Is six children too many ?

[mozhe]

Someone,( a colleague..but I do not know them well ), just stopped me in the corridor at work...noticing I was pregnant they asked me if it was my first, when I told them ,' no, it's my 6th '...they said,' six is too many ', and strod off....Is six too many ?

She says...but why is she so cross with WOHMS ??

humility??

mohze and xenia show none nor should they

given the choice to live their life or mine i would choose mine without hesitation

they think their way is the right way.... i beg to differ

they simply need to realise that some of us do not aspire to their lifestyle - rather - the antethesis

mohze and xenia, "training" ?

I think you mean it gets easier to ignore your children the more you have, eg xenia saying that her older ones au pair the younger ones. Lucky them, NOT.

Just for the record, no-one is of you. Frankly most of us think you're bonkers.

Bonkers ? No one's ever said that to me before...

Yes they have.

Can I just throw my hat into the ring here? Why can't supossedly? {hmm] mature? adult? women? talk rationally without falling into ever decreasing circles? Just a thought!

I guess this is getting to what I was thinking before about you not being real mozhe (sorry, here I go again). My sis is a doc and she doesn't harp on about how hard she's worked - mainly because it was her choice and gets a kick out of it. She now locums so that she can lead a "more interesting life" and go where she wants at the drop of a hat and didn't relish the thought of being a consultant for the rest of her life at the age of 30.

BUT - she says this to me as I'm her sister - she wouldn't dream of saying this in a public forum as she knws how it would make other people feel (i.e. get their backs up?). And yet your profession is partly supposed to be understanding how other people feel - and presumably making them feel better about choices and not worse.

Don't get me wrong, I think that rocking the boat is good, it definitely makes life more interesting. But given that you are a professional woman who's clearly very proud of her achievements (both family and professionally), I just don't understand why you persist. You must be having a laugh - aren't you? Passing the time while your husband's away? Keeping yourself entertained? If not, can you please please explain? I, for one, am fascinated.

3flights...I don't think I do harp on..people have asked me what I do for a living..and I've told them in a very general way..There's nothing mystical about doctoring, you don't need imo to go about with an air of 'keeping it all to yourself because it's so special'...I'm all for opening up it up and being seen as a normal human being. Good luck to your sister, but we are probably different sorts of people and doctors...

Quote of the week:

Mohze"....I don't think I do harp on......"

Is it just me who meets Doctors who have no people skills or are they fairly common?

You see, that's the thing. I DO work. You just never bother to read my posts properly, mozhe, because they contain points that you either can't or won't address properly.

I'm not angry at working mothers. I have said on more than one occasion that I was raised by a working mum (had a happy childhood, have an amazing relationship with my mum). I also feel hugely blessed that I am able to continue working p/t & freelance and earning good money, which allows me to spend lots of time with my family.

I had never seriously criticised your choices until I began to lose the will to live with your condescending, narrow-minded little posts, and started taking the piss out of you (through sheer amazement and exasperation at your attitudes. Oh, and because I'm a piss-taker. Sorry, miss).

On a serious note, I am a GEUNINE feminist and tend to be inclined to support women in their choices, even if I do not agree with them myself. You, however, do not apear to share the same attitude of sisterly solidarity, which makes you, in my humble opinion, fair game for all the criticism you receive on this site.

One thing you reveal is very telling to me. You are probably about 15 years older than me, had children fairly late in life, and work in a traditional industry (the city? is that right? I am guessing Xenia is very similar to you?).
I am a different generation of woman, I started my family in my 20s and I work in a 'non-tradiitional' industry (music/media). I would guess there are also class and cultural differences between us? This all obviously explains A LOT.

I may bang my drum a little louder than you, throw in the odd swear word and come across as aggressive to sensitive souls (as opposed to passive-aggressive...
* raises eyebrows and waits for mozhe to acknowledge her OWN faults *) - this does not make me 'angry'. It just means I will NEVER stop passionately defending the rights of women to choose their own paths - not to be dictated to by anybody, whether that be a patriarchal society, male-dominated industries, their own husband, or women with no desire to understand the reality of their younger sisters. If you don't like it, that's unfortunate. The future is coming, mozhe and it looks more like ME than YOU.

Mozhe lives in France and it's the usual thing there for women to return to work very soon after their babies are born, regardless of whether they have 1 dc or 8. Obviously most dm in France can't afford the options Mozhe has chosen so their babies will be in a creche.

I think it's unlikely Mozhe would receive the kind of criticism there for being a WOHM and employing people to care for her dc that she's getting on MN. However, the French families I know have between 2-4 dc - not more, possibly because of financial constraints. So perhaps the size of the family she has strikes people as unusual there but I'd imagine very few people in France would question her decision to return to work full-time soon after the birth.

I live in Germany and attitudes here are different again. Don't think there is an absolute "right".

LoveAngel, Mohze works as a ................psychiatrist

lolllll@Cammemelia. Oh God. That's funny.

Cammelia even!

mozhe-im expecting my 6th aswell.ive had a few say "oh my god you must be mad"!!but apart from that ive been lucky,everyones been pleased for us.

i dont think 6 is too many,i dont even feel like ive got 5 and another on the way!

good luck with your pregnancy!!

One reason I did what a lot of working women deliberately don't do - talk about children at work and write about it in other contexts is because women need examples. They need to be able to see that Mrs X has 5 or 6 or whatever children and has a balanced family life and that it can work. Now once it's the norm as perhaps it's becoming more and more that women can work and have large families there may be less need to see examples of it but I've always enjoyed reading about others who make it work.

It's sad we need the discussion at all - I know plenty of men with large families - I remember an article last year about lawyers, male, with 6, 7 etc children from one particular firm and then the women wrote in with their numbers. Basically chidlren are expensive and if you get a good job and do well at it then you are tremendously lucky in all kinds of ways and one of them is that you can afford loads of gorgeous children.

I am always amazed by stay at home mothers who think working parents shouldn't have chidlren because they work. Why not? Fathers nad mothers who work full time still spend huge amoungs to time with their children. In fact if you earn more you have someone else to clean and do all those dull jobs which take you away from your children and instead your time can be with chidlren rather than worrying about putting away 5 lots of children's clothes. You win / win all round and also if your work is absolutely fascinating and you love it that is a huge great benefit too.

My youngest are 8 so I'm not in the baby phase any more and it all gets easier as any parent knows. On contact and babies though I always breast fed. I breast fed the twins, we fed regularly through the night. There are a lot of hours when you're not working that you bond with babies.

No-one on m/net thinks mothers who work shouldn't have children. Far from it.

But you think that women who have children should work. And, further, that if they don't they're evidently of lower intelligence.

Tha's the argument that people are having with you xenia.

cammelia 'mozhe works as a psychiatrist'

Hal -hedge- head- leeeeee

( allegedly!)

I have done both - worked like hell with help and done the sahm mother thing. I have done both married and single. Including Maude, I have six children. It is our business, and our business alone if we have 1 or 12 kids - especially as we support them all ourselves.

I have known great, happy and well functioning families with one child and families as miserable as hell with one child, similarly two, three and more children.

Every family is different and no one has the right to judge.

Incidentally, I know a couple in SA with ten children - 5 girls and 5 boys amazingly. They are all privately educated and have two merc people carriers that ferry each fivesome to the respective schools. There are two chauffeurs and two nannies and various daily helps.......

I'm the youngest of six so don't think it's an issue. It is no-one's business but your own.

gglimpopo i know a family in my hometown of ten 5 girls FOLLOWED by 5 boys!!! The Mum went a bit crazy and left and the dad moved to france with a new wife

Bizarre !

I would never judge - every life is different - but it is ill educated and blinkered to believe sahm are of lower IQ that wohm..plain silly