. I'm here to answer. I'm a mother of 12 myself.

Stress wise, stress is the same with 3 kids as it is with 12. The only thing that changes is how to manage the day to day. As long as management is kept up, stress isn't a problem. Cost wise, yes it costs more to have kids, but I've compared my costs to my friends before (at their request) and it all comes down to what we value. We spend $500/week on food currently, without doing any gardening. I cook from scratch often. We don't have phones for every single child. We instead take the kids out to do things as a family or various forms of one-on-one time. Many of my friends have around 4 kids and they spend more on food, since they pack their school lunches. They value quick food for saving time. I cook and either spend time with my kids while doing so or enjoy the quiet. Both are good with me. Time commitment, I honestly don't know what people mean by this. Maybe seeing our day to day would help explain things. I'll do that below.

My mother and I are opposites in how we view motherhood and I think that's a great way to explain further, if you don't mind a wall of text.

My own mother got pregnant with me and stayed with my bio dad until shortly after my brother was born. At that point, she pushed him out due to postpartum issues. My dad was very involved. He worshiped our little family.  My mom was fairly hands off. She didn't like to stay home. She just really likes working in an office. My dad was the one who made our food, gave us our baths, tucked us in at night, did most of the house stuff. He did this while also working. My mom did a little cleaning when she got home, she's always been particular about the laundry. My mom says that she really liked their dynamic, but she met some not great women at the absolute wrong time.

Those women told my mother, who was postpartum, that my dad was too involved. That she is failing as a mother. That he was doing work that is meant for her by nature. That she should have been barren because my brother and I "would only ever suffer without a real mother." They tried to convince her that his involvement was a sign he would become some sort of pervert. What in the world, crazy ladies! These were women she worked with in the office. They were superiors. They got deeply into my mother's head and she pushed out my dad.

She met my step dad shortly after because "children shouldn't go without a father. You need to get a better one." So she found one that was incredibly uninvolved at first. He straight up ignored my mom even after marriage. My mom ignored him in return. She'd get us from the baby sitter up the street, come home and see him crashed on the couch, start cleaning, and make dinner. This was how it was for years until they had my youngest brother. Postpartum, my mom kicked him out because she needed help and he wouldn't do it.

Many years later, she met my second step dad. He's nice, helps with the house, he was practically a "house husband" while she was working. He is a homebody, but he'd talk to me and my brothers. Ask us about our day and things like that. As he learned more about us, he came more into the dad role. He wasn't hands off, but he wasn't hands on either. My mom kind of just left him to it and focused on work. He'd take us to recitals or practices. He knew what was going on with our school, where we were struggling and everything. Eventually he started a combo online/in-person college. Got his degree, and went into software development. They're both very chill people and complement each other well in that way. We never really spent time as a family though outside of meals together and watching TV.

Now my bit of this. Met my husband, have 12 kids. I've been a stay at home mom since shortly before our first was born. We homeschool. Our mornings are spent cleaning the house, then going outside to either work or just be in nature. We all come in around lunch time, I have several kids that like to work in the kitchen, so they'll either volunteer or if nobody's feeling it, I make lunch by myself. While they eat, we start up school with a read aloud. I read to them while they eat, then we discuss while we all work together to clean up afterwards. After that, we do the "regular" school. Bookwork and projects. After that, they go and play with their friends. By the time I'm cooking dinner, my husband gets home and the kids help tidy back up from playing. My husband likes working physical labor jobs and has built himself up in the company to where he's running it. He comes home, I have food and the house ready, he helps me if he sees that I need it or I ask for it. Spends time with the children daily. After we put the kids to bed, we spend time together ourselves. This is not an exhaustive list of what we do in a day.

Our school week is 4 days year round. Monday, we do grocery shopping and have a sort of round table where we talk about plans for this week and what we can do to make sure those plans happen and air any grievances. Last Monday, we did a session where we talked about You vs I statements. It's not the first time we've talked to them, people just need a refresher sometimes to help keep them going. Other things we do weekly is my husband and I go on at least one date, I take out a "house" (pairs or trios of kids is the simplest explanation) to go run errands and get a treat on Mondays with the groceries, my husband spends daddy-kiddo time taking a kid out on a rotating schedule at least once a week, and I have a second "run to the store for milk" where I take the "house leader" for the week with me so we can just talk while we're out. That's pretty much our week at a glance. We are only just now starting permaculture, but with how we already integrate spending time outside daily, I don't too much change coming up.

For my mom, raising three kids was like standing outside Hell's door until she met my second step dad. For me, I was supported from the get-go.

It was hard for my mom because she had people in her ear that didn't support her. She had people telling her to do things their way, our own family dynamics be damned. Society established she was failing because she didn't like their rules on how a family works. She regrets caving to their pressure, which eventually let my first step dad into our lives. After she had "conformed" to what the social climate she was around said, she had no support behind closed doors. She wasn't a wife and mother in first step dad's eyes, she was a housekeeper, cook, and source of finances. She says being a single mom was easier than being married to my first step dad. Getting rid of him changed how she saw being a mom. It wasn't just a new list of chores to check off and more mouths to feed. We were still pretty much left alone after she got rid of him. Says she felt like she had already lost a chance at a relationship with us by that point.

It's easy for me to be a mom. I keep up with my husband's needs and he keeps up with mine, both in the house and personally. We both interact with the kids regularly and make a point of spending time with them. Even with moving to a place where we have no family around us, we feel just as supported as when we had family around. My kids are happy and healthy, by their own accounts.

Oh, the last part of your ponderings. In regards to the physical effects, I got another anecdote.

I have given birth in the car twice (long-ish story short, the new nurses both times told me something along the lines of it's impossible to give birth that fast. My family history says they were wrong.) I gave birth at a hospital that was more mother focused (the most recent) and all the rest were at a country hospital where the only choice given was to lay on my back. The labor and recovery of the mother focused hospital was the best, followed by the car, and dead last was the country hospital. The country hospital was more about the staff's efficiency and getting me in and out of the hospital as quickly as possible.

I do have a quibble with one thing that was said "Women have sought and found solutions to various problems as much as men have done. It's tough to do that when having ten or more children." This comes across as disregarding the men's role in child rearing and as children only being a barrier to life. I'd venture to guess that isn't how you meant it, just stating that's how it sounds.

The biggest struggle in parenting no matter how many kids is the mental load. You have to manage the house, the kids, yourself, and your partner. If either parent is not involved, all the mental load is placed on one person. If neither, it's all on the kids, stereotypically the oldest. One person managing all the mess, lists, cooking, and even emotions of 14 people total. But in a healthy relationship, that isn't what happens. Everyone works together. The parents show the kids through their own actions what a healthy relationship looks like while also guiding them to have their own healthy relationships with each other and the world around them. A healthy relationship means I don't have to manage my partner. I don't have to memorize his schedule and be on my toes to placate him. At the same time, we're not just existing in each other's general vicinity. We want to be around each other, even if that means working on an inane project like getting popcorn ceiling off the bathroom (who thought that was a good idea?) We seek out helping each other not because we're scared of how the person will react otherwise, but because helping brings them joy and brings ourselves joy likewise.

People have a lot of strong feelings about themselves and other people having babies. It's such a personal act to birth a baby. Raising up a human has a huge influence on the world and the future.

Is it a good idea to encourage other people to have babies? Imagine pressuring somebody into having a baby and then they do, but it was a bad fit for them. Or imagine telling them they shouldn't have had one. What are they supposed to do, put it back? What a nightmare!

Or, imagine talking somebody out of having a baby, and then the world misses out on one of the most needed resources right now: responsible humans who can face and solve problems, using whatever leverage they have to change the trajectory of the collective human actions for the better?

So, I hesitate to have an opinion on whether or not people ought to be having babies. I have been re-writing this post all week! But, having the ability, I did have to make that decision for myself. I structured my whole life plan differently because of my decision. So, here's my thinking process for that.

You can't control the opinions of who you raise. You can do your very best and raise them with the values that you care about, but ultimately that kid will roll their own dice. The current economics and culture both encourage unsustainable practices. There is a good chance that children will get swept up in the main culture. Is it possible to raise a baby in the US without causing more harm than good to the environment? I think it's extremely unlikely. Almost every system we have is built on broken backs and bad environmental choices, or recycled leftovers from that same bad system.

However, the only way the culture will change is with younger generations adopting systems more aligned with stewardship of our communities and environment. The more privileged you are, the more resources you are likely using up when comparing per-person around the world, but also the more power you have in swaying the culture that you are living in, if you can use those powers for good. I think that can more than balance out.

So, I conclude that it's reasonable to go for it, if i feel strongly that i want to take on that important burden. But only if my circumstances give me and my child good odds. I didn't get told the full story of the physical and emotional sacrifice that is being made in the birthing and responsible raising of a human. I understand now that we are discouraged from telling that story. I didn't have the support I needed, and I didn't understand that was how it was going to be. If there is not enough, you have to choose between you getting what you need and the child getting what they need. And sometimes there isn't enough even for that. Those can be dark times. It would be very hard to raise a baby the way you want to, if you don't have the energy, money, and community support you need. One other person is not enough help in my opinion, especially if that person hasn't been around children before, and/or has other priorities taking up a large portion of their time. I think it's good to budget at least 10 years of not having another important project, unless you have daycare and full support from another responsible person. Then another 10 years of half a project. It's important to look up the health risks. Giving birth has a higher physical risk of mortality than being a police officer, and even if everything goes fine there are costs that are hard to avoid. You might reasonably expect to lose one tooth per child.

If you want to encourage babies in general, my feeling is that the best way to do that is to create a supportive environment, where emotional and physical resources are provided, with existing safe communities of care for both parents and children, with transparently communicated values around parenting styles to know if that environment is a good fit.

For anybody considering raising a kid but not sure, a long-term commitment to be a chosen auntie or uncle to somebody else's baby might be everything you wanted without the full burden. If you are shown to be reliable and share values, especially parenting style values, I can see that being extremely rewarding for everybody.

What happens if we start to have fewer children in the world? The current economic system is built on infinite growth and breaks under sustainable systems. There are serious issues with stock markets and social security systems depending on infinite growth. It's not surprising to me that a lot of people who depend on the current economic system would be upset to think about declining populations. Last year i spent some months in Japan in the countryside. Many of the countryside towns are drying up. As the population rate declined, younger people moved away to the big cities, and the retired folks there are gradually passing away. Beautiful old houses in the countryside are available for very low prices (to a trusted person who speaks Japanese), but almost nobody wants to live in a town without a proper grocery store or hospital, far away from the train station, with every third house vacant and falling apart, when they could live a quick walk to a 30 minute train ride to Tokyo. And many of these abandoned houses are full of 40 years of household items, like furniture, towels, cookware etc. I imagine if there was a permaculture craze in Tokyo, and suddenly the young people wanted to go back to the towns and clean up the older houses and turn the vacant lots into gardens together! These are already walkable shaped communities. It's not a declining population causing the problems that I see. It's our reaction to a declining population, and the lack of systems that work under sustainable practices that seem to be causing the problems.

In a declining population, there are fewer new resources coming in, but there are more already existing resources to (potentially) distribute to fewer people. In the US, what is preventing a lot of folks from older generations from passing their homes to younger generations? Many from the older generations are selling their homes in order to afford elder care, which can be $11,000 per month for very basic memory care, when a person is still able to mostly care for themselves. Some people need jobs and homes, and other people need quality elder care and community support. That could be a good match. The people who need elder care need qualified, trusted, pleasant, and patient individuals to care for them, and a community to exist together with. We would need training and systems of creating community. It's a systems problem, not a population problem.

I'm not worried about the world having fewer babies. I would be thrilled to see more of that time and energy go to the kids we have now, and to not have as many people struggling to provide. I care more about babies being an intentional and supported decision than the number of babies, large or small.