Facing criticism/judgement over baby no.6

[Loudhouse6]

hi, are there any ladies here who have experienced judgement or criticism for the size of their family? How did you deal with people judging your families size?

me and my husband have been together 20 years. We have five children together 18,8,7,5&2 we are expecting our last baby later in the year. We had our first child when we were 18&20. No one believed we would last being so young but we proved everyone wrong. When we became more financially stable we had our second and subsequent children.

I’m so anxious at the thought of announcing because we’ve already taken a lot of criticism from friends, family and even strangers when it came to babies 4+5.

to give some context we both work full time running our own business which means we’re financially independent and are sensible with money. Working together means we are more than able to juggle work and kids without relying on childcare.

We don’t rely on friends or family to take care of our children and our oldest child who is soon to turn 19 is not asked to baby sit or take responsibility for her younger siblings in any way. I have heard of older siblings becoming like second parents but this is absolutely not the case with us. We may have a babysitter once or twice a year so me and my husband’s life is literally raising our children and work.

giving all of the above I don’t understand why we have been judged so harshly when we are hard working parents who don’t depend on anyone for any sort of support. All of our children are well cared for and loved. We make sure we have one on one time with our children whether it’s activities or a trip out and we also do activities as a whole family.

my brother has said some very derogatory things to me in the past about how many children I have and it makes me wonder if other people think the same way of me too.

sorry for the ramble it’s just we’re a big happy family and I don’t want our joy spoiled. How did you ladies cope with the criticism?

£120k, actually.

Yep, I said more than and at least as I couldn’t remember the exact figure and it wasn’t worth googling. Plenty to raise a family of 8 on independently though, even if they don’t have loads of luxuries.

The majority of people are not net contributors over the course of their lifetime.

I think a lot of people think that way, that as long as they have the basics and love, that they’ll be ok. For me, I want more for my kids than ‘ok’. But you hear people trying to justify their kids doing without because of their own selfish decisions, quite a lot on mumsnet.

We chose to only have 2 children so that they would benefit from the sibling relationship, but so that we could give them lots of our time and support. We couldn’t have given them what we would class as enough of that if we had 4 more children.

We also wanted to be able to provide nice days out, holidays, whatever hobbies they wanted, driving lessons, first car, uni etc. We must earn more than OP does as no child benefit since it was means tested, and could have afforded more children if we were willing to lower what we wanted for them, but again, we had things in mind that we wanted to provide, and this attitude of ‘it’s enough’ when you have the potential to give them so many more opportunities in a world that is hard, seems selfish to me. To try to claim that giving children more makes them spoilt brats is bs and just another way to justify selfish actions. Our children are what many would call privileged, but they have never had a bad attitude or acted spoilt. That’s down to parenting.

I do question how happy OP can be to put this one here though because as I said before, I think when you’re truly happy with your decisions, you don’t really care about judgement.

I judge parents who have 1 or 2 kids and then constantly moan and resent their kids way more than parents who like having kids so much that they have 6 tbh.

I probably won’t be able to have any so you can take my 2.1 children OP

Plenty is subjective and heavily influenced by a number of factors.

Obviously. But we have no idea how much OP actually earns, just that she feels it’s enough, which is the only relevant factor seen as it’s her money.

It has nothing to do with anyone. People are always derogatory for big number families due to the old Catholic stigma - never throw your seed , or what was it.

Do as you want, who cares what others say

See what her kids think when they're are teens and want the latest tech, trainers, bags, clothing etc, which most have. They are the ones that have to cope with their parents decision to have an excessive number of children.

My parents had 3, then went on to have more with other people. They felt they had enough money. They definitely didn’t.

Of course they are. You’re only thinking about tax paid but people’s actual work contributes to a functioning society. Do you think nurses and care workers aren’t net contributors because their salary (and therefore income tax contributions) are lower? What about delivery drivers? Retail workers? Street cleaners? Bin men? How content would your life be if the only people left were high earners?

Nobody's business. Have your baby and be happy.

I think you’re lucky to have a big family and well paid flexible work. Enjoy your life and forget about the moaners.

I can kinda see the point of having three... personally, I was very happy with my two ( one boy, one girl ) done and dusted, thank yew very much....

Also not keen to go through pregnancy and childbirth again!

But any more than three just seems excessive.

And I completely disagree with this ageing population bullshit. So we need more kids to take care of / pay for the old folk? Ok, so what happens when those kids get old? We'll need even kids to take care of / pay for them?

The country isn't getting any larger, and there isn't enough housing as it is. A bigger population just means more and more of the greenbelt getting built on, and I hate that.

I don’t really care what others choose to do, if it doesn’t impact me and isn’t hurting anyone then okay but my worry with bigger families is about more than just money, although other posters have made some great points about finances and why “okay” isn’t always good enough.

For me it’s more about time & effort. I always said I wanted a bigger family, loved the idea of having lots of kids running around and part of me still does but when my second baby was born I just knew I would be stopping at 2 because while everybody says your love doubles and that is true, your time doesn’t and kids need time, not just space, money, clothes, food, they need time with parents and especially with 2 working parents 6 children just as a fact are not all getting the 121 time they need, it just isn’t possible.

As ex-NHS staff, I absolutely don’t undervalue that sort of work at all.

Net contributor literally measures tax in and cost out. It’s not my measure, nor were we talking about general value to society prior to your comment!

If you can afford them have as many children as you want. If you can't then don't. It's big families relying on benefits and council housing that I find irritating, many people would like a bigger family but want to live within their means and give the children they do have a good start in life.

Just tell them all you're delighted. My mum's advice to a neighbour expecting her accidental 4th and worried about what people would think.

3 makes zero sense to me. 1 is always likely to be left out, 2 adults are outnumbered by 3 kids, it impacts house size, car choices, holidays and hotel rooms and all sorts of other things.

I think you are explaining and justifying on here, OP, so you are probably doing that in real life.
Don’t. People can mind their own business and you don’t have to take rudeness.
It's not your job to persuade people that having six children is a great idea. For many people it isn’t. For you, it is. That’s all there is to it.

Just listen to yourself!!

I've had comments with three kids - especially as eldest two were girl boy.

Had comments about when we had them - our ages - age gaps - then everything we've done with them - some very nasty ones when announcing pg.

You just have to ignore and focus on your family. If I'd listened to others I'd be by myself no kids and nothing but work in my life.

Best advice is to shut it now before it starts as PP says.

Well it's your choice.. You're not having kids for others to be happy about it, it's for you - if you want it, great. I'm not really sure why you are posting here seeing external validation. if it is any consolation we get an equal amount of negative comments about choosing to have 1 child, and I couldn't care less.

People judge. It's normal, it's a part of life, you cannot avoid it happening to you.

If you are financially, practically and emotionally able to have 6 kids then go for it with joy. If you had no children, or 1 child, or any other number, someone would judge and comment. It really doesn't matter.

I am with the person above who said if you love and enjoy family life, as far as I'm concerned, that's better than a lot of what many children go through, where basically their parents either don't enjoy the time with them, or actively neglect or abuse them. Your children are extremely lucky to have loving involved parents who love family life!

Beyond that, don't explain, it's no-one else's business.

I don't judge family size, I wouldn't want more than two myself as I'm not that great a mum, and that just about stretched me to my limit, but some people really are just great in that situation, so I say, all good.

I guess 6 children will eventually become productive members of society, get jobs and pay taxes into the state, thus supporting an ageing population.

Oh dear, OP. Of course, you do realise your choices as parents caused her to be spoiled rotten, not the fact she was an only child? To be aware: folk on here (me included - an only child with an only child) really object to these negative only child tropes.