Large families

[GreeenFingers]

I recently met a lady who has a 27 year old daughter with 9 children! I understand she started her family in her early teens.
How on earth does anyone manage with so many kids I wonder?
I know that a few generations back this was the norm, but then people lived as extended families and were on hand to give support.
I wonder why someone would want so many children?

Could be all sorts of reasons. Some people genuinely do want big families.

Of course having children at that time was simpler in many ways - children wore the same clothes for days on end, dirty or not, had only a weekly bath, didn't have fifteen after school activities to attend and played out on the street as soon as they got home from school. My mother who is one of the eldest had huge responsibilities on her shoulders - she mothered a lot of the younger ones from when she was quite young herself. Of course the boys did very little and were treated far better than the girls, something she is understandably bitter about. In terms of food, pounds and pounds of potatoes were bought each week and dinner every night was potatoes and... whatever cheap meat was going. They also ate a lot of bread.

It's not a life I would have liked for myself I think - according to my mother there was a lot of fighting, shouting, screaming, etc. and she was terrorised by one particular older brother but of course her mother had no time for it. They were very poor, but in spite of that, a lot of them went to university (my mother included) and by now all of them, bar one, have very good jobs and very comfortable lifestyles. They didn't have huge amounts of "stimulation," coaching and parental input but it really didn't impact on their adult lives at all as far as I can see.

Still, I wouldn't recommend it!

Why are some of you trying to turn it into a fight when it was a perfectly interesting and civil discussion about how amazing our forbears were?

i would love a large family but i'm raising two on my own and just couldn't be happy (or afford) doing it with more children. i'd rather be in a partnership whilst parenting. just personal experience, not a judgement on anyone.

My father was one of nine and my mother one of six. They both spoke not of the economic poverty, because all your neighbours/family/friends would all be in the same boat, but of the poverty of attention . None of the nine or six went on to have large families.

I know someone who is one of six. She says if she is being completely truthful, she wishes her mother had stopped at maximum four. Six meant the end of days out/holidays and she had to spend a lot of time helping her mother out.

Santa four are now at uni - does that count for a goat?

Greenfingers ironing stopped to any meaningful degree years ago - we're still all here :)

no it wasn't ariel, it was a badly disguised attempt at encouraging others to bitch about single mum's having loads of kids whilst on benefits. it wasn't about amazing forbears, OP was talking about a woman she knows who is 27.

you can have 2 goats in that case yellow

Cailin and Letty, just to say how much sence you both speak. In the olfen days people were not as materialistic, didn't all want a different supper evey night, they were probably dirty, but so was everyone around them. We have different values now, and that is the issue I was hoping people would comment on.
Often eldest daughters were kept at home to help lookafter the other children and thier parents too when they grew old.

In "the olden days", large families were often liked so they could help out in the family business. The kids left school at 14. Everyone had to muck in, even before and after school.

If I could affort a tumble drier, I wouldnt have to do anywhere near as much ironing.My clothes are like cardboard when i take them off the airer.

Kids in large families do get attention from each other though. Isn't that as good, if different, from parental attention? (I'm assuming that I don't give all of mine as much attention as a mother of two - hard to gauge really).

Excellent news on the goats then Santa. Thanks for that :)

Santa, there is more to a discussion than an OP, in my opinion. Sometimes a badly thought out OP is brought into line by the subsequent and civil discussion, without insults and intentional derailing being necessary. The OP may well have wanted to have a pop at large families, but posters after her turned it into an discussion about how amazing these women were who coped with what we would consider to be actually uncopeable, if that's a word.

Just because something is in AIBU, it doesn't need to be a row.

It's true about the dirt. I would say to my mother "You must have all stunk! " and my mother would get all huffy and say of course not. But they would not have stood up to 21st century ideas of personal hygiene. I very much doubt whether our forebears were washing 11 pairs of pants every day let alone the rest of the stuff. Their clothes must have been covered with stains (bleeurrgghhh) and as for the beds...

Benefits or not. I'm telling you it's tough raising one child on benefit never mind 9. Someone would not have 9 kids for the child credit.
I do know of a family who have eight children, ;dad goes out to work and Mom stays home and they have a live in nanny. And in my book that's fine;they've feathered their nest very comfortably.

I distinctly remember going to infant school with a few children from a rather "old fashioned" family, shall we say - washing done only once a week (for a large brood), weekly baths, and I have to say those children did smell. But then, all animals smell, it's just that humans seem to have become really averse to natural odour. Perhaps because we spend so much time indoors it's harder to bear. On the other hand I have a ridiculously strong sense of smell and while I definitely don't like BO I equally dislike overly perfumed people who stink of hair products and fabric softener and the whole lot.

The OP was not " having a pop" at large families. Perhaps I should have lied and said something along these lines:
" I know this woman from the tennis she's got 9 children, yes 9, why would she so many?"and " Yes they are all beautifully turned out in thier Bodum /Catamini outfits, but she must be exhausted even with a nanny to help her"

Same meat, different gravy.

who turned it into a row ariel i think you'll find the only person to swear and call names was Hdee.

Not going to argue.

I was just interested in people's anecdotes about their grandmothers etc.

Truly unwashed people smell unbelievably bad. Never mind weekly bathing, where I live some people honk to high heaven.
Now Santa and Ariel, play nicely

ariel i'm not looking to argue either, just pointing out that asking why this op was posted in the first place, isn't starting a row. it's perfectly acceptable to question an OP's motives without it getting nasty. if HDee isn't around

There we are then. So no one is looking to argue :)

Little ray of sunshine, me.

Talking of smells, in Andrew Marr's History of Britain, he talks about how smelly we would have found post war, austerity people. Coal was rationed, therefore water couldn't be easily heated etc. And yet, they were healthy apart from when they died of cold in their thousands in the winter of '47.

Going back to Netmums naming tangent, I saw a FanjO on there once

Why post anything?? People post nonsence about shaving/waxing there fanny fanjo's so why not post about this?. I'd rather chat about stuff like this than discuss the inner workings of my minge.