Watching documentary about the family with 22 kids!

[mothersdayhmm]

The Radley family. How do they do it? They seem to be really good parents actually. I cannot imagine how you cope with so many kids though. My blood pressure is through the roof just watching this! There are multiple dogs as well! I have 2 kids (adults now) and that was enough for me. How will they cope if all 22 go to Uni? My brain is fried!

I was a teen 30 years ago and a 17 year old having sex with a 13 year old then was absolutely fucking gross and illegal. It was not such a different time that this would have been considered in any way ok.

I’m sorry if this is uncomfortable for you but 13 is a child and not able to consent to having sex with a much older boy/man.

I've only seen small glimpses of this programme. But I didn't get the impression that they were good parents.
I don't think good parents expose their children's lives to the media and make money out of them

It certainly wasn't the norm for a 13 year old and a 17 year old to be in a relationship 30 years ago.

It wasn't even considered acceptable 50 years ago when I was 13!

Mum was a child herself with firstborn, and appears to have a learning difficulty. I think the older kids have mostly raised the younger ones.

But you can't claim child benefit if one parent owns over 60k . They have a successful bakery and money from media appearances. I'm sure Noel has an income over £60k

Even at the beginning the maths didn't work out
I'm pretty sure once Noel said the bakery brought in 30-35k. More than a third of that would probably go on food, then presents for 15 kids on birthdays and Xmas, a new pram, phone contracts for (at that time) maybe 6 teens plus themselves, school uniform x 10 kids, and that's before bills, petrol, insurance, mortgage , vet bills, and a holiday ....

now they obviously have a massively bigger income from tv, YouTube etc. The bakery is not their main source of income

I have met them.. so I can pass judgement on their parenting skills and well… it’s lacking. The kids that I have met are all lovely though until they reach their teens.

Agree with this. Also it’s basically monetizing having this huge family. The kids didn’t consent to being used like this and I don’t understand why this irresponsible behaviour is deemed suitable for a tv show.

It was still illegal 30 years ago, but yes back then it was much easier to sexually abuse children as the lack of online news etc and poor safe guarding in schools meant it was much easier to keep hidden. I’m not sure why you have changed Noels age to 17.

In the beginning they got tax credits. A massive amount of them.

But they're not benefits (according to Noel) because they are hard working people...

Agree @GrammarTeacher
This was in the 1990s not the 1590s @Maverick66

I just looked up all their ages and it’s crazy.
The eldest Radford is 35 and youngest is 5. So there is only 14 years between him and his mum, yet 30 years between him and his youngest full sibling.

Also the fact that lots of their grandchildren are older than their youngest kids. I wonder how active they have really been as grandparents when they have simultaneously been going through pregnancies and newborns at the same time.

It wasn't even acceptable in the 1590s tbh.

Age of consent was 12 until late 19th century.
But agree, it wasn’t accepted ok by some people with advice for men to wait till girls were 14ish.

( some colonies had an even younger age )

Never having been a great fan of the family or programmes I've watched a few of them and know much of what they're about. Playing up to the cameras is to be expected I suppose but something about them is not good. I happened to view a recent one which featured their friends in Scotland. The family whose teenage daughter had cancer. Sadly she died some time back. Heartbreaking.

However Noel is seen during a phone call with the father of the girl who was in remission from her cancer
He must have informed Noel that the cancer had returned. Noel's reaction "you're joking" was awful to hear. Ok I know those words tend to be said when we hear something unexpected but imo the editors should have scrubbed that bit.

Sally Lindsay will be making a fortune as the voice over. I've gone off her 🫤

They have about a million documentaries, I used to LOVE watching them and was fascinated, until I worked out the mum was 13 when pregnant with the first and the dad was a grown adult 🤢 I just can't see past that now

All fake and false and kids basically bring up the kids

I feel like both parents were adopted / grew up in care and have spoken about that? I think they both should have had fucking loads of therapy, rather than 22 children.

In their book, Noel says that he wasn't in trouble with the police etc because in those days the police/social services would only intervene in things like this if the parents wanted them to. So if Noel and Sue's parents didn't object then it wouldn't have been seen as a problem. I'm not sure how true that is as I would have been about 6 at the time.

What I don't get (and am a bit envious of) is how little the children seem to eat. I've seen them buy 4 large takeaway pizzas to feed about 15 of them or spending less than £100 on a Chinese takeaway for all of them. My dc would eat that much and there are only 5 of them. It's not like my dc are all really fat either, my youngest is quite chubby but 3 of them are normal sized and dc3 is like a rake. They all eat like locusts compared to the Radfords though.

They were adopted young and had pretty normal upbringings by all accounts. These were not children flitting between children's homes and foster parents.

They used to make a big thing about how they were bringing them all up without benefits, and the Mail and Express loved them as a result. They were artistically quiet about the fact that they were claiming full child benefit (in the days before it was limited0 to say nothing of the fortune they were claiming in NHS care, education costs etc.

Noncey Noel who was 17 when he got a 12 year old Sue pregnant

friends with Chris Ingham who tried to get a barely 16 year old autistic girl to engage in sexual activity (been others with him , his mother also groomed young fans)

I wouldn’t touch that lot with a barge pole or think they were good parents

They're still entitled to full child benefit - that has never been capped.

At the time it was tax credits that they pretended weren't benefits when they said they weren't claiming.

My experience of big families is an obsession with pregnancy and babies and once they are 5 the shine has worn off and they are expected to parent themselves. It goes very wrong for teenage children in large families because they don't get enough parental time. 22 children is not right.

I always think this when people start saying 'oh back in the day your mum would have helped with your kids' or 'it takes a village' (date and place of village never specified) - before contraception women married young and kept having kids till the menopause or death/death of their husband - so the youngest could easily be getting married and having their own kids whilst gran still had young kids at home.

Why?
Some of the older ones have been to uni / 3rd level education as far as I know