If you grew up in a big family.....

[DuggarMother]

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How do you feel about it now? Would you recommend it?

Not me but our neighbours had a huge family (13 kids) when I was growing up.
All of those kids are adults now- the youngest is 42 and the most number of kids any of them has is two. Some have none, some only have one.

I am the youngest of 5. We all had a very happy childhood and are all close now on the whole.
Eldest sis had 4 children
Brother had 5 children
Middle sis had just 1 son, but due to a high risk of an inherited disease that her husband has and they did not want to pass on
Sis had 4 children
I have had 5DC.

This thread is so interesting, but in many ways very sad for me to read.

My mum is one of 10, and I'm the oldest of 9, I have 4DC myself, my youngest sibling is 10 (I had left for uni by the time she was born)

We weren't rolling in money, but there was enough, my mum worked evenings to make money for extras like dance, football, karate, swimming, musical instruments etc, they are much more comfortable now that both DM and DF work full time and they only have 3 left at home. We didn't go on foreign holidays but going to stay with family was brilliant and we choose to do it now although we could all afford to do otherwise.

My parents (particularly my mum) was very aware of the need for one-to-one time, sometimes that was as simple as a trip to the supermarket but it made sure that she had time to talk to all of us. We've all achieved very well academically (grammar schools and universities) so must have been supported with that as well. Most of us could read before we started school... The house was healthy if not immaculate, we were fed, washed and very much loved. I don't know how my mum did it!

We did all take on responsibility, I probably had a lot more than my friends but no-one escaped, the boys were expected to pull their weight as well and it has made us independent young adults who were capable of looking after ourselves when we left home.

I love all my siblings, I love that there is always someone to talk to, someone to ring for a chat, someone to share a raised eyebrow with. If I find something funny, I know another 8 people who will get the joke... I love that there is always something to celebrate, whether that is DS9 getting a merit certificate or DB3 getting engaged.

I think being from a big family means that I feel like I know how to handle 4... I don't find the juggling too difficult. If DH was younger we would probably have another 1, but he's not and I'm happy as we are.

Hi everyone. Read some lovely stories on here about big families. Unfortunately for my partner I've seen the flip side of having a big family. Although, I don't think you can ever say it's because of the number of people, but it's about the people themselves. And in my partners case, he's in a family full of selfish, controlling people! But it's the fact that the aunts and uncles, all in their 40s bearing in mind, all live extremely close to one another. It's not always a good thing. It's like they are still children. They certainly act like it! They are the kind of family that boast about their "closeness", when in fact, me being a listener and a watcher, and being slightly on the sidelines, have heard them all bicker and bitch about one another constantly! My family however, although I do have a large family, we are spread out around the UK and also the world! We seem to appreciate one another more and value the time we get to see and talk to each other. X

Oh and it might or might not be interesting for me to add.. There are 6 of the aunts and uncles of my partner (obviously including his mum), and all of them have had no more than 2 children each. A couple of them only having the one. As far as I'm aware it wasn't due to any complications with conceiving etc. Maybe they thought it wasn't all that great growing up with so many brothers and sisters....? That family have certainly put me off having any more than 2! (I'm currently pregnant with my first). X

I am one of 7 from three marriages, and my mums little sister and dads little brother married and have 5 that we are very close with. I loved it, we were given a lot of freedom and at one time or another somebody was being left out but on the whole my childhood was amazing.
Mum worked in a greengrocer's so there was enough food, if a bit dented.
We always had birthday parties, Halloween costumes, stockings and advent calendars at Christmas, friends my age with less siblings had less than us...when we definitely had less money.

I am on my third baby, due May, and if I wasn't having csections I'd probably have 5 myself.

Eldest of four, even that was too many. Had to grow up much too soon, no companionship, no privacy, lonely, muddled, money only for basics. Youngest two did a lot better than eldest two.

I'm eldest of 5. We had a fabulous childhood in a lot of ways, although our parents split when I was 14.

We are very close still, have a fb chat that we all use every day. Xmas was great, 4 sibs home, 7 grandkids.

I have 3 and that's plenty.

We always had enough space, and money was not desperately tight so that probably helped.

I realise I came across very negatively in my previous posts. Just want to add that I love all my siblings and wouldn't be without any of them. Some of them I would walk over hot coals for if they needed me.

I think part of my negativity comes from what I see as a romanticized idea some people have about growing up in a big family, like it's all a bit like the modern Cheaper By The Dozen film when the reality can be much different.

We get so tired of hearing how great a woman our mother is, especially by the time the older ones of us were young teenagers and doing the bulk of the work for very little thanks. People seem to think because we were adequately dressed and not starving that she was doing a great job but I want more for my children than just about getting by.

Out of 10 adult children, 8 of whom are in long term relationships my parents have 4 grandchildren. I have 2 children, one sister and one brother have one each. They are both from the younger end of the family. I have lots of siblings mid to late 30s who probably won't ever have children.

The more I read the more I learn here.
A lot of food for thought and definitely a thread I'd like to read again so I'll ask MNHQ to move it to Large Families section.

As a mum of 7 all of your experiences (happy or sad) are invaluable to me - despite now dreading that my kids could grow up and say they hated growing up in a big family. I really really don't want that, but my eyes have been opened to the errors of my ways and I feel I have been given a chance to make things better.
I have a glimpse of what it is through the children's eyes and for that I'm very grateful for all who posted! Thank you

(just NC-ed from my Xmas name btw - I don't think I'm great, it's a response to another thread)

I know my children in a way my parents never knew me. And I am an only child. I think a lot has to do with how you face parenthood.

Our 5 get on will.
I think th emain issue is if you have a lot do you expect the state (me and other full time working single mothers) to support you. If not go forth and breed - we need many more higher rate tax payers bred as we have massively long retirements of people to fund -one of our biggest issues as a nation. We either need immigrants to pay that tax or we need to have lots of high earning children.

Perhaps we should limit child benefit only to women who earn over £75k and remove benefits for any child after number 2 whether it is the man or woman who has had more than two and whether with one partner or not.

My aunt married into a family with 16 siblings. They are all adults now, in fact they are nearly all grandparents. Once a year they all get together for a family picnic and with partners, kids, kids partners and grandchildren the group totals nearly 90.

Five of the boys, now in their 60's, were very close and went on to start their own company and live close together and still work together.

Talking to them, they still talk about the wonderful childhood they had and have great affection for each other.

I have always thought that lovely, I have three sisters and we are nothing like that.

Sure I read ids is looking into capping child benefit to two children so that one might happen. I don't admire people with large families sorry. I think it's selfish environmentally.

I'm from a large family, as is DH. I don't think it's a co-incidence that most of our siblings went on to have only one or two DCs.

There is never enough of anything in a big family: time; attention; love; money. I also think we felt a sense of responsibility for everything from a young age because older siblings look after younger ones, etc. It may just have been my personality but I don't remember a time when I didn't consider the cost of everything and the ramifications of every action. As a DC I didn't feel overly deprived because I didn't know any different. But, looking back as an adult, I just wish I'd had more chance to be a carefree child.

Ultimately, as well, bad behaviour was rewarded with more attention and even now as adults, I still see my DM responding more to my demanding siblings.

Don't get me wrong, I love my parents and my siblings, and we've had a lot of fun over the years. I also know that if I was having some sort of crisis, I could pick up the phone and most of them would come straight away.

ZingTheGreat, don't feel nervous that they might say that once they are grown up. People could say the same if they grew up as an only child, everyone's different. I'm not particularly for or against families with lots of children, like someone else said, if they've chosen to work hard to provide for all of these children I don't see the problem. But sometimes it's the children's own life choices they make once they are older, despite what the parents might or might not have done. With my partners grandparents they worked hard as far as I know, but I can tell you that they're "children" haven't turned out the best. I think despite hard work it's the underlying personality of the parent/s that eventually is the making of the children. Each and every one of them, now grown up in their 40s, can be very spiteful. Considering their age they haven't really grown up at all. I won't go into detail about each of their lives as that's entirely another story in itself, and you probably wouldn't believe me! X

KateAdies, I think that's a huge part of it re carefree childhood. I don't recall a day where I wasnt doing chores or parenting the younger ones. It robbed me of my childhood and I could barely fit in studying let alone leisure time.

Clubs didn't happen as I needed to be home, no holidays or breaks from it, no privacy, no friends allowed and lack of money played a huge part. My sister feels very hard done to as she had nothing new so could never have her own style etc.

I left as soon as I could and clearly remember spending my first pay check on a clothes blitz for my sister.

Lots of my friends grew up in large families and have not repeated that themselves. Some from finances but others from their experience.

Th environmental impact of large families is huge, the drain on the state enourmous and unless super parent then something has to give.

Daisyflowerchain that's sad to hear. The youngest of the siblings (carrying on from my earlier post) turned out one of the worst, without a doubt. All I've heard from the other siblings is that the youngest was favoured with being the baby of the family, but if this was true, maybe she didn't like being the favourite and this is why she rebelled so much as she got older. And when I say rebelled I really do mean just that! But then the eldest of the siblings, who had to help with chores and look after the younger ones etc, doesn't work and hasn't bothered to look for a job for years. She has no young children to look after, either. Just laziness. It's strange that there's not really a pattern!

My Mum was an only child (not her parent's choice) her she hated it, she said she wrote her thankyou letters on Christmas Day because she had no-one to play with .

As a result I'm one of four because she was desperate to have a large family. My Dad was a farmer, we had plenty of room (bedroom each, big garden, farm to run wild on if we wanted) and money (always lots of good food, nice clothes, holidays every year) and attention (four wanted children evenly spaced over 9 years). Growing up in a farming community we were a pretty normal sized family (but better off than most), my best friends at school were from families of 5, 4, 4, 3 and 2, all the neighbours had 3-5 children.

I loved being one of four and enjoy being part of a big family still, I'm closest to the sibling closest in age to me (we live a couple of hours apart but he comes to visit us regularly) but we all get on. DH (one of 3) and I have had 3, but unlike Mum I work so will be stopping at 3, balancing work and 3 kids is hard enough and we pay for a lot of help (cleaner, nursery) to make our lives run smoothly.

Unclerory, that's a lovely story. I picked up on where you said "wanted and evenly spaced out over a number of years". Which made me remember hearing about them (in my previous posts) wanting boys whereas they had more girls. Maybe they were focusing more on trying to conceive to have a boy, than focus on the girls they already had. Suppose I'll never really know but it's interesting reading all of these posts about families!

SoMany, that's interesting that many of your siblings don't have children, and are unlikely to. As I said up the thread, the four of us have had one child between us - my son - and while it's still possible my brother might have a child, neither of my sisters will.

It's definitely not coincidental. We grew up with a model of the family in which reproduction was involuntary and, if not actively unwanted, was at best something you shrugged about and put up with, like bad weather. We saw our mother have repeated pregnancies and miscarriages, sick and struggling, and frankly, none of it looked like anything any sane person would want to do. It took me until age 40 to decide I wasn't doomed to repeat her life, and my sisters made the opposite decision.

(In fact, I remember posting on Mn before I had my son, after a friend had remarked on how odd it was that none of us had children, asking whether people would find four adult siblings all over 35 who didn't have children by choice unusual, and a lot of people said yes, they would wonder what had made them decide that.)

In answer to whoever asked about whether it was the number of children or the personality of the parents that created the problems in my childhood - you can't extricate the two in my case. My parents did and do love us, but as someone else said, they were on survival mode, just trying to keep everyone fed and clothed. There was no energy left over for attending to any of our emotional needs - I was badly bullied for years at school, by a teacher and classmates, and not only did they not notice, but it never even occurred to me to tell them, because I was aware from a very young age that anything 'extra' I needed just increased the burden on people who were already spread far too thin.

Yes, I think the number of children was the tipping factor, on balance. There would have been more of everything with fewer of us. Yet it's hard to blame my parents as individuals for the religious and social conservatism of 60s and 70s Ireland - they were uneducated, had absorbed the unthinking Catholicism of their time and social class, and had no thought of anything other than trudging on with whatever life threw at them. Unfortunately, we were part of what life threw at them.

(Possible incredible anecdote for anyone who isn't familiar with the history of contraception in Ireland - after her sixth or seventh pregnancy, my mother was seen by a progressive Church of Ireland doctor, who put her on the pill - my mother (who was not consulted) believed it was a vitamin that would stop the miscarriages. )

I suspect that a lot has to do with the personality types of the parents and their attitude to child-rearing, rather than the number of children in the household. The negatives being put forward on this thread could often be applied to a family with only two or three children. However, I was pretty appalled by that documentary about the British family with all those children - he's a baker. Their mother didn't seem to have any concept of individual attention, or home making really. She ironed and shouted and that was it. I wonder if she would have more of a clue if there were only two children, though. Suspect not.

Holy Terror WHAT???!!

HolyTerror

wtaf??

In our case it was definitely the sheer number of children that was the issue. Our house had plenty of space for 4 or 5, not 10 kids. My dad earned enough to comfortably support 4 or 5, instead we barely scraped by with 12 people in the house.

When the oldest of us were young my mother was very involved with us. She was houseproud, a good cook, made lots of our clothes and knit. She was an avid reader and was fun. By the time she had the last child she was basically a shell of that person. The only housework that was done was by us older ones. She had no interest in the younger ones schoolwork or taking them anywhere or bathing them or teaching them anything.

She chose to have us all. Contraception was available and she did use it after the 10th child. She loved having babies. I think it gave her the attention she craved in life.