To wonder if you're one of the older members of a large family you ever stop and think

[PlayOnWurtz]

No more kids please mum and dad!

How much were you expected to do to support them?

To parents of big families who ask their children whether they like being in a big family, do you really think you would get a straight answer?

blueshoes surely that's equally true of only children, 2/3/4 children families. Some will like it, some won't. There's no way to know before they're born.

I think if there is any such thing as the ideal standard then it would be two or three children. More than that means time, space, attention, patience and resources can become overstretched. I think it's fairly obvious that there are also huge downsides to being a singleton. I doubt many parents of singletons would dispute this and I think most of them work hard to compensate for whatever their child may be missing out on by being an only child.

The difference is that many people have an only not necessarily through choice and would have loved to give their child a sibling or two, had things in their reproductive life worked out differently. So it seems harsh to judge them for something that may not have been a lifestyle choice at all, or a decision they wanted to make, whereas (in the last 40 years at least) having more than five or six children most certainly is.

I think there is something to the idea that to parent a large family well, you have to be a better than average parent. So some will manage that, but lots will not.

My DM swears blind that my sibling and I were not in any way affected by the years of DV that we were subjected too She has no idea about the years of counselling or the effect it has had on our relationships. We are considered close but would not (for reasons I don#t know) ever share these feelings with her. I think mainly because she was so insistent that we weren't affected by it impressed upon us that we weren't allowed to be. The way some of the pp's are insisting that their dc are delighted etc just reminds me of this.....

My DM swears blind that my sibling and I were not in any way affected by the years of DV that we were subjected too hmm She has no idea about the years of counselling or the effect it has had on our relationships. We are considered close but would not (for reasons I don#t know) ever share these feelings with her. I think mainly because she was so insistent that we weren't affected by it impressed upon us that we weren't allowed to be. The way some of the pp's are insisting that their dc are delighted etc just reminds me of this.....

This. My mother would also swear blind that "kids adjust" and we weren't affected by various things.

One of my dc has just had a major life upheaval and is needing some heavy support. My mother thinks we're mad taking her concerns into account and insists we should just tell her to get on with things and she'll be fine. "kids adjust", and she'll be ok with it in a couple of months....

Jed blueshoes surely that's equally true of only children, 2/3/4 children families. Some will like it, some won't. There's no way to know before they're born.

Exactly, if I ask my dcs whether they like being in a 2 child family, would they seriously tell me they hated it even if they did? I would not take 'yes' to be the unvarnished truth.

In other words, a parent's perspective of whether their child is truly happy in whatever set up they put in place will always be skewed, even if they went and asked their children specifically. The response is unreliable.

You can go to the bathroom by yourself. Anyone who says they didn't have a single moment of privacy ever in 18 years is lying.
This made me think the the writer is very slightly delusional because:

1. What a refuge!
2. Any one who thinks the bathroom is a good space for a bit of privacy has clearly not lived in a large family. There is always, always, always someone rattling at the door.

I do however believe that there are happy large families. Sometimes. And unhappy smaller families, sometimes, and very few perfect families.

2. Any one who thinks the bathroom is a good space for a bit of privacy has clearly not lived in a large family.

Wrong.

Me saying you could go to the bathroom on your own was actually written directly in response to someone asking where you would go to clean up after a leaky period so it's a bit disingenuous to suggest that I was saying the bathroom was a place for hours and hours of uninterrupted 'me-time'.

"JedBartlet

Cara - HTH."

m.popkey.co/a0b141/bgk9q_s-200x150.gif

Cara I don't think I'll click on that, thanks. HTH.

"Or perhaps people just have an aversion to arrogance and bitterness."

Why do you imagine people here would feel "bitter" about not producing a clutch of sprogs!? Au contraire, most parents would be horrified if they were landed with that. Actually, it's the stuff of nightmares...

The children in such set-ups might well feel bitter, though.

Me saying you could go to the bathroom on your own was actually written directly in response to someone asking where you would go to clean up after a leaky period

It was a response to where to have a wank wasn't it?

JedBartlet

Cool. Sadly, though, you will miss a gif of a sexy man telling you you are a "weird-o"!

splendide bathrooms are useful for so many things aren't they.

regards the parents of big families on this thread responding very defensively, you could all be my mother. If she was on this thread she would be telling you all how happy we all were to be part of a large (6 children) family.

Ask us (now adult) children, we would disagree.

But it's pointless telling our parents this. They have their reality, we have ours. It's just that their reality is nowhere near the actual reality.

Take something like helping out with housework or cooking or childcare.... my mother would say (does actually say) I helped out occasionally, and was always free to refuse. I would say I put in on average about 30 hours per week of unpaid child labour. Whether it was cooking, cleaning, doing laundry and ironing, babysitting, gardening, chopping wood for the fire, gardening, running to the shops or DIY. 4 hours per day was average. Many weeks it would have been a lot more. And as for free to refuse.... that's just a joke. There was no freedom to refuse. She just remembers it differently to how it was.

When I left school and got a job (at 18) and moved out into my home I was shocked how much time I had for myself now that I only had to work a 40 hr week. It was so easy. So many hours in the day. Housework was a doddle. Every Saturday I could clean my house from top to bottom, do all the laundry and ironing and still be finished by 3pm. Compare that to going to school fulltime and then doing at least 4hrs of u paid "parent" work everyday, it was a doddle.

I am now in my 40s and still think this. The hardest I have ever worked, the longest most tiring days I have ever put in, were between the ages of about 10 to 18.

I strongly disagree with the post a while back about much good it did us when we got on own place that we were used to doing work in our childhood home. I can buy that to a certain degree. Of course it's handy at 18yrs old if you move into your home that you can cook and clean and wash and iron. However, I could have learned to iron perfectly reasonably with say 1 hours practice per week for 1 year. That would have given me 50 hours learning. I didn't need 800 hours hours practice by the age of 18. That is just taking the piss. Changing a nappy is a handy skill, but I didn't need to do it thousands of times in my childhood to learn it. I am sure I would have coped just fine with "learning" it as an adult.

My mother also says things like "oh Els love helping out with cooking". This is hilarious.

1. I never "helped out" - I cooked, set the table, dished up, cleared the table, did the dishes. The most "help" I would get was a quick glance in the pan with a snide comment along the lines of "that needs more salt, for Christs sake are you thick".
2. I never loved it. I never even remotely liked it. It was expected. So I did it.

And before anyone jumps down my throat - YES I KNOW that not all parents of big families "use" their children in this way. Kudos to those of you who don't.

I am also firmly in the camp that says no way can you as parents KNOW that your kids are (or were) happy growing up in a big family. None of us now adults would bother telling my parents any of the above. It's pointless. They have their reality, we have ours. Every one of us hated never having an own bedroom, never having any privacy, never having enough money, never having anywhere near enough attention. Our parents live in blissful ignorance about how we loved sharing a room, how we all got on so well, how we loved the noise and bustle. We didn't.

Any one who thinks the bathroom is a good space for a bit of privacy has clearly not lived in a large family.

1 bathroom with 1 toilet in it for 2 adults and 6 kids, then add in all the visitors/kids friends, I would have to agree that anyone who says the bathroom is some kind of refuge is deluded.

Thought-provoking posts, Els.

My cousins and indeed their parents and grandparents were all large families (4 to 13 kids). The cousins have mostly had smaller families simply because housing them is more expensive than it was when they grew up - they grew up rurally and my uncles would build on an extra couple bedrooms every few years, and there was loads of space for everyone. Cousins mainly live in towns or cities where that isn't an option, so have mostly got 2-4 kids.

Conversely I did similar amounts of housework to elsbelz as an only child.

Large families I know seem as varied as any others - though the one where mother kept popping out another baby as soon as one became a toddler and no longer cute was particularly bad just ebcause there were so many children affected by the complete lack of parenting (think there were 12 in the end).

The families I'm closest to had 7 and 9 children, and really were very happy - as an only child I wanted to copy them, though figured I'd get back to DP after baby 2 (and found I personally wouldn't be able to cope with more children).

Please anybody do feel free to point out where I referred to the bathroom as a refuge, a place of uninterrupted unlimited relaxation, or implied that we had some sort of spa set up with a bathroom per person and no restrictions on time or usage.

I said if you needed to clean up after a period a bathroom would be the obvious place to do it, if you wanted a few minutes of 'private time' for having a wank you could use the bathroom, and that you were allowed to go to the bathroom on your own for fucks sake.

HONESTLY if there are any adults who were never allowed to use the bathroom alone in their whole childhood (0-18), yes I agree your family was too large or your parents fucked up somehow.

Probably about to open myself up to all kinds of sly insults about my masturbation abilities, but you'd have been doing very well to manage a wank in our bathroom growing up without anyone banging on the door. Clean up after a period leak, aye, but I couldn't possibly have cracked one off in there uninterrupted. Fair play to any of you who could get the job done under those conditions though.

Despite that, I still feel on balance, for me, growing up with several siblings had more advantages than disadvantages. But that's from someone who lived that, rather than lived parenting a large family. You can only speak to your own experiences, so the test of whether anyone in this thread with a large family is as good a parent as they say they are will be when their kids tell whatever the equivalent of MN is in 2040. Not the claims they're making now now. Just as those of us who come from big families but haven't then gone on to have 4+ kids aren't the ones you should listen to if you want to know what being a parent of many is like. If you weren't one of a large family yourself growing up but you have several now, you still aren't qualified to comment.

(Eagerly awaits a barrage of responses from posters who both come from and had a large family...)

HONESTLY if there are any adults who were never allowed to use the bathroom alone in their whole childhood (0-18), yes I agree your family was too large or your parents fucked up somehow.

It's not a question of their being a ban on using the bathroom alone. It's a question of practicalities. It is practically impossible. 8 people sharing 1 bathroom with 1 toilet in it means hardly any privacy ever. Yes the bathroom may be empty between 9am and 4pm, but no one was at home to use it. Mornings and evenings the bathroom (with the toilet in it) was in use more or less constantly.

Yes I think my parents fucked up, not in the least by not having the space to house 6 children. 3 bedrooms, 1 bathroom, 1 toilet, they should have had 4 children maximum. That would still have been a tight squeeze.

Emotionally and financially and to fit in with their capabilities and the time they were prepared to spend parenting (and on cooking, cleaning etc), 2 would have been more than enough for them.

I am one of two children and was very lonely as a child, I have 5 children and they all love their siblings, granted mine range from 22yrs down to 20mths but they all get on well, DD1 will offer to babysit in return for a takeaway but it's never forced on them (babysitting not takeaway).
DH is one of 11 and some of his siblings only have one child but one sister has 6. Get togethers are great :)

Mine might well judge when they are in their 40s but right now in their 20s they are more than happy with their lot.

I hope you’re right. I hope your kids aren’t like me and my siblings and just go along with my parents “reality of the past” for the sake of a peaceful life. By the time I got to my 20s the very last thing I wanted to do was spend (waste?) any more time dwelling on how shit my childhood was. Besides, what is the point if the person you’re talking to doesn’t accept your reality?

Nobody else's place to criticise that we chose to have a larger family or why.

I am not criticising you or anyone on this thread. I am relating my own childhood experience and critiquing that.

Our children are happy and mainly healthy. We did/do a good job of parenting.

My parents would say the exact same if they were on this thread. Their children wouldn’t. Make of that what you choose.

None of the above “doubt” is aimed at you personally. Just as a general rule in life. If I want to know how good someone is as a boss, I ask those under them. If I want to know how good a teacher is, I ask the pupils, not the teacher. When it comes to how good a parent someone was, I will ask their adult-child. And I would never expect an honest answer if the boss, teacher or parent was present.

I'd expect parents who have chosen to have a very large family to insist their kids loved it, otherwise I presume those parents would not have deliberately had such a large family. It's the grown-up kids' perspectives I'm interested in.

Me too. With no disrespect to those who are parents of large families, the OP to me was “what is the (adult) kid’s perspective on growing up in a large family” and not “what is the parents perspective of having a large family”. I wouldn’t even have read further than the OP if it had been looking for the parent perspective.

My Dad grew up in a family of eleven - my Grandparents couldn't even feed their kids, they had to go live with an uncle but dad still managed to have six kids. Did I love it - hell no! I grew feeling like there was never enough time, money, attention, patience, love etc. There was too much noise, anger, aggravation, neglect and alcohol.
Mum & Dad would say they did their best but they were not capable of looking after more 2 kids. No way would I consider having a large family