Large families

[MadamMMA]

I have 3 kids and just manage to give them all the individual care and time they need, how do people with large amounts of kids deal with this or are they just processing them iyswim

The Radfords have 21 and I’m not worried

I am the youngest of 7 my eldest brother was 18 when i was born. I am extremely close to my large family and loved having so many older siblings. There was never a dull moment in our house. Don't know how my poor mum coped 😂 we regularly go out for family meals it's great.

I'm glad i am the youngest i got away so much more but it was challenging at time having 6 older brother's. They were all very protective of me growing up which was great

Six brothers, wow! I would have liked an older brother

I would have loved a large family but the financial stress I couldn't cope with. How do you help 4 children onto the housing ladder? Unless you are very well off you'll have your children living with you until they are 30...

The housing ladder/ inheritance is a very definite downside cake7pn, unless you're super rich.

I have five and absolutely no obligation to justify this by explaining the minutiae of my daily routine to the great and good of MN.

What I will say is that not all parents are created equally; we all have individual resources and differing amounts of extended family network/support.
Some of us, because of this are able to successfully parent more children than others.
Why this should surprise precisely anybody remains a mystery to me.
Oh and if we're giving gravitas to anecdata; nothing could have been more isolating than my position as an only child.
Of course that doesn't mean anything to the parents who successfully manage to navigate the shortfall of a sibling relationship upon their only, its simply my experience.

I have mentioned it before but I was referring to extremely large families, I should have made that clearer. No justification requested or required

Some parents struggle with three DC and some parents can easily manage more. People are individuals with differing abilities, shocking I know.

Yes shocking

@enko

*I know mine are better behaved than the single kid next door who may get a lot of 1 on 1 time but gets from what I can see zero lessons in behavior and manners.. I have told him outright to not speak to me the way he did once he came to get a ball from the garden (now his dad comes for the balls)

They are Similar behaved to my niece who is a single and had all of my sisters attention.*

Insulting generalised implication about the behaviour of only children there. Absolutely NOTHING to do with the fact they both happen to be onlies: it’s poor parenting, plain and simple. I am an only child and, had I ever spoken rudely to an adult, my parents would have come down on me like a tonne of bricks.

I'm the oldest of 7 and from age 9 I was expected to do nappies, baths, laundry, cleaning etc with my mother. It was not a childhood. No one to one time for anyone but the youngest two, when the older of us had moved out.

*You cant give multiple children the same attention you can give one or two, its just logistically impossible.

Most larger families Ive come across tend to rely on older siblings looking after the younger ones to some degree whilst the mum is busy concentrating on the new baby.*

I agree with this, I'm the eldest of 9 and I've got a number of friends who were the older siblings in their families and not one of us liked growing up in a big family.

Without exception we had to take on a lot of the rearing of our younger siblings and a lot of responsibility and I missed out on a childhood.

I see my mother as a selfish broodmare only interested in babies.

I think anyone using their older child/ren to care for their younger child/ren is not being fair. No matter if that’s one child with one sibling or ten siblings.

Mine don’t do anymore around the house than other children their age. They only do standard things like one sets the table, one fills the dishwasher etc. Just the general things that chip in to make a home. When DH was away for that 6 months the older 3 took on one extra chore each (and were paid for it).

Children aren’t babysitters or housekeepers and shouldn’t be used as such.

I think there are a lot of crap parents regardless of how many kids they have. Mine were and they had 4, but from stories I’ve been told they were dire with 2 as well.

I have 4 children aged between 18 and 8; there are nearly 5 years between the first and second. I would not have minded if I had had another.
I really hope that they don’t feel they have missed out on 1:1 time and I don’t think that the older ones have had to take up the slack in terms of childcare or housework. They are expected to cooperate and compromise at times though, and to empty the dishwasher because I hate doing it.
The older two are heavily involved in sport and normally OH attends every competition (occasionally it is not possible). We all attend major competitions, for instance a couple of weeks ago we went away for the weekend to watch dd1 competing at a national comp. DS1 is on a gap year and living away from us but took a days holiday to watch his sister, which I thought was lovely and his sister was delighted. They all are happy to support each other it would seem.
The younger two are more artsy, so we all go and watch performances etc (not son obviously, he is too far away!). We spend quite a lot of time watching things.
I have absolutely never scheduled 1:1 time, but it kind of happens. Do people really schedule this? Often a daughter will sit and chat with me whilst I am cooking or 1 may come to the shops with me etc.
I think it runs as it should do and hope the children have had a nice childhood. I was very keen not to replicate my own; I am the oldest of 4 and did a lot of babysitting. My father worked away during the week and my mother attended 2 or 3 church groups in the evenings during the week. She worked part time and spent most afternoons volunteering for something or other. She certainly never had time for me, not sure about my siblings, but her lack of time wasn’t because she had 4 children it was because she wanted to do other things rather than look after them. I would hate for my children to be so disengaged from me as I am from her.

The older children do not always bring up the younger children, despite what most people believe! There is a way to parent a large family that does not rely on siblings bringing each other up. How do i know? I have a large family and i rarely ask my teenagers to look after their siblings. I was one of 3 and ALWAYS looked after my younger brother, it’s not just large families where that happens.

I'm one of five. I would never have a large family myself. There was a lot expected of us older ones - minding younger dc, putting them to bed, taking them to school, lots of helping with shopping and household chores. It was the 80s and I know more was expected generally of children then but even allowing for that it was too much. I was doing a lot of this stuff from the age of 7!

My parents of course think they managed great, that none of us ever went without . Even now my mother wears the rose tinted glasses: we didn't have much but we were happy etc. The truth is they didn't have the time, money or emotional energy to meet the needs of 5 children and we did go without. We didn't go hungry but we definitely didn't have what most of our friends did. They could rarely afford more than the basics and we learned young not to ask. They were so busy with the practicalities involved in running a large household there was nothing left over for our emotional needs, they were kind of oblivious to those (even allowing for the fact that it was the 80s when children just fit in!)

As pps have said nobody ever posts to say they think their dc suffer from being one of many. The parents make the choice for their own reasons and need to believe that it's all great and their dc are happy but actually they can't really know. As a child your large family is just your norm, you don't connect your unhappiness or loneliness or stress to that and you get used to having to wait. Or just muddle along. Or go without.The squeaky wheel gets the oil so whichever child was making enough fuss or causing enough trouble got the attention. Not great for an anxious introverted child...

It's really only as an adult, especially as my own dc grow, I've fully realised how much my parents didn't meet our needs and actually how oblivious they were. It wasn't intentional but like everyone else they only had 24 hours in a day so of course they justified the compromises they had to make and told themselves their best was good enough but often it just wasn't.

Have only skim read but had to respond. I have 5 children between 13 and 5. I had the 1st 3 within 13 months. They never take responsibility for each other, cook, clean or do anything that is expected of a parent. They are children. They each get individual time, homework help etc from me. They're very close and we have a happy home. It's not perfect, they weren't planned, but they don't suffer. Our house is always full of their friends, particularly those with no siblings.
If we go to a restaurant, we see people cringe (obviously expecting chaos), but I'm always complimented on their behaviour by the same people

You can’t base your own experience on every other child’s large family experience.

My children don’t do the shopping, don’t care for any of their siblings beyond watching them for 5 mins while i hang a wash out, the teens have never babysat, they have holidays, days out, sleepovers, days out for their birthdays, the clothes/shoes/gadgets they want, support with school work/choosing their options/going to interviews, they can join out of school clubs if they wish, they often each get time to spend with me alone, my teen girls will often text me from their bedroom and ask me to come and speak to them about personal issues etc. I bust my gut making sure all my children are not over looked or feel pushed out and it annoys me when people suggest otherwise to be honest!

@big so pleased someone else is the same

it depends. Dh is the eldest of 6 and yes he changed nappies, did homework with toddlers bothering him and was expected to babysit a lot in his teen years. But I don't think he or the next 2 down ever really resented it because they loved having the small ones around and they are all close now. But he does remember being used as a babysitter/helper. My experience of his family (the youngest ones were young when I started dating dh) is that it was worse for the young ones as they had what looked like 5 adults telling them what to do instead of 2 parents and 3 older siblings.

I have friends who are from families of 8 and 10 etc. My experience is there was nearly always some kind of chaos or neglect with those families - bullying by siblings/lack of attention/one child not getting noticed. I have a friend where the family forgot her sister's birthday one year (she was 16). But I have one friend who has 8 brothers and that was one happy family - everyone loved going to her house. Both the mother and the father were very gentle but effective and very much in love with each other too. Everyone in that family was very kind to each other. I suspect they'd have been the same if they had 2 or 20.

I have 3 and lots of their friends are onlies - sometimes I do envy the amount of focus and attention the parents are able to give their children. I remember being at my dd2's school play and she had a big part and did brilliantly - for one moment I was the mother everyone was saying "isn't she great" to but I couldn't relax because dd1 was having a crisis at almost exactly the same time.

It's pretty obvious that the more children you have the less attention you can give each one. There are only so many hours in the day.

Personally I didn't even like being 1 of 3. I always vowed if I had children I would only have 2. As it is me and DH chose to have none.

I am amazed at how many big families there are on here. I would have thought with overpopulation people would stick to 2 children. God know what the future is going to be like for children of today

It's not in the least obvious mydogisthebest. Lots of women with moderate sized families choose to spend lots of time on their own pursuits.

I have three and when one goes somewhere for a sleepover or something it feels soooo much different with only two, so much easier! I do love them all but it’s nice having individual one to one time with them at different times. Now the boys are older though they usually fob me off in favour of their bedroom so I guess there’s not really much difference if they’re there or not 😂

I would terminate another pregnancy

Lots of women with moderate sized families choose to spend lots of time on their own pursuits

Yes Goodbyestranger but so could a woman (or indeed man) with any size family, large or small. The fact is that even if ALL your time is dedicated to your dc the number you have will dictate how much time each actually gets. If you've got five/six hours between school pickup and bedtime that's the time you have to allocate to whatever number of children. It's simple maths! And that's before you consider that babies and toddlers demand more of your physical presence so no matter what's going on with say, the 8 year old, it will often have to wait while the parent corrals preschoolers and feeds a screaming infant.

@Piglet89

Clarification so you get my intention

The single child next door is a spoiled entitled brat who lives up the the stereo type of single children. (Due to his parenting not due to him being a single)

My niece is nothing like the stereo type.

My point was that you have ALL sorts of different type of behavior due to what type of behavior you grow up with being tolerated NOT because of the level of 1 on 1 time you have.. I knew a child from a family of 5 who was similar to the child next door.. Again because that was allowed by her parents not because she was 1 of 5.