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.
