Large Families

[Czerny88]

I'm trying to understand the psychology behind people having large families (by which I mean anything over three children, I guess). NB I'm thinking about people in the 21st century, in the West, with access to contraception and low infant mortality, who don't belong to a culture where it is particularly encouraged to have a large number of children, such as Judaism. And obviously there are circumstances such as multiple births which don't apply.

My visceral feeling is that it is often wrong on many levels. In attempting to enunciate why, I would say people should not have more children than they can afford, than they have time to care for, than can fit comfortably in their living accommodation.

And even in the case where the parents are very wealthy, have a huge house and extra support such as a nanny, there is still the hugely important issue of over-population. It feels like we are at capacity already, without room to increase the population by the amount would result by every couple having even three children.

I'm trying not to be too goady or right-wing, and I have personal reasons for the way I feel (I am involuntarily childless) so please don't be too harsh, but it's something I struggle with ideologically as well as emotionally.

So... AIBU to think that people should be more responsible about how many children they produce and not act solely on their own desires regardless of the potential effects on others? Or is that an unrealistic, draconian expectation?

I'm not going to discuss the economy of China with people who think the single worse thing you can do the environment is have a baby. It's an inane argument and there's no arguing with the inane, its a waste of time.

Doesn't follow children of big families have large families. 3 of my siblings never reproduced. Not entirely through choice
The rest of us had 1 2 or 3. Although given the chance I and at least one of my siblings would have had more.

Birth rate is falling in the UK or is stable I believe. The only reason why population is rising is due to people living longer.

Found the figures and you are right.

It's pretty irrelevant if the rate is falling in the UK. We need 5 in 6 people to die on the planet to achieve proper sustainability. The fact one small country may have a birth rate which if you add immigration is about stable is neither here nor there. However it does not really matter. Humans will not be on the planet long anyway. We are tiny part of this planet's history. So if we destroy much of the planet a b it quicker than we are doing is neither here nor there.

Theres a 95% chance the human race will die out within 10,000 years anyway, so really, who gives a fuck?

I often find that women who have chosen to have very large families always trot out the line that the kids love it, one big happy family, runs like clockwork, they all get on great and love sharing bedrooms blah blah....

Yep exactly what my parents said to anyone who'd listen. I bloody hated being one of 10 and so do my siblings. We were dirt poor in a two bedroom that my selfish parents kindly added a 3rd bedroom onto when I was 15 as I was the oldest girl. I couldn't wait to get away and wouldnt inflict that on my dc. All because my mum so loved the newborn stage. Idiot

Thats valid. But many large families DO love it and are very happy. Same as some single child familes are very happy and some are not. And those with none, or 2, or 3, or whatever.
Some families are happy are some are not so much. This is not news.

They loved us, cared for us. I don't know one single child of a large family (over 7 say) who liked it

I do. Just because you don't know them doesn't mean they don't exist.

My mum was one of eleven, she recounts a wonderful childhood and has close relationships with all of her siblings.
Her greatest regret is that I am an only child, due to undiagnosed primary anti phospholipid syndrome.

It is also my greatest regret.

I consider it rather cruel to purposefully have only one child, having none is eminently preferable to my mind.

There will be those who will wholeheartedly agree and those who will fervently disagree.

Ultimately it's really none of my business, is it?

I think the reason people are more likely to have views on large families rather than small is the using up of resources / over population angle which potentially affects us all. Whatever your views on one child or smaller families they do have less impact so it really is "none of my business". Whereas some find large families concerning because if more of us went down that road our own children could face real problems in the future. You may not believe that - as has been said already on this thread - but lots of people do.

As I stated previously;

If there were any evidence at all that the UK birth rate was rising then I would give credence to what is ostensibly concern.

As there is no evidence that their concern is legitimate then I'm afraid that it really is just an opinion which requires no justification from the objects of their disdain.

It is equal to my poor opinion of those who willingly and imho selfishly deny their child a sibling. It is equal to my concern for that child in that it is a wholly theoretical concern with no credible shred of anything other than anecdata to legitimise it.

Why is having one child cruel?

In all fairness it may be less cruel to have one child in contemporary UK society than perhaps it was twenty years ago when I was a child myself but as you have asked I will provide you with my rationale;

As an only child you are denied a sibling and all which this entails, another child to share your home, your parents' love, your toys and possessions.
You are denied an peer, an ally, a sparring partner, an enemy in close quarters.
You are denied a sibling to love, hate, feel envious of, to bolster you when your parents are harsh, to be your biggest detractor and somebody who will fight the outside world on your behalf.
You are denied a person who feels similarly if not exactly as you do about your parents, somebody to share your animosity towards them and also your gratitude.
You are denied a sibling when your friends have gone home to theirs after school, you are denied a person of your own age on family holidays, you are denied stories to recount of your siblings when others are praising or moaning about theirs. You are denied a relationship of which most other people have experience. As a child it feels like being excluded from a members club.
You are denied aunts and uncles for your children, you are denied nieces and nephews.
You are denied somebody to lean on in the case of parental infirmity or death or both happening concurrently.
You are denied the chance to have another person who is invested in your parents send worries about them in their dotage.
You are denied shared childhood memories, a link to your past when your parents are gone, an extra person to love your children.

I consider it selfish to deny a child of all of these things if you can possibly help it. Especially if you were fortunate to have experienced them for yourself.

However this is my personal experience, based wholly on my experiences and anecdotal evidence of other only children of my acquaintance.

Oh and of course a close or amicable relationship with a sibling (s) is not guaranteed.

The only thing that is guaranteed is that you will have no sibling relationship at all if you don't have any siblings.

It seems selfish to me not to at least give it a shot and to hope that your children will get along. In my again anecdotal experience I find that sibling relationships are rather a boon once both (all) have reached adulthood in the vast majority of instances.

You are only denied aunts and uncles for your children and nieces and nephews if you have children with another only child.

Food for thought though and I did ask.

I have a DS who is likely to remain an only and I do feel shitty about it but i will try to make up for those things as best I can. I didn't know he would probably be our only when we conceived him so it's too late for me to have had none instead.

You are only denied aunts and uncles for your children and nieces and nephews if you have children with another only child.

Won't this be increasingly likely with the birth rate now at 1.88 or thereabouts and no signs of an upward trend?

In any case my partner has five siblings, I'm still sorry that the entirety of my children's extended family stems from his side so to speak, I'll never have a niece or nephew who reminds me of my father for example in the way that my DP potentially will.
I probably do sound overly sentimental/romanticised but to be candid, family ties become ever more precious when you experience a district lack of them.

splendide I don't want you to feel shitty, this is after all the opinion of one random person on the Internet and in many ways I had an idyllic and privileged childhood. It would however of been disingenuous of me to have answered your question in any way other than I have.

You're quite right and I obviously share some of your concerns or I wouldn't feel bad about it. I guess we all just have to muddle on best we can.

I'd like to ask those of you who say that it doesn't matter that you have 5, 6, 7 or more, because plenty of people have 2, 1, none.

I see your logic. But how would you feel if suddenly every couple who could produce children started to feel as you do, and felt they had either a religious obligation, an emotional desire or a sense of entitlement to have at least six or seven children too. At what point would start to get concerned about what this would mean for the world as a whole, and for our society on a day to day level - school places, housing, jobs, resources, hospital beds, traffic on the roads, etc? Imagine in fifty years time, every woman capable of bearing children from now until then has had, or is in the process of having 6 children?

I think if you look at places like the Philippines or rural Turkey or Syria or the Ireland of 50 years ago where this has been and often still is very much the reality, you don't see some lovely fluffy Utopia where everyone's life is like the Brady Bunch or the Waltons, you see something rather more alarming and real where the majority of people live in grinding, depressing and relentless poverty that only the lucky and ambitious few manage to escape from.

I consider it rather cruel to purposefully have only one child, having none is eminently preferable to my mind.

on behalf of myself and my mother...f*ck off

Wow! I grew up in a large family and it is in no way the supportive Utopia Ellen thinks it is. Quite frankly I found the experience traumatic and now deliberately live half way around the world from most of my siblings and have only one child.

For what it's worth, those of my siblings who have reproduced have one or two children. A couple of them have 3 but I know for a fact that in each of those families one those 3 children was unplanned. We all got the hell out of home as soon as we could, live geographically distant, keep a respectful distance from each other and talk once or twice a year at most.

It's all very well idealising the large family but it's also worth thinking through how this affects the children i.e. Always having to share or have limited access to everything including money, resources, attention, parental contact and support, space. It's noisy, crowded, and chaotic. Just one example to think of, at Parent evenings at school my parents never had time to talk to my teachers, they just assumed I was OK as their time was taken up with the less academic siblings. I was never praised or encouraged to go further because, cost of Higher Education aside, they had no idea if I was capable of.

I see your logic. But how would you feel if suddenly every couple who could produce children started to feel as you do, and felt they had either a religious obligation, an emotional desire or a sense of entitlement to have at least six or seven children too. At what point would start to get concerned about what this would mean for the world as a whole, and for our society on a day to day level - school places, housing, jobs, resources, hospital beds, traffic on the roads, etc? Imagine in fifty years time, every woman capable of bearing children from now until then has had, or is in the process of having 6 children?

The fact remains that this is extremely unlikely though doesn't it?
It would be a wholly unprecedented phenomenon in this country if everybody who had the ability to produce five or more children actually did so. There is exactly zero evidence that this scenario is ever likely to occur.

Because of these salient facts I would ask you to consider the benefit and indeed the validity of posing such an unerringly unlikely hypothesis to those of us who have larger families.

Its akin to me asking those who have in excess of one or two flights per year how they would feel if every person who owned a passport suddenly felt inclined to do the same?
Or posed the question to everybody who drives a 4X4 diesel gas guzzler how they would feel if everybody with a driving licence decided to drive the same vehicle?
It's not likely that either of these things will occur owing to financial constraints, opposing ideologies, personal preferences amongst other things.

The same applies to family size and I'm afraid you're behaving in a rather obtuse manner if you don't recognise the flaws in the premise of your hypothesis Leavemywings

You know slug that you can't apply your parents' failings to other parents with multiple children.

Furthermore I haven't idealised large families;
I have idealised having a sibling which is a pertinent difference and I think largely evident if you actually read and assimilate the entirety of my posts, rather than illogically extrapolating their content.

My view of the reality of having a sibling is in no way akin to Utopia, I think I was fairly clear on that point actually, however in my opinion it is preferable to ever being denied the opportunity to experience the sibling relationship.

ellen I don't think the country has a populations problem particularly...I think the planet does though.

But I am sure we all hear an awful lot from people about how crowded the UK is, how the NHS is unable to function due to the overload of people etc.

The weird thing is how much this argument is made in reference to migration and how the moment you say 'overcrowded? Oh so you'll be having less children then?' suddenly there is loads of space! No population problem here.....