what assumptions would you make about a family with four to six children?

[ChelseeDagger]

Not wanting to start a bun fight or being goady in the slightest. Just looking for honest opinions, whether they be positive, negative or neutral.

Good, it needs to crash. We're still fucked though with everyone thats alive now and advances in medicine.

Is there any good reason not to just simply refuse to produce more medicine, allow, for example, covid to run its course, stop vaccinating against polio, refuse life saving intervention in childbirth, close down all hospitals, etc?

Just curious.

@ScrunchieInNewYork

Totally agree *@oblada*

This is such a subjective conversation. For one mother, having one child might push her to the end of her limits of parenting. Another woman might not feel this with 3/4/5 kids and be able to parent them better than someone who finds it difficult to cope with one.

I also find it interesting how three kids is regarded as totally normal but four is apparently another level. I personally found 1-2 the hardest transition. We have four.

Also surely a family with 4+ kids who have help (whether paid or family or whatever) and a stay at home parent could in many situations arguably be able to provide more ‘quality’ parenting time than a family with two children who have both parents working full time.

I guess my point is it totally depends and we ought not to judge on numbers alone. Going back to my original point, I have never met anyone in real life who has quoted environmental factors as a deciding factor in the number of children they have. Not saying they don’t exist, just I have never met one in my experience. I have met plenty of people who have quoted cost or their ability to cope with / allocate resources to further children.

Im another one and to be honest, if I had my time over I'm not sure I'd had any because of the shit show facing the human and most other species in the decades ahead.

@theleafandnotthetree fair enough!

@mathanxiety

Good, it needs to crash. We're still fucked though with everyone thats alive now and advances in medicine.

Is there any good reason not to just simply refuse to produce more medicine, allow, for example, covid to run its course, stop vaccinating against polio, refuse life saving intervention in childbirth, close down all hospitals, etc?

Just curious.

I don't know would I go that far, I think I would instead tackle things at both end of the life cycle - i.e drastically cut down on no. of 'new' births/children in the first instance and seriously think about the very high levels of medical intervention amongst older people. My 88 year old neighbour is getting chemotherapy, that is the kind of thing I would seriously question.

@mathanxiety

Good, it needs to crash. We're still fucked though with everyone thats alive now and advances in medicine.

Is there any good reason not to just simply refuse to produce more medicine, allow, for example, covid to run its course, stop vaccinating against polio, refuse life saving intervention in childbirth, close down all hospitals, etc?

Just curious.

Er... Because a smaller population with a high quality life is a desirable aim whilst a larger population with health problems resulting from lack of medical care is not?

Saying we need the population to shrink is not remotely the same as saying we should stop medical treatment.

@PattyPan my point is in your statement, you love your sister.
You have this special love in your life.
I see it clearly in my 2 sister in laws.
The worst kind of poverty is of course a love poverty.

I agree it’s common sense the more kids you have the harder it is to divide your time even a trip to the park if one child runs off and you have another 3 kids.
What ages are you assuming the kids will be? Not all families with 5-6+ kids have sextuplets or other higher order births.
And what about parents who are actually able to control their kids at the park, and nobody ever runs off?

People are getting on the defence because they know it’s true.
I think parents of small families are going on the attack here because they know that families with more children tend to be better organised, and the mothers tend to be superwomen.

It’s funny how the parents speak from their point of view “I always wanted a big family”. Did the siblings though?
Equally, there are parents who say "I always wanted just the two", or "I have what I always wanted, one of each", or other parent-centered statements. They never consulted the children either.

Hold on a minute, are you seriously saying that parents should consult their children on a decision to bear a child?

"My 88 year old neighbour is getting chemotherapy, that is the kind of thing I would seriously question."

Christ alive!
surely after a certain age if you get cancer you just accept that this is the thing which will eventually kill you?
And when I say eventually I do so advisedly. An early cancer diagnosis in your eighties could give you a good five years left to live in the absence of anything other than palliative treatment.

Prolonging life is at any cost and age is bonkers.

@Shinyflecks I said I loved her so you wouldn’t think I was some kind of psycho who wishes her innocent sibling wasn’t born she’s fine but if I didn’t have her I wouldn’t feel like my life was lacking and I don’t feel like my friends who are only children are lacking love in their lives. They actually have a much stronger relationship with their parents than I do.
My DP and his sister who is a bit troubled don’t really get on, I think he views her as a bit of a burden on the family sometimes - he is the responsible one who has to take the slack and he resents that. So having siblings can be nice but isn’t a guarantee of extra love.

I would broadly agree with you @mimipie, but I don't think every single medical intervention is always justified or even ethically defensible. I'm in Ireland and my strong impression is that we take a very strongly interventionist approach with babies born with severely life limiting conditions - whose life seems like a living hell - and that this continues right up to end of life care. No one I would hope would suggest that the likes of polio be let run rampant but not all interventions are wise or even in the best interests of the patients

It’s not about consulting is it. It’s about taking things into consideration more to the point your current kids. I don’t see anything wrong with that. @mathanxiety

@mathanxiety

My children are pestering me for another sibling because 'five is an odd number'

I'm going to have to disappoint them I'm afraid so unfortunately I won't be in the running for the title of 'MN mother of the year' for the forseeable.

I'm gutted. Can't cope.

@ChelseeDagger

"My 88 year old neighbour is getting chemotherapy, that is the kind of thing I would seriously question."

Christ alive!
surely after a certain age if you get cancer you just accept that this is the thing which will eventually kill you?
And when I say eventually I do so advisedly. An early cancer diagnosis in your eighties could give you a good five years left to live in the absence of anything other than palliative treatment.

Prolonging life is at any cost and age is bonkers.

I agree, I dont understand why anybody would want it or how any doctor can stand over it. But that is not uncommon here. I've had friends try and open a conversation with medical staff about letting their very ill, days from death parent slip away and be given short shrift and practically be accused of murder.

Unless you know a family very well how do you know they haven't adopted some/all of their children? Does that make a difference to your judgement?

I know one or two families of six and more and sometimes think that they like babies a bit too much. The kids are all loved but their parents are not able to give them much attention and they often seem to end up with more responsibility for the younger ones than perhaps is ideal. Money is inevitably tight and they sometimes struggle with school work as the house is busy and there are too many competing needs to be able to read with them all for example. I think its a choice. There may well be many advantages and I think if you are wealthy enough to get help in then that might help but essentially always having a baby or toddler around means you can't really supervise your older children that effectively.

I can see why an elderly person would choose Chemo, not necessarily to lengthen their life but not to have cancer spread and run rampant through their bodies. Maybe I see it differently because having lost people (some before 40) to incurable cancers for which it was too late for anything but palliative care and seen it spread throughout their entire bodies...from breast or colon to lungs, lymph nodes, bones, brain, it’s an absolutely horrific ending. My aunt’s bones were breaking all over her body from the growth of her tumours (originally spread from the breast to lymph then bones) and still she had to suffer brain cancer at the end. It’s such an awful, awful way to go. Palliative care doesn’t stop the suffering. Chemo can have its place in palliative care. And yes chemo has terrible side effects but again, having seen both sides, it is preferable to just a syringe driver and morphine and slowly starving to death for months and months on end. I find the belief that past a certain age, people should be denied chemotherapy and allowed to let cancer completely run havoc through their bodies really frightening.

I would think

1. The children probably don't get much quality time with the parents - I would feel a bit sorry for them
2. They were either very wealthy or on benefits

I've got 5. We are independently educating so I guess we are wealthy although it doesn't feel like it as clothing and feeding 5 children is expensive and holidays cost the same as a small car. And a large car is extortionate.

Im well educated with a professional career. My house is large (although some of them
Have to share) and my children are all well cared for and well adjusted, popular and doing well at school.

I read my primary aged children a story every night, help them with their homework, show them things, take them places, bake and draw and even play console games with them (even though I find it boring). I don't think my younger children have less attention than my older ones did when they were small. And my older children have lots of attention too!

My secondary children practise their French abd spanish on me, watch tv together, bake, paint my nails and have lots of chats.

The biggest thing I have done for them though is try to help them in fostering a great relationship with each other. They are all really close friends and enjoy hanging out with each other. Not feral. In fact I'm constantly shocked at some of the behaviour of some of their friends from much smaller families. I guess I'm pretty strict about behaviour.

I do endless washing, cooking and loading of the dishwasher and am pretty organised.

@theleafandnotthetree

I would broadly agree with you *@mimipie*, but I don't think every single medical intervention is always justified or even ethically defensible. I'm in Ireland and my strong impression is that we take a very strongly interventionist approach with babies born with severely life limiting conditions - whose life seems like a living hell - and that this continues right up to end of life care. No one I would hope would suggest that the likes of polio be let run rampant but not all interventions are wise or even in the best interests of the patients

I agree with this as it happens (to some extent: in the case of compos mentis adults I believe it should be their choice whether they want interventions or not, even if we think it’s not worthwhile)

But it’s a bit of a tangent from the thread

On the subject of kids running off at the park, the worst bolter I ever knew had one sibling, who spent most of his time at the park in his buggy thanks to his sister's antics. It took two grown adults to manage them safely. Both NT, in case you wonder.

Meanwhile entire nursery schools had one teacher per four children at my local park and seemed to do fine.

No one I would hope would suggest that the likes of polio be let run rampant

Why not, if population crash is a good thing?

I'd think they liked kids and enjoyed family life.

In fact I'm constantly shocked at some of the behaviour of some of their friends from much smaller families. I guess I'm pretty strict about behaviour.

YY to the shock at behaviour of some kids from smaller families. It seems to me that many parents of small families think they can get away with less than stellar parenting because it isn't making that much of a difference to them if a limited number of kids run amok. It is noticed all the same.

@May17th
It’s not about consulting is it. It’s about taking things into consideration more to the point your current kids. I don’t see anything wrong with that.

Your basic assumption being that the existing kids hate and resent their existing siblings and feel they are getting short shrift in the attention department? That parents are run ragged dealing with bad behaviour, misery, and endless household chores?

Your basic assumption would be all kinds of wrong, misguided, deluded, ignorant, and prejudiced in that case.

I have four so I would presume they are a bit mad 😉

I have a environmental biology degree so I care about the environment more than the adverage Joe. I lived it and breathed environmental science for three years. The key thing I took my degree over 20 years ago was we was ironically fucked even then. Me having 2 extra kids when my sibling is childless make fuck all impact from.the course we are on. It's all far, far too late.