are parents of big families really 'more relaxed and less pushy'?

[stormtrooper]

i know I shouldnt read Daily mail, it always gets me going..... but just read a piece by mother of 5 saying that parents with two kids are much more likely to push and hothouse them because they've 'only got two chances to get it right'....

.....whereas parents with larger fams give their kids space to develop their own interests and talents becauase they simply havent got the time to 'burden' their kids with all their hopes and dreams.

made me feel mighty irritated (and I'm marginally off the hook in the pushy stakes cos I've 3 dcs). But is there ANY truth in it?
hmmm

well i have four kids and am laid back but thats they way I am and would probably be the same whatever number of kids I have.

I pity three of her children then

actually she hasnt had 2 of them yet, they're still in utero, that got me going too!

I think it's true (well in my case) that I tend to leave them be to play with each other or make their own entertainment quite often. And they do this quite happily.

There's less time - and money tbh - in the week to join too many clubs and after school stuff. Is that what they mean in the article? (You do know that mentioning the Daily Mail gets everyone oversteamed up on here don't you?)

Mind you, I'm a great believer in giving people their own space anyway, so I'd probably still do that even if I had less children.

I'm quite happy to encourage any interests though and to take them to things that they seem enthusiastic about.

i think she partly meant clubs and stuff like that, but not just from the time point of view. She seems to be saying that you're more desperate for your kids to succeed if you dont have so many of them because they are the focus of all your dreams. And that that isnt healthy for the kids.

just seems so darn sweeping!

i think there is some truth in it. obv it's an overgeneralisation, but I think it is to do with the family dynamic in part. once you have more children than adults, then the children are likely to have less attention, therefore less pressure and more freedom.

I think I lost the energy to hothouse with two.

Try to think of it this way - people with a lot of children get so much stick from others. I know this because my mum had 5, and some of the things people said to her thoughtlessly on the subject were outrageous. So I suspect that the fact that she is carrying twins after 3 children already has made her a tad defensive.

Fair play I reckon.

I think big families are lovely. I would have rather liked one myself, and have to fight back broodiness, but I think she is just bigging up her own life decision as we all tend to do, without a shred of evidence. And the flipside of this is that children in smaller families get more attention, more time and tend (in GENERAL - loads and loads of excepts) to achieve more at school and in career.

And I doubt if the parents are more 'relaxed'.

Oh dear - yes iswym.

Surely we all want our children to be happy - with their own hopes and dreams though whether they come from a large or small family.

I have three children and I've always taken the attitude of letting them develop their own interests/talents - I've never pushed them into anything TBH (even though I can be rather bossy)
I also know a family with five children and another with six children. Interestingly they are FAR more pushy with their children and one family, has very high expectations of all of them.
IMO it makes no difference to the number of children, just depends on the parents.

I do think there is a difference between some children from one or two child families, and some children from big families.

I've got 3, would love another, and I think the benefit for me is that there is less time to obssess over the minutiae of each one's development, which I would do with one. When ds1 was a baby, I religiously documented each development, worried if he was a day late on a milestone, encouraged him to be ahead, and clearly believed he was a genius!

Dd and ds2 are thriving on benign neglect! Ds2 is his own little person, and the elder two really help look after him, reading him stories etc, and there is more of a feeling of a 'gang of children' which I really like. Also the house is never quiet, we usually seem to have extra children here, and happy chaos ensues!

If I only had one, I wonder if I would be hothousing him, because there would be much more need for adult involvement, as no other children to play with, and there's only so many times an adult can play snakes and ladders or Bus Stop!!! So maybe pushing the academic side is more interesting!

I have a friend with one. They don't hot-house exactly, no I wouldn't say that, but they do seem to get very strung up about things and talk everything over a huge amount.

I have 4 but don't know about more relaxed! But I don't fret the stuff I did when I just had one.
Didn't that Daily mail woman have a nanny?
My older 3 (teens now) all do their own thing and I'm rarely told what they are up too.