To wonder how mums of yore did it

[Peonii]

I just read on another thread that "you should only have as many children as you can cope with on your own" and "three kids is already too many for most people to handle".I feel like these are relatively new ideas as there were bigger families in previous generations. I only have one DC (14 months old)and with that limited experience I totally get those statements. I am in wonder at how mums juggle having babies, recovery, weight loss, back to work, emotional transitions, career progression, another baby, rinse and repeat. Before DC I really wanted four children. But honestly WTF. How the fudge do women do it!? I would still love a big family but I am terrified for a) my body (it's still healing 14 months later) b) my energy levels c)the lack of time I have for things that aren't family related eg. exercise or hobbies.

How do women do it? Men could never. I have never been particularly the "down with men" type but having a baby has completely changed my perception of what a successful man and woman are. But I'm waffling. I'm just curious how women have managed large families and careers and life. I am frazzled after just one.

Late 70s child here. We were outside playing all day, only came home to eat. Bath once a week. I did a few activities but only ones that were close to home and that a sibling, or local older child, could walk me to and from.
Our neighbours had 10 kids. Three bedroom house, one toilet. It was total chaos. Some of the kids were bullied unmercifully by their siblings. The eldest was a girl, followed by a line of boys, so she ended up taking responsibility for the younger ones. Interestingly, she chose to have one child herself.

My own mother had a lot of help from her mother. She also had a ‘nervous breakdown’ in the 80s and when she was in hospital I was carted off to live with cousins and aunts.
DH’s mother had five kids. Her mother and a cousin lived with them so she had four extra hands to help.

Well the big difference is I came from a very ordinary background but one wage, my Dads was enough to pay for everything so Mum was at home. HOWEVER although it was grest for the rest of us she did later admit she hated leaving her job and feeling dependent on him for money. We were never short but it rankled so there is no perfect solution. I'm happier and more fulfilled as a working mum than she was, despite the mad stress of the early days. Also I'm 53 but even in the 70s and 80s did music, swimming, guides etc so it wasn't all free range !
This is completely separate from a DH who can't change a nappy, utterly incompetent and needs to change.

Mums with big families either have lots of support... grandparents, extended family etc. Or they are the kind of women who have an air of obliviousness about them and don't register how shit things are.

You are ridiculous in imagining everyone lived like this. I can assure you my family did not have lower standards, or Valium, and as a child I did plenty of extra curricular activites. What I didn't have was my mother hovering over me and making sure I was kept busy all the time, instead letting me fill my time in my way. In summer we kids practically lived at the swimming pool, our parents weren't required to be there, and we played happily with friends rather than having to be constantly entertained.

My gran was the 7th of 8 surviving children. Her slightly older sister (5th of the 8) had responsibility for the younger kids as their mum was either running the house or helping to run the pub that their dad managed. They slept 3 to a bed and on Sunday my gran (7) would take her younger brother (5) to the museum so that everyone else could get on with running the pub or making Sunday dinner.

My gran's focus was always on having a "nice" house. They lived on an estate of prefabs and were then rehoused in a brand new council house in the mid 50s. Her focus was always on cleaning and everyone looking nice (her favourite word) so that the nighbours would respect her. She and my grandad adored one another and would walk the mile to the nearest pub leaving my 3 year old dad asleep with his 1 year old sister - as did everyone else. By day, my dad would be sent off to wander the fields with the dog. If he wasn't back by tea time, the postman next door would go look for him on his bike.

My parents married young and we lived in 1 room in a shared house. Then i was sent 500 miles away to live with grandparents so that my parents could both pull double shifts to save a deposit. In the early 1970s I walked myself to and from school from the end of Y2 and stayed home alone until my mum got back from work. She was a nurse and an evening shift might not finish until 9pm.

My kids are now adults and were, by contrast, the central focus in my life.

Much good that has done me. I look forward to seeing how they do it.

I’m one of five. My mum worked part time, always (and sacrificed a lot financially that I wouldn’t do). We did some clubs but usually the same eg we all did music centre on a Saturday morning, different instruments. We did stuff together - baffles me when people say an 8 and 15 year old need very different activities - just do the same. Walk round house and garden or go bowling or whatever.

I have five and didn’t have huge input from family, need my eldest to care for the younger ones. I played with all my children and they attended some afterschool activities but probably not to the level I read on MN!

I do think that you have as many as you can cope with and live the life you enjoy. If you really prioritise the sort of self care that requires a lot of hair/nails/exercise classes then there isn’t going to be room for much else. If you prioritise a larger number of offspring you aren’t likely to be able to have a job that requires a lot of late nights and travel. So long as everyone is doing what satisfies them I can’t see any of the options are lazy or overworked unless you make it so.

This sounds a little like my wee family. I have 5 children and we all do our part.

My husband works very long hours in his own business and I do what I can to lighten the load. Mostly admin, picking up things etc

My older dc all have a weekly job and help out with dinner and clean up daily. They help the toddler get dressed and make him constant snacks as he's a bit of hungry monster.

But I don't do any sewing in the evenings I'm afraid and I don't iron either 😂

Expectations have changed. I am one of 6 including one disabled sibling.
My mother didn't have hobbies exercise outside the home, date nights, 'me time ' etc. She looked after the family and that was her role. My father worked all the time and was hardly at home.
That was just how it was then.

I might actually hoover the house if I had uppers in my fizzy pop!

I'm surprised how few families opt for the DH to be SAHP.

We did and to me it makes sense. Men on the whole are stronger. DH was perfectly fine doing housework and simultaneously toddler wrangling etc. He also had energy left to do DIY.

Left to me DCs would have ended up living in a midden eating what the cat could catch.

Looking at my own family, I think a few of the women kicked their husbands out as they were sick of having babies. Others had to work and looking at census records, kids seemed to get farmed out to family a lot: I found one household where a cousin had something like 6 kids there from various extended family? Of course, I'm making assumptions, but it doesn't seem unlikely. I can't find any records of my great grandmother living with her parents at all.

My MIL parented in the 1960s/70s. She would have spent majority of the day on housework and chores and just done the basics with DC.
When my DC were little I would spend majority of the day doing stuff with them and only the very basic housework (albeit with mod cons)
I think partly down to necessity (housework took longer, shopping more frequently etc) and possibly expectations from others

In the past most mothers of large families did not work outside the home so that meant they weren't juggling a career and family commitments.
Expectations are huge these days - it's very difficult to live on a single income so the vast majority of families have both parents working but on top of that we are expected to progress in careers, to look good, to exercise, to give the children all kinds of opportunities - ie. extra curricular activities.
It wasn't like that in the past.
Also older children were expected to look after the younger ones. My mother pretty much brought up the three kids younger than her. Her mother died when the youngest one was 5 (I think) and she became the mother.

I live in the countryside in a central European country and there are some large families around here - ie. 4 children or more. All of the larger families I can think of have the mother at home - it's usually the farming families. The mothers who work tend to have 1 or 2 children and that's it.

My mother's generation left school and went to work at 14

And helped look after the babies/did housework when they got home.

Yeah my grandmother had 16 children and it only dawned on me when I had my own child how crazy that was. My mam told me basically the older ones helped with the younger, everyone had chores and were out working by 14 and the majority married before they were 20.

I imagine my great-grandmother, a 'mum of yore' coped with her 13 kids by a) ignoring their crying most of the time, b) getting the older kids to help with the younger ones, c) not knowing where they were a lot of the time and not being worried about that, d) not sending them to clubs and activities or schools that set homework, had uniforms etc, e) feeding them primarily on bread and jam, f) not having any time at all for herself, ever, g) bathing them, at most, once a week, h) washing their one set of clothes at most, once a week and i) just generally not really doing any of the stuff considered normal parenting today. She wasn't taking the kids to baby sensory or bounce and rhyme, or ensuring they had tummy time or doing baby-led weaning or 'wait until they're ready' potty training. The younger ones were weaned by having the older ones feed them mashed-up bread from a spoon. I don't think she was really concentrating on getting her figure back between babies, not least because she was usually pregnant again very quickly anyway.

Her life was a million times harder than that of pretty much any modern parent, bearing in mind that in addition to having 13 kids in a slum, she also took in laundry and piece work, had an alcoholic, mostly unemployed husband who beat her up and raped her on a regular basis, lived through two world wars, and had all her kids pre-NHS.

All of her children had to leave school at 14 and find jobs and/or help with the other kids. My nan worked in a factory from 14 onwards.

One thing I remember vividly from my 1950's/1960's upbringing was my DM's mending basket. She always had a basket of socks and stockings to darn, buttons to sew on and repairs and alterations to clothes. The mending basket and knitting were her evening activities. Her darning was beautiful but she had a lot of practice!

I can't remember the last time I saw a member of my family mend any clothing

We have babies too old!

Women used to be having their babies in their early twenties. You recover faster and have far more energy.

Then add in - younger grandparents and a community where it was expected people would help - a neighbour mind a toddler, an older child take a younger one with them to play.

People also had lower expectations! You left kids to get on and play without your input, or better still, you had them helping out. A four year old shelling peas, an 8 year old plucking a chicken, an 11 year old helping cook, a 12 year old minding a toddler.

Got 6, dh has always worked away for days to months at a time. Fortunate he earns enough for me to be SAHM and we have workout equipment at home (cheaper than a gym membership long term anyway). Doing so much on your own is not so hard if you are organised, take a day off and it can get stressful as you're playing catch up. Social life is not a thing, lucky if I go out out once a year.

Presumably they often didn’t have much choice. And expectations were lower.

My GM (died mid 70s in her late 80s, 6 children, one of who died as a baby) once told me she’d asked her own mother, who had 10 (all survived) how on earth she’d managed without a pram.
‘I used my arms.’

This would have been early 1900s, and the family wasn’t even really poor by the standards of the time - GGF was a master craftsman.

I grew up in a large Indian family. Dad was an alcoholic. Mum died young in child birth. My reflection is that life in my environment was pretty miserable. We existed rather than lived and women were treated very badly. Domestic violence driven by alcohol was common and often witnessed by children. There was absolutely NOTHING a woman could do but suffer and get on with things. The days of yore were not good for us.

Realised all these stories of child-rearing are similar in a few ways to the approach advocated/used by the pronatalists in the Guardian article that did the rounds a few days ago.

Only the goals are different!

The older children do a lot of the work, a LOT.

Yeah, I'm only 51, but I'm the eldest of a large family, and was a subsidiary parent for my younger siblings from the age of, I'd say, eight. We also lived with extended family, so there were adults other than parents vaguely 'keeping an eye'. There was no really the concept of 'parenting', either, or certainly not in poorer WC families like mine -- you provided basic food, shelter and clothes and put smacht on your children, but there certainly wasn't a concept of lots of individual attention, emotional attunement etc. We dragged ourselves up.

More physical labour, less emotional labour for parents.

It was an unhappy upbringing.