To wonder how the huge American families can afford it?

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So you have blogging families who have like 9,10,11,12+ kids.

HOW??

But it’s not just housing and food.
How do they afford tertiary education and healthcare?

The Duggars and their crowd use some form of Christian health care insurance. Jessa was advertising it recently. I'm not sure how it works exactly but it seems to have a charitable element.

Many of them are Christian fundamentalists grifting. They live in cheap parts of the UK and don't get healthcare.
Don't go down that rabbit hole, is all I can say. An awful patriarchial branch of "Christianity".

The ones I knew the father had a good job that paid well and covered medical dental and optical for the whole family and the mother stayed home to allow him to work in that great job.
Each child under 18 is a deduction on your taxes. So married filing joint with something like 8 kids gives you a check back from the Government each year even if you declare them on your taxes so less money is taken out each month.

It's not a crime to be curious...

Ok.

But things like (say) swimming lessons or clubs or going out as aa family or school events etc must be prohibitively expensive?

I can't imagine putting 4 kids though swimming lessons at the same sort time.

Or is it a case of them not doing things like that?

I am.

It's just intend to see more American families in SM I suppose.

Like someone (I think the Dougherty Dozen) or something did a Costco "haul" the bought something like600 bottles of water, 300 bottles of Gatorade,250 Sunny D and 100 bottles of Fruit Shoot equivalent (can't remember the name) it's jus got me wondering how can they afford that kind of thing. They're hardly essentials.

Yes, it would probably be more interesting to see how a family raises 11 kids in the UK with everything being more expensive in relative terms.

Yeah but how does that work? Where do you find the time/energy to homeschool 15 children, cook, clean, do laundry for an enormous family, run a successful business and grow your own food.

Yeah but how does that work? Where do you find the time/energy to homeschool 15 children, cook, clean, do laundry for an enormous family, run a successful business and grow your own food

If you have 15 kids, most of them are unpaid labour. The older girls will do the cooking and cleaning and look after the younger kids. The older boys will be working on the farm.

None of them are going to college or swimming lessons (local municipal pool will likely be an hour’s drive away, so that isn’t really a thing in really rural areas).

I grew up with families of 9-13 (not in the US). They mostly had multiple children in one bedroom and did stuff like go to the bakery and buy the bread that they had left at the end of the day etc. They had an apple for a snack, not a punnet of blueberries. Things like that.

I don't know exactly how they do it, but the Mum seems to have boundless energy. And she's bloody good at organising, which I suspect is a must. Some of the children have, in fact, gone to college. They choose their life path and she helps them follow it, whether that's college or entrepreneurship. The older ones all seem to have fulfilling careers (and of course, you only see the best stuff on social media.)

I'm one of seven children, and yeah, you do get used to helping out around the house, but IMO that's not a bad thing. I had to teach my husband how to do household stuff because his parents (Dad too) did it all for him as he was growing up. That was annoying. I also knew how to take care of babies when I had my own so that was jolly helpful. None of the childcare element of having a baby was a problem, just the parenting bit.

It's an older fashioned lifestyle with the help of the technology our grandparents didn't have. Much easier to keep on top of laundry with a washing machine and dryer, or keep the house clean with a vacuum cleaner. Not the life for me, but that family seems to do it well.

This is kind of bollocksy and a misconception about big families.

For a start they don’t all live on farms secondly, when you have loads of kids they’re never the same age, usually a mix of babies through to mid or older teens. So many people now have 2 kids 2 years apart that they’re used to only parenting one age category at a time. Teens can make their own lunch, get themselves to school, do most of their own chores like laundry etc. So the pressure is off there. It’s not ‘unpaid labour’ to occasionally watch your younger sibling or have chores to do in the family home.

So many kids are lazy/selfish/incompetent now, relying on their parents to do everything for them - I know 16 year olds who still have their packed lunch made and all their cleaning and laundry done by their mum. It’s actually very good for older kids and teens to take responsibility for themselves, learn to live communally and not have their parents catering to their every last whim.

For a start they don’t all live on farms Wink secondly, when you have loads of kids they’re never the same age, usually a mix of babies through to mid or older teens. So many people now have 2 kids 2 years apart that they’re used to only parenting one age category at a time. Teens can make their own lunch, get themselves to school, do most of their own chores like laundry etc. So the pressure is off there. It’s not ‘unpaid labour’ to occasionally watch your younger sibling or have chores to do in the family home.
This is a good point too. When you have a large family you might have adult children and still have babies/pre-schoolers in the house. The adult children might have left home.

My two youngest sisters were born when I was a teenager, and I'm the 3rd child in our family. My oldest sister was a uni when #6 came along, and then big bro and I were at uni when #7 was born and big sis had started working.

@Cuppasoupmonster I thought we were talking about a specific, famous Mormon homesteading/home ed family - obviously not all large families live on farms, home educate, or are deeply religious. But that particular family do.

I don't know if we're talking about the same family here? I wouldn't think the one I'm thinking of is famous.

@Cantstandbullshit Thank you mam, and in the spirit of Christmas let’s stop creating foolish threads to bash and make fun of other people

That's three quarters of the Internet gone then the rest is just cat videos

Have you seen the dougherty dozens outgoings????

Most Americans don't pay for swimming lessons or driving lessons. Maybe the former, though it can be cheap. But driving lessons are usually done by family members on private land or in a big parking lot (at certain schools there are driving lessons, but they tend to be brief/large). In rural places, a lot of kids are taught to drive really young (like 13 or 14) on private land or back roads. And a lot of the children I've met here just were taught to swim by family too. It was very different from my own experience at home, but it makes a certain degree of sense.

Food and cars tend to be more expensive. Petrol, housing, and taxes are less. Most of these families don't go on holidays outside of visiting family or going to national parks.

Out of over 330 million people, you're seeing a handful of wealthy ones, ones with inherited property and land, ones with jobs that are far better paid compared to in the UK, and they've fitted a particular demographic (usually white/preferably blond and almost always Protestant of some description) that attracts interest from people and sponsors. It's a larger pool for these people to emerge from.

I'm American, from Texas, and I no one paid for my swimming lessons or my driving lessons. In fact, I paid for swimming lessons from my pocket money at the YWCA and I didn't learn to drive until I was 28 because only then could I afford the lessons.

i am American and love to visit this site and love reading about life there, so it makes sense that people would be curious about here. Especially if what you know of Americans is from watching TV or online. That said,I have to say that I can’t remember being without health insurance except maybe when I was very young. It’s offered at most jobs. And the cost for family coverage is the same, regardless of the family size. My son is 33, I have know people in four different states who have had babies over the years and have friends in nursing (delivery) and never heard of a mother being put on a “ward” until I came here to mumsnet. Even the poorest mother gets Medicaid, which is government insurance for the poor, and she will get a private room like anyone else. Some people choose midwives, but most people have a doctor deliver. As for vacation time, I think I get more than average with 27 full days off a year. I am not rich, by a long shot. I earn $52,000 a year and DH is on disability and a part time job so adds maybe $20,000-so we are really very average here. My house is small, 1200 square feet and a large garage. It would cost about $400,000 to buy now. I live in Florida and never heard of anyone having to pay for swim or driving lessons. I think the average American family has less than two children now. A family with more than four is extremely unusual, a family with eleven kids is rare, usually half adopted. And not everyone eats processed crap. I work full time and when I say I cook from scratch, I mean I can turn out a loaf of bread without an issue, and bake and cook everything myself. Son is a chef and also cooks, as do most of my friends. I love reading mumsnet and I know people on mumsnet are fascinated by the different life here, too. I have learned so much about another country just by being on this site, and I hope people will look at our part of the world with an open mind, too.

Thanks for the insight- that’s fascinating. The average family home in the UK is 1000sq ft so your home wouldn’t be considered small here- though I can imagine relative to American standards it’s small.

Who pays for swimming or driving lessons if you don’t- are they provided free of charge by the government?

I've just come back from 9 days on Long Island, NY and I can confirm supermarket prices there are through the roof, even Lidl was expensive - about 2 to 2.5 times more than here. I was shocked. My friends house was $750k it's about 1500sq feet - same as my house in West Midlands which is valued c£450k. Outside of the city and now 'well to do' areas, houses are much cheaper.
We were told that base salaries in NY are c$80k, so quite a bit more than UK salaries, so maybe they can afford more kids... However imo having that many kids is immoral when we're facing a climate emergency...

No driver’s ed offered at your school?

There are ultra orthodox Jewish families with 12 kids. Mainly live in London or Manchester so not the cheapest places. Kosher food is generally more expensive too..they do manage it so it does exist here's.