For thinking having lots of kids is selfish

Has she never been on any holidays at all? My 15 year old is about to go on a plane for the first time because we have a big family and do cheap UK holidays or get the ferry to France.

But then again I didn't go on a plane till about the same age and I only had one sibling.

The planet is over-populated and in the UK we are building on the green belt and farm land.

I just know I won’t be able to split my time between 3 kids and I highly doubt anyone can past 5+ children

I have 2 and I'd of lived another but realistically, I just wouldn't be able to split myself between 3 children. I have no idea how other parents do it when they have loads

I know 3 women who, one woman has 10 children..... 10! My friend is pregnant with her 7th! And the other woman is on her 5th. I just don't know how they manage to give everyone the same time energy ect

No, she was abroad. Yes, it was a lot of responsibility but I was used to it by then. I used to take my siblings to the park for hours on my own at age 10 (the youngest was 4). Many parents of 10 year olds won’t even let them walk to the local shop on their own.

Several of my friends come from families with four children, and loved it. One came from a family of eleven siblings (I think she was 3rd oldest child and eldest girl) and loved it. Maybe they're all unusual in that.

The amount of time you have in the first place makes a big difference. I educate my three children at home. They each get more of my attention than if they were an only child at school and I were at work, I suspect. (Not a criticism of working mothers, but rather a response to the idea that children in larger families miss out compared to those in smaller families).

One of my friends has 4 and most of them are mid-late teens. She says that her oldest daughter says to her she’s never had a beach holiday abroad and my friend felt a bit guilty. Had she only had 2 children she could have afforded it and the memories that come with family holidays.

Having several children is expensive and they can miss out on normal experiences and attention because it has to be shared 4 ways. They also have to share a room so they don’t love that.

I think whether or not you’re self sufficient is down to your parenting and personality. If you didn’t have a choice it would be irrelevant how well you coped because your mum would have still holidayed.

My cousins were similar - although not with younger siblings. My Aunt met a new man when they were 14 and 16. She moved into the new man’s house leaving them to fend for themselves in the family home. I don’t know the ins and outs (like whether she did the food shop) but my Mum was always very critical of that.

I hope she was holidaying down the road, because that's way too much responsibility to put on a 16 year old. I know I'd have been capable at 16 but if there was an emergency, it's very young to have to deal with.

YANBU and I completly agree. My DH would like a third. I say no way

I don't have anything to give a third, not financially but of myself. I don't have the time or the energy. And the NHS and housing is already stretched. Imagine if there kids all have three kids of their own. We are all living much longer than we did in the past when bigger families were more common so the population isn't evening itself out. Two kids is plenty.

I was one of five and completely neglected. My parents were neglectful and selfish anyway but there being five of us didn't help. I was cooking dinner and watching over toddlers when I was way too young and it wasn't fair. It's one of the main reasons that I do object to the Radfords. Inevitably, with a family that big, some of the kids are going to end up with too much responsibility.

Yeah I guess - it doesn’t seem that well thought through. I think it’s less common for a child with only one sibling to develop the self-sufficiency that someone who is the eldest of four does though. She would leave me at 16 to care for three siblings while she went on holiday (my dad was off the scene by then).

I'm one of 7 and I agree. I'm sure there are big families that work really well but that wasn't my experience and it's definitely not something I'd want to replicate myself.

Exactly what I thought. There's no logic in that.

I don’t really understand that logic though because if she didn’t have the younger ones nobody would have needed looking after. The older ones could have looked after themselves.

I think the important thing is you have the amount of children you have the emotional and financial capacity for. There's no hard and fast rule of what number of children make the perfect or happy family. Some people love being from bigger families, some hate it and equally the same from those from smaller families. Everyone's situation is unique.

I know I couldn't handle a big family yet I have a friend who has four kids and handles it like a walk in the park! My husband has one sibling and they are very close. I have two siblings (one a twin!), neither of whom I speak to and I have no desire for any more siblings or feel I'm missing out on anything.

@farmlife2 I agree - having kids is inherently selfish. We do it to satisfy a biological urge. I have kids and have thought this before.

OP, my grandmother was one of 13 and she would have absolutely agreed with you. Most of her siblings had 1 or 2 children of their own because they did not enjoy growing up in such a crowded home. My grandmother would always tell me not to have lots of children. She said there was no privacy at home. She was close to the siblings that were around her age, though for their whole lives. My grandmothers father died when she was 4, her mum had to go back to work aged 46 and my grandmothers 18 year old sister was asked to quit her job and stay at home to look after her younger siblings (that sister had no children by choice, always said that she had already raised children). My grandmother had 1 child herself but in contrast to my grandmothers childhood, my mum always said that hers was lonely so she had 2 children. I have 2.

I think the size of family is a very personal decision. I had three young children when I found myself unexpectedly pregnant with twins - so I have five. I didn’t plan it; I would never have contemplated not continuing with a pregnancy (and it wasn’t an easy pregnancy, either) but once the babies arrive, you love them. I’m one of five, and I certainly wouldn’t be without my sisters. As a child, I never thought anything of it - it was just how it was.

5th of 5 children here. My siblings are so important to me and have been all my life.We spend as much time together as we can.
When we were younger, the age difference mattered, and we mostly hung out with our own friends but there was always someone around at home for fun. We all did loads of activities- sport, music, drama. It helped that both parents were teachers so finished work relatively early to ferry us around (or we walked) and had long summer holidays where we'd drive around Europe in a camper van.
We all helped out round the house. I remember having to stand on a step to reach the draining board so I could dry the dishes. We set the kitchen on fire (twice) but that was while my mum was in hospital. But no one was abused by having to parent anyone else.
You can be miserable and lonely being an only child, or being one of two children or being one of 10. That doesn't mean it's like that for everyone.

I agree OP, no one needs more than 2 kids - and those two kids will replace their two parents when they die. Not sure why you'd need 2.1 kids to replace 2 parents?

The world is already hugely over populated, we need a population decline - how many new houses are having to be built and green spaces destroyed to provide them? A huge town has been built on what used to be beautiful farmland near me, it's just horrible.

I know we needed younger people to pay the pensions of older people but that doesn't seem to be working out either - the pension age is getting older and older anyway and there are huge numbers of people that just don't seem to be interested in working and are just costing the system more rather than helping to keep it going.

Op I'm sorry you had a bad experience as a child. Ten children is a lot and it must have been very hard.
Not to minimise your experience but as others have said bad parenting does come in different shapes and sizes of family. I'm an only and my childhood wasn't great.

I have 6 dc. They are aged from 31 to 10.
I hope they have enjoyed their childhood.
In my head I have some very strict rules about what I need to make sure happens/ doesn't happen.
Eg one on one time, sitting down as a family every night to eat, taking to them individually about their days.

The main thing that enables me to do this is I was able to give up work. We are financially secure and I have the time for them all. We go on holiday, they all do clubs and sport and the they can all do the school trips they want.

YANBU my mum admits that she had four kids so that the older ones could look after the younger ones, which is what happened. There are exceptions but generally growing up in a big family consists of having to do lots of chores and babysitting, hardly ever going anywhere because of money and wearing hand me down clothes. My parents also liked being “different” by having a big family. Neither of them particularly likes children or playing with them.

I think there is (quite literally) a very big difference between having 3 children and having 10.

However you don’t have to want to have a third child and it is completely understandable that your own upbringing has influenced your life choices and desires.

I worked with someone who was the eldest of 13. They were late 30’s at the time, their youngest sibling was mid teens. Not really sure what they thought of it, we weren’t close enough to speak about it. I did find it a bit mind blowing that someone born in the 80’s was one of so many. I suppose very big families like that make me think “pre war, pre contraception” and even then, wouldn’t have been the norm.