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

[DuggarMother]

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Well, that's what my mother says. It's possible she misunderstood. She's of the forelock-tugging generation when it comes to doctors so it would never occur to her to ask questions about a course of treatment or a drug. It's also perfectly possible that, in the paternalistic atmosphere of the times, this non-Catholic doctor saw yet another woman exhausted by pregnancies and with no control over her fertility, and decided to take a decision for her that would allow her not to consciously contravene Church teaching. This was a time when priests fulminated about contraception in the confessional.

I do think that a lot of the issues raised could have quite a bit to do with the era in which a lot of us grew up, almost as much as the size of family . Eat Shit Derek is in her 20s with younger siblings and has positive experiences. Generally, the 70 s and 80s were quite a hard time to grow up I think, with less community feeling that earlier but with, in our case anyway, high unemployment, strikes, and the same " sweep it under the carpet and get on with things" mentality as earlier generations. The social changes of the late 80s and 90s blew a lot of this out of the water. The sexual abuse scandals, for example, brought that issue out of the dark for a whole generation.
When I think of the way us kids were just expected to put up with things, and that major changes happened in our lives with almost no warning or consultation, as we're were "just kids" whereas now children's feelings are considered.

Nah its nothing to do with personality of parents.

How many threads are there on here along the lines of "2/3/4 children under 2/3/4 years old"- with people saying how much they're struggling.

It's often acknowledged that several little children at once is very difficult.

I'm not saying all parents of big families are crap, just that it's much much harder to be good. It's easy peasy to be a perfect parent with one PFB!

One of six and loved it, still close to the surviving ones. However my parents were quite well off and we all had our own rooms, we had a housekeeper and nanny and a huge garden so a lot of others problems didn't exist. Only had three myself though and two of my siblings are childless by choice!

We have tended to have two in a cluster and then had a break. My children at the moment range from being in their nappies to sitting A levels. Maybe that is why we find it easy. I manage it so it can't be that hard

Loving reading all the different responses. I'm finding this thread very therapeutic actually! One thing that I found (and still find) difficult is that because my mum invested so much of herself in her children, there was very little left when my dad passed away. She didn't work, she had no social circle. Being the youngest daughter, a lot of pressure came down to me to deal with the emotional fallout.

She's much better now as time as gone on, but I remember really wishing that she had saved a bit of something for herself for when we all left home - like a job, friends, a social life. Probably these are problems unique to my own family though, not specifically to large families.

I'm just so glad that my dad waited until we had all pretty much grown up before dying, if it had happened when we were all still at school I really shudder to think what would have become of us as there was no extended family to help out.

I’m one of three and think even that was too many for my parents. To be fair, that’s partly due to their personalities - my mum cannot prioritise and lives in a constant state of semi-chaos (always trying to do too much, disorganised, always late for everything). My dad is a head-in-the-clouds absent-minded professor type and was never much help with the practical stuff. So things would probably have been slightly chaotic no matter how many children they‘d had (or even if they hadn’t had any at all), but surely each extra child adds to the chaos.

My mum recently told me that she would have liked a fourth and I was a bit - I always thought she had bitten off more than she could chew, but apparently that’s not how she sees it.

I’m expecting my first and don’t see myself having more than two. Maybe just the one.

I was middle of 3, but the house was always full of itinerant adults and their children, Embassy staff who were experiencing British family life, au pairs from anywhere and everywhere, as well as relatives. I have a ridiculous number of first cousins who would often be sent to stay with us during the holidays, or we with them.

As a child, the really important unit was me and my brothers. I think we were very close at least partly because the house was so full of other people, and though most of them were great, and having other children our sort of ages about was good (one lot stayed for over a year, none were with us for less than 6m), they were not permanent.

I can't say that I enjoyed being part of it all. It was normal. That was how life was. As an adult I can see advantages and disadvantages.

If you have a big family - ie, lots of siblings - then you have to have a way of gelling them all together, which, from seeing some of my uncles and aunts, is not as easy as you may think. Some have done it fabulously well, but not all by any means; and when it goes wrong it does seem to be specatacular and pretty permanent.

HolyTerror I can absolutely believe that about the doctor and your mother. I grew up in Ireland too (born in the 60s). However, looking back at the families of the children I went to school with, and at my mother's siblings' families, the notably large families (all with 6 children) were notable because they were so much bigger than other families they needed a van to get around in. The (south Dublin) families of my schoolmates had mostly three or four children. The families across the street from me had 4, 3, 2, and 1 child respectively. Next door there were two, and when they moved a family of three moved in. I don't remember any childless by choice couples among my old neighbours, but there were several families with adopted children - I suspect people expected to have children, and adoption seemed to be always an option up to the late 70s anyway. I wonder if there were pockets of the country where people were more conscious of their ability to control family size.

That sort of thing was happening in the London suburbs too, in the 60s and 70s. I'm from a Catholic family (though not Irish Catholic) and that is why a number of my aunts/uncles have over 6 children. Our family doctor was a Catholic - again, not Irish - who refused to prescribe the pill to any woman, whether she was Catholic or not. He was the only doctor in our little area, and thank goodness that by the time I was in my teens we had a FP clinic up the road too. Many of my friends mothers were queuing up there the day it opened (without their husbands' knowledge of course).

4th of 11. The best I can say about my upbringing was it was a regime of benign neglect. I am on civil, if not particularly friendly terms with most of my siblings though I rarely speak to them from one year to the next. In my defence I live 12 thousand miles away from most of them. The comments above about the bullying, poverty, neglect and constant fights and noise all ring a bell.

The best thing about such a large family was the fact that when I had DD nothing came as a surprise. My midwives were surprised by my competence (as a older first time mother) until I pointed out I had probably bathed more babies than them by the time I was 7.

I always think it's instructive to note that none of my siblings have large families. Of those that have 3 children I know that in each case one of these children was unplanned.

When I started my periods in 1982 my catholic gp described menstruation as "the tears of a frustrated womb"
!!!!!!!

I am the eldest of 3 of an Irish catholic mother.
My brother - the youngest - is the golden child. Can do no wrong, is defended no matter how awful his actions.
My sister - the middle child - is a selfish moody nightmare. Her teenage years were so bad I tried to leave home twice. She made my life an utter misery.
My mum took every penny I earned from my part time jobs (babysitting, cleaning, waitressing) for years. It put food on the table, but she never took a penny from my siblings, not even when my sister started full time work.
Since my dad died last year, mum has had a pretty steep learning curve...she has realised that my siblings are no who she thought they were and that she cannot rely on them.
Sad.

My mums neighbour had 5 kids. No money and times were hard.
Of the 5 kids only one has had a child.
I think that's very telling.
I have 2 dc - both boys. I have a 5 year gap (not planned) but it has meant that both dc got lots of 1-1 when they were babies.

I'm one of 6. I never thought anything different when I was growing up (might be a generation thing-there were quite a few large families about & I thought only child or two children families were strange in some way!)
Now my parents are ageing, I'm really glad that I'm from a big family. Not all the caring/responsibility for parents will rest with just one or two (fingers crossed anyway)
I get on well with my siblings, we don't always see each other often,but they are always there for me.

I'm one of 7 and I loved it. Our house was full of love too, Mum didn't work so was always at home for us. Money was tight, but we lived on a 20 acre property and spent a lot of time playing outside and that's a brilliant life for a child.

We're all close now. There are occasional issues, as you'd expect from a group of different personalities.

And we all want big families too.

I am the middle of five (of six really, my sister died as an infant) and it was an incredibly positive experience. I loved it growing up and still do now as an adult. We are all very close still and see each other fairly regularly. We are all so different too, but each with a close connection to my parents. I know I sound evangelical about it but that's because I truly loved it. I don't recognise tales of being ignored, lack of privacy etc, as it just wasn't like that for me.

I would have had lots of children if I wasn't infertile - would love at least four! My siblings all have kids as well, so it hasn't put them off.

Human population is reaching critical levels. We are heading for catastophe.
I can't see how having large families can help, except speed us on our way.

Unless one of those from a big family is the one to work out how to save us all!

Very interesting reading. I am one of 3, definitely not large, but my younger sister (middle child) claims she didn't get enough attention from my parents!

I have just one 4 yo DS, (2 older DSC's who live abroad). I am too old to have another now, so in a way, am glad we (DP & I) have plenty of time for him and ourselves, without anyone feeling resentful....

"Unless one of those from a big family is the one to work out how to save us all!"

Oh yeah, lets' breed ourselves out of the problem. Can't fault your logic there.

Do people actually know how much of England is built on? 12% - and that includes green spaces (under 'urban & development'.) Actual buildings cover less than 3% of our land.

I was one of 5, but our Mum was married twice (married and widowed at 19 with her first son, our step brother), then 10 years later (or thereabouts), had my 3 sisters, and I'm 10 years younger than my middle sister. Our father died when I was around 6 or 7.

For a while I shared a bedroom with my step-brother before he moved to his own flat in Hove. Three sisters went in different directions... eldest left secondary education to get a job when our dad died, carried on living at home until her mid-20s. Second and third sisters went off to further education (middle sister, teaching in the Midlands afterwards, the youngest to London and then worked abroad as nanny to a millionaire and his wife).

Among my neighbours, one couple (she from Lancashire, he from Surrey) each had 10 siblings, so really big families!