To think having lots of children doesn't necessarily mean you'll get a 'big family christmas'

[Whowillsaveyoursoul]

Went to pil today, dh is one of four, they each have two children and there are also some great grandchildren.
Consequently mil's house is heaving at christmas, always someone there until late in the evening from early in the morning.
We've had repeated ivf failure this year (mil knows) but she said several about how lovely it was to have such a big family especially at christmas as it meant you were never alone.

It made me think. Ok yes, if you have four children statistically you are more likely to have someone around at christmas. However I think dh's family are quite rare in that all dh's siblings live in the village they grew up in and can walk to pil's house. Same for the grandchildren, three of them are now married themselves but all live in the same village and pop into each other's houses all the time.
Dh is the only one to have moved out of the village (we are about 20 miles away). I think that's pretty unusual. Plenty of my friends now live nowhere near their parents and nor do their siblings. They've met someone who lives elsewhere / gone travelling / moved away when they went to university and never went back.

So Aibu to think that yes it would be lovely to have lots of children (god knows Id be thrilled) but it doesn't necessarily = huge family occasions.
Dh's family often have huge family occasions just randomly.

bananas almost no one I know lives within a 5 mile radius of family.

Just goes to show that the plural of "anecdote" is not "data" doesn't it?

On mn it seems to me a lot move away or leave their families as they aren't that close. A lot of families here see their parents/siblings daily or at least every couple of days throughout their lives. The only people that don't do that here whether an only or from a big family are people that were never close to their families growing up.

I also think it's rare to live near each other. My parents were born and bred in the East End. To enable them to buy they had to make their home in Kent initially, then moved two hours away due to work. My Mother's older sister moved to the coast, her middle sister lives in London still.

I have moved all over the place and am now half an hour from my parents but an hour away from my Sister. If my DPs job changes we will be moving North again and will be around an hour away from parents if not more. I think this is 'usual', particularly since these beautiful rural villages that we hear of that used to be full of families and young people now tend to be full of retirees as the houses are so expensive and have priced the young ones out.

My family was large growing up, but has got more emotionally and geographically fragmented over the years, so we don't get the big Christmases of my childhood.

Mil has 5 children, 2 local, 1 an hour away and 2 over here, all have two children each so we're not encouraged to all go over at the same time as it gets overwhelming in numbers.

People I know mainly moved for university so are away from their families. I work in a small town that is a vortex: once you've moved in, all generations must remain there for ever more.

I am one of four and there is always a big gathering at Christmas. God knows what happened when other three start having kids but my parents will always be busy.

How things thoughtless of you MIL.

I have a brother and a sister and lots of cousins and aunts and uncles but we chose to spend Christmas on our own.

My DH has 2 brothers, all married, 5 grandkids 1 of whom is married himself. We never have huge family Christmasses.

DH & younger BIL don't get on, older BIL is too far away for us to travel over Christmas as my parents are elderly & I'm an only child so can't leave them. MIL is a carer & usually works & FIL suffers badly from anxiety & can't cope with travel or big groups of people.

Multiple children/siblings are no guarantee of anything imho.

Do hope your MIL gets a big box of tact & empathy for Christmas

YANBU, OP. I'm one of four children - I have one son, but none of the others have children of their own or will have them in future, and the four of us live in four different countries, with only one living in our home country, geographically close to our parents. My husband's work means we can't travel back at Christmas, and in any case, there isn't room for people to stay at my parents, so there are no 'big family Christmases'. Which is fine - my parents are both shy, their house is tiny, and hosting anything is an obvious strain. I see them often at other times.

On the other hand, my husband is one of five, and the other four (with twelve children between them) live close to his parents, who also both come from big families, so there are huge numbers of siblings, cousins etc. they used to have enormous family Christmases when I was first with DH, but now find it too much for them. It's not an idyllic scenario either - there are total breaches with two of their five children for complex reasons.

She was thoughtless.
Bigger families alsp mean some spectacular family fights and feuds, and often far too much advice and interference being loaded on you from all corners. If there are multiple MIL, FIL, childrena and random relatives, the minefield of relationships gets even more dangerous.
I hope next year is a happy one for you both.

Think it depends on the area. My moved somewhere where very few people are university educated so tend to leave school and get a job then stay in the area.

There were 20 of us for Xmas day dinner. Some siblings have children, some do not. All are important family members.

Depends on the family. Larger families tend to have to share time, resources and money when younger so can miss out on a lot whereas smaller families tend to be a lot closer amongst my circle of friends. It tends to be those that go home for Christmas rather than the larger families.

It depends on how close the family is and the importance they place on togetherness. I come from a large family, we always travel home from wherever we're living and bring kids/spouses/boyfriends/girlfriends/friends/lonely strays with us. We had twenty something for dinner this year from three continents. I'm local now but in the past have travelled from Australia, Canada, South Africa...

Not all large family's will meet up, neither will small ones, it's how you raise them and the resources you have to accommodate them. Your mil didn't realise her comment would hurt you and probably would have kept her mouth shut if she'd known but her comment wasn't wrong, you're over sensitive because of your unfortunate personal experience.

I am one of 4 children and at one point 3 of us were living abroad and the other 250 miles away.We are all now in our 40s and have returned to the village where we were brought up and our parents still live.It seems to pull people back.i still know nearly everyone I went to primary school with (either because they live locally or their parents still liv ein the village ) which I think is quite unusual

I do think children from bigger families seem more close knit and family orientated.

Thing is, when you marry into a big family like that you will rarely get to be the matriarch with everybody coming to yours. As you say, even the grown up married grandkids go to hers.

Sorry, posted to soon, meant to say that no matter how many kids you now have or how few, you are part of your dh's extended family now :)

bananas I came from London, suburbs, and no one could afford to buy in the area so all the kids bar about one or two (including one who married someone well off) moved away.

It might be partly about life experiences too, people who go to uni or travel abroad might be more likely to meet people from other places and move away. My friends who married younger might fall into two categories, those who stayed local, if they could, and stayed with original partner, and those who married young and then got divorced and might then have moved away.

This is all anecdotal, of course!

PO how are you doing.

Did you want to talk about other stuff, I wondered if you wanted to share about how to deal with any insensitive comments?

OP not PO!!!!!

Couldn't agree more with Celeste. Its not the size of the family, it depends how close you are. I am 1 of 2 but we are incredibly close as an extended family - my Mum is one of 3 sisters, who have 8 children between them (nearly all married) and now 7 grandchildren. Wherever we were, whoever we were with, we had to be home for a Family Christmas. Everyone brought boyfriends / friends. It rotated between the 3 sisters' houses (at 3 different corners of the country). I think we're up to 30 or so people now.

My H is one of 3 - his family are not close at all. We do all tend to get together over Christmas but no-one would really mind if we said we didn't go.

The thing with it is there has to be somewhere big enough to all gather.

bananas most people know mainly people like themselves. Just because something isn't typical of people you know well enough to know their business, doesn't mean it's an "only on MN" phenomenon I know lots and lots of people who live at least 800 miles from their parents, and several of them have siblings spread all over the world - less than 1/4 of the old school and uni acquaintances and friends I am still in contact with live anywhere even vaguely near their parents/ where they grew up - in fact probably less than 1 in 10 do.

Bananas, what an odd comment. In my world, it's probably more the norm than it's not to live in a different country to your parents and siblings, to marry or shack up with someone of a different nationality, and/or to move around for work. My generation of Irish people all expected to emigrate, it was as simple as that. As I said up the thread, none of my three siblings and I live in the same country at the moment. I assure you it jsnt a Mn 'thing'. Do you think people take their entire families with them when they emigrate?

It's only since moving to very rural England that I've met people who all live within a few miles of their families - I find that exotic and barely credible.