Sue Radford, baby 21 is here..

[FortuneFrimble]

Daily Fail story here
21 babies! That's some achievement. I cannot believe her body is still in one piece. I feel sorry for those kids though. There's absolutely no way they can all have the individual attention they need growing up. Four kids maybe, perhaps 6 at an absolute push but 21 seems like collecting trophies for a hobby to me. It'd be interesting to see what families those children decide to have when the time comes. It seems like she's putting her own want for babies ahead of her existing children's wellbeing & that isn't healthy. I'm curious that she's practically guaranteed herself an endless supply of babies as her children have children. But they're supposedly paying for everything themselves so we're not allowed to say anything against them. I don't agree with it. Tell me I'm being U.

Sorry but all this ‘in the past families of 15 were common’ is bollocks.
Women who married in 1860 had an average of 6 children. Women who married in 1910 had 4.

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3865739/#!po=0.375940

This family are costing the state i.e us tens of thousands a year. When you factor in NHS, education (also imagine trying to get your child into a school catchment with a child army of siblings next door?), CTC, child benefit, refuse collections etc it boggles the mind.

Then you have the huge environmental impact of energy usage. When they are all adults, the will be wanting cars and homes each.

Brands and tv should not be supporting and celebrating this by giving them money. In fact I would not use a brand which supported them as I feel the environmental cost of this family is disgusting. They should not be being celebrated for this selfish behaviour.

I also feel very sorry for the kids.

The thing is those kids will be at a disadvantage to those from smaller families whose parents do give them individual attention. In the olden days when most families had loads of kids not so much.

MEH, can’t get angry about it tbh, I do follow them on sm. I do think they have deep rooted issues from both being adopted and that’s why they’ve had so many but I do worry enormously that something will happen to sue and Noel will be left to bring them all up. Although she looks great for having so many children on the outside, that’s no indication of how her insides look and I worry that her womb and cervix is probably not in the best states after so many.

I hear what everyone is saying. But if I had had the opportunity, I'm pretty sure I'd have been popping out a baby every 18-24 months for as long as my uterus held out. Posters are saying its a mental illness, but for me It's not so much a mental thing as it is a hormone and body thing. My body is just not happy unless it's pregnant or breastfeeding. It's almost like an addiction

Having more than 2 kids isn't something I can afford to do, and I have to constantly cram my body with hormones to hold back the drive to get pregnant. It hurts, actually hurts, every day

Eeek this is very you centred isn't it? What do you mean you have to cram your body with hormones and it hurts? I'm sure you don't take more than a normal amount of contraceptive hormones and I don't see how that hurts? Sorry, but as someone with endometriosis currently in a forced menopause to stop my disease spreading I'm just wondering what huge amounts of hormones you're cramming in which are causing pain.
Resisting the urge to not have any more children when you already have 2 really isn't some big deal. We have to make sacrifices like that as mothers in order to make sure our children have special and loving upbringings.

Well I'm certainly happy that all is ok. It's good news that sue and the baby are ok.

Wouldn't wish a bad outcome on anyone.

I hope they stop now though. She's playing Russian roulette now. And the kids and grand parents have to help out too much as it is without the addition of being a parent down or a baby with complex needs due to birth complications.

Ankther one to chuck in the floor to crawl around and be raised by the girls as soon as the attention for hang a baby dies down.

How do you take them to parties, buy gifts, manage all the ups and downs. My kids have friend/teacher/homework traumas daily- at Primary school and the teenagers, well the angst and then the commitments with drama, sport etc.
It’s very hard to balance with a very large family let alone supersized.

I am one of six dc, we all had one or two dc apart from one sis who has three but the third was unplanned.

Well sorry but I would not call being so selfish as to bring 21 children into an already overpopulated world an achievement.

As others have said, there is no way on earth those children all get enough time and attention from the parents. The older girls have said on tv that they have to look after the younger ones.

Just think what they have cost this country in medical costs - just the births alone cost quite a bit. Then there is dental costs, schooling costs, other medical costs.

They have been claiming child benefit for over 21 years now so how much does that alone work out to? Then there are tax credits. They must have had a fortune over the years and it makes me sick that they try and make out they only live on the money the magic bakery makes.

Families may have been larger in the past but surely not as large as 21? I am in my 60's and when I was young there was one family that had 14 children. They were talked about all the time and not in a good way. Just about all the families I knew only had 3 children maximum. I am one of three, DH only has one sibling. My mum (90) only has one sibling, my dad (95) only has two. Even my grandparents were not from large families either.

I’m more disgusted that children are starving because the likes of Amazon etc pay so little tax & the government are making bad decisions.

I'm disgusted at that too.

What I meant was the media celebrate this family as an example of "look how it can be done, you don't need handouts after all" while printing articles about workshy bastards who can't feed their kids because they're too lazy to find a job and it's all their own fault. (I don't believe that btw) The Radfords know this is rubbish, yet they're quite happy for it to be their brand if you like. Noel even did an article on how he thinks it's awful that people have kids to get Council houses.

I really dislike them (particularly him) and all the gushing about them on their fb page etc is ludicrous. They seem to have built a narrative round them that they don’t take a penny in state benefits but I’m not sure that’s what they said.

Why admire her? She isn't looking after her kids, the older ones are.

Some of her kids may easily have mild disabilities, but they could easily go unnoticed due to the lack of quality time with their parents.

I wouldn't be surprised if another 5 come along (assuming she doesn't die first from pregnancy/birth complications).

I used to follow Sue’s Facebook page. A couple of years ago she posted a moan about how one of their children had been allocated a reception place not at the school of their choice so would be in a different school to the other (I think they don’t go to the nearest school). Anyway she was saying how unfair if was and someone commented saying it was disgraceful that they hadn’t got a place and it was because of all the immigrants taking the places! Sue agreed with this comment and I couldn’t believe she didn’t see the irony that they are basically demanding one school place in every year is given to their family (when it’s not even their local school). But blaming immigrants for lack of school places is more acceptable to them.

Didn't one of the older children end up leaving uni to help look after the younger ones? I find that so sad.

Anyway, see you all next year for the thread about baby #22.

Sorry but all this ‘in the past families of 15 were common’ is bollocks.Women who married in 1860 had an average of 6 children. Women who married in 1910 had 4.

But not everyone on this thread is English & migration into England largely occurred after that timeframe.

I wonder what is going to happen once she can't have any more children. Her entire life has been based around been pregnant and having children. I really do think she has never considered the idea of not been able to have more. I fear it will hit her hard once the menopause starts

I think it's wrong to expect the older ones to do childcare. You should only have kids you can look after

Can't work up much annoyance tbh.

Yes, likely psychological issues. And 21 kids isn't good for the environment, but wasn't there something about 3 children being an unethical environmental decision? So unless we treat all families with more than two children with the same vitriol...

I'm in the 'each to their own' category. What's an acceptable number of kids? If it's two then I'm sure there are 10 people in her vicinity that are childless, so the impact is absorbed.

Agree with above post that there are worse examples of parenting.

There seems to be a tone of 'if we all had 21 kids', but who would want them? For the majority of people have the number of kids they can afford, can cope with and can conceive. Isn't that everyone's 'right'?

I also don't object to there being media interest. I can't imagine having 21 kids, I'm fascinated by how they live and how they navigate something that must be bloody hard. It's ok to be interested!

I wonder how they would cope if one of their dcs had additional needs. I have ds1 who has additional needs and caring for him is very time consuming.

Not she's usually pregnant when the baby is 3-6 months, so it could be a lot sooner than that!

In general I'm quite defensive of larger (4+) families in general and I don't like the assumption that more kids must = worse childhood.

I am good friends with a lady who has 5 kids and puts a huge amount of effort into one on one time with them, helping them to enjoy hobbies they're interested in, listening to them, helping with their education. She is totally devoted and her kids are 100% the focus of her life, they are all very happy. I look at her and I look at mums with only 1 or 2 kids, where the parents are just not engaging with their kids at all, ignoring them and spending hours and hours on their phones, packing their weekly schedule so full with things (I'm not just talking about work) that there isn't actually any time left to spend with their child, and just generally resentful of having to "make room" in their lives for the needs of their child(ren).

In general I think that it's the quality time and effort that you put into raising your kids that matters. There are only children out there who aren't getting their emotional needs met by parents who don't prioritise them in any way, and larger families who are doing a great job.

Saying all of that there are only so many hours in the day. Realistically it must be impossible to give 21 children the support and 1 on 1 time that they need. Surely?

I have 3 kids and it takes a lot of effort to make sure they're all getting what they need from me emotionally, and that the ins and outs of their lives is important.

Dobby I predicted this a few years ago and I still stand by it.

Once she can no longer get pregnant, she will have IVF and squeeze out those last few babies.

Once that isn’t possible, she will live her life through her daughters and encourage them to give birth

Her husband MAY walk out as he wants more babies

It completely blows my mind. Firstly in terms of her body, how it has coped with all these pregnancies and labours, it's actually incredible. But mostly in terms of what it must be like living in that house, the organisation required, the day to day chaos it must be, no one getting any quiet or space, no one getting to talk to their mum about their worries without getting interrupted, no one getting enough sleep. Ugh it makes me feel stressed!

I watched the documentary on them and they seem to be relatively self sufficient in that they run their own business to support themselves. I would hate having that many kids though, no time to yourself whatsoever and the costs of holidays, Xmas, birthdays, days out must be ginormous. I think the 21 includes the stillborn baby they had so technically it will be 20 lots of schooling/nhs etc but if they grow up to be useful members of society I say live and let live. Her body must be geared towards pregnancy though as if she has been able to carry 21 babies to term and only lost one that is a pretty good statistic. No way can they give individual attention to them all and I wonder how the kids feel being part of this enormous brood.

The children will be featured in magazine articles in years to come saying their older siblings were more parents to them than their actual parents ever were.