10 kids? To judge it not to judge?

[Sekena]

I don't have 10 kids lol BUT boyfriends Dad was one of 10 - boyfriend's dad was a 'rainbow' baby born after a stillbirth -although doubt if this term was used then. Boyfriend himself is one of 5 - and all the sibs get on.

On MN - you get for instance a lot of 'only child' threads and parents potential guilt for not providing siblings and the opinions on these quite rightly are overwhelmingly that onlies don't miss out and these only child stereotypes are nonsense - which I completely agree with - I firmly believe an only child can thrive and doesn't need siblings. However - I also believe that a child in a large family can also thrive - just like my boyfriend's dad did. However if I was to say I'd like 10 kids - would I be judged ? I haven't decided on this at all - I'm currently pregnant with my second - but honestly felt my DD thrived as an only so definitely didn't conceive to give Dd a sibling - am delighted for this child in its own right !

I'm currently open minded about family size and am a SAHM. But what are your opinions on families of 10 like my boyfriends Dad's - WIBU if this is what I wanted ?

I would judge. There aren’t enough resources for people to have 10 kids.

My poor grandmother had 9 children in the 1940s/50s. Only one didn’t survive infancy, so there were 8 of them in my mum’s house, growing up. She told both my mum, and my aunt (the only girls), to get on the pill as soon as that was an option for them. She wouldn’t have had so many children if the option had been there. She spent almost all of her fertile years pregnant (married at 22, and started a family almost immediately- and then one child about every 18 months.) I’m sure her hysterectomy in her early 40s was a massive relief.

We live in very different times. I’m one of 3, and my sister has 3, and brother 2. I’m sadly childless. I would think a family of 9 would be much more rare nowadays. Mum’s family was far from the only large family in her village - there were families with 8,9, and even 11 or 12 kids.

My mum was oldest of 8, she hated it, felt she got stiffed with all the housework and childcare. She was determined to have a much smaller family with big age gaps. I’m the youngest of three and was raised similarly to an only child as both siblings were years and years older than me. I thought it was shite, I’d have preferred brothers and sisters to grow up with.

If the family can support them it’s no one else’s business how many children someone has. Who gaf if randoms on MN judge you? I find the posturing re the environment hard to listen to tbh. More women than ever aren’t having any children at all. If you drive, fly, etc. that has an environmental impact too 🤷‍♀️ I think there are far worse things you can do than have a large, loving family. The work involved though (having been brought up in a large family I’ve seen it!!), you have to be prepared for fifteen - twenty years of babies to have ten kids!!!! Not for the faint hearted.

That's the thing - I think it's women in the family who had to bear the brunt of this no doubt !

You are talking about history when you talk about the ten kids of two generations ago. Life has changed, the U.K. has changed. I don’t know how the family managed 10 kids then, but the mum would have been at home, assuming she survived, assuming all 10 survived. Which could be quite a feat back then.

We dont need so many kids now, infant mortality isn’t what it was, and population growth means resources are short. We have contraception to allow women lives beyond reproduction. Nowadays kids need much more investment, education and training to be able to make a living. So I would look askance at people having 10 now - can they afford it, or are they expecting handouts from the rest of us who can’t? And does the woman have much choice here?

I come from a very big family born in the 60s and 70s. There was no pressure on us to take care of the younger ones. My dm was very organised and while we had our chores it was no more than dc nowadays. My dad was pretty hands on too. Our parents were into education so school was stressed more than minding others.
When l look at family pictures now l wonder how they did it but at the time it was just normal life. I have absolutely no regrets and we are all very close as siblings. I love all the company now. Saying that none of us had big families.
It's a different time with both dps working now so 10 children would be mad. Imagine the childcare bills.

My grandad was one of 13, but then very large families were not that unusual back then.

I am one of 11 children, born in the 50’s and would like to say it was lovely growing up. Always someone around to play with. I would also like to add that we only ever had a 3 bedroomed house with lots of bunk beds in every room.
it truly was wonderful at Xmas time. House was full of fun. My father also worked all his life, was never on benefits but we never did have any holidays.
that would have been too much of a stretch. Now we are all grown up with children and grandchildren of our own and love more than a good old get together as often as we can. We did have hard times but the good days more than outnumbered the bad ones. I would not have had it any other way.

Salutations, fellow Mum-of-4! Brilliant* isn't it?

*and knackering.

I love being a mum, but ai also love having time for me and to wear other hats than just my mum hat. If I had 10 kids I would be too time and money poor to still be able to other things than being a mum. Consequently I would be a much less fun, interesting and well rounded person. I would also assume that other parents with a lot of kids would be slightly less interesting as people as they would have been to busy to have a life outside of their kids.

i would also judge massively from an environmental aspect. Nobody needs to make such a footprint on the world.

The thing about motherhood is that, no matter what you do, you will be held up for judgement and found wanting. So you may as well do what you like.

There are incredibly few women who would choose ten pregnancies (or, I suppose, if you had multiples you would reduce that number a bit) to get ten babies through their first sleepless year, wrangle ten kamikazi toddlers and guide ten teens through the slalom of hormones and exams.

This idea that the only thing that holds women back from this lifestyle is environmental restraint is ridiculous.

This sounds absolutely lovely 😊

My mum was one of 11, 2 died in infancy, Irish Catholic family. Things have changed a lot since those days, you can't compare then with now is a completely different world.

I’m expecting #5. A lot of my friends are currently in the 4-8 range. DH has ten siblings. I have seven. I don’t think we will have any/many more because my pregnancy history isn’t great, but in my experience, bar one family I knew as a child who probably wouldn’t have been good parents to any number of children due to personal issues, large families are lovely.

You cannot compare the environmental impact of a couple of flights a year with having a child. There might be people out there who decide not to have children, but population overall is still growing every year and the habitable parts of the planet is decreasing and will continue to do so quite rapidly.

Yep, agree.

I notice on these threads its usually the mother who gloats about how wonderful it is having so many children, I like to hear from the kids when they grow up.

aah that's lovely @Septagenariandaisy I'm glad you have lovely memories x

Same. I have 4 too and people are so vicious and rude. It’s either their way ie 2 or less, or no way.

Celine Dion was the youngest of fourteen but I think they’re Catholic! It was (obviously) a lot more common years ago. I wouldn’t necessarily judge but I would think gosh that’s a lot to be dealing with. I think it must be quite nice though to have a bustling household full of energy but I probably watched too much Walton’s years ago so have a rosy view of large families.

This a million times!
We’ve just had our 4th and, whilst I would happily have more, we can all have a very nice life with 4 so we’re stopping.

Number of children - quality of life is exactly how we’ve weighed it up each time.

I’m one of 4, have 4 of my own. One of my siblings has 5, one has 4 and one has recently had their first.
We all absolutely loved our childhood which has clearly impacted our own choices on family size.

All the research shows that societally, the less children women have, the better off they are.

Better educated, better jobs. Societies with smaller family sizes as the norm tend to be more equal

I don't think we should be harking back to a time where huge families were the norm.

On an individual level I probably would judge because I just don't get why anyone would want that many kids.

Or how they could afford them, give them enough attention etc

Ten was understandable 3 or 4 generations ago when you could bring in a wage at 14 and no one knew the impact of large families. Now, not so much.

What's Elon Musk done?