Monday Teeny Poll
Last week, I wanted to know what you thought about the birth of octuplets which occured a few weeks ago. Basically, it was a “to judge or not to judge” question, and a full seventy six percent said that they judged the mother, and harshly. An angelic twenty three percent said that it wasn’t their place.
As for me, I question the ethics of the fertility clinic involved, and I honestly have to question the mother’s judgement. Just because you want something, doesn’t mean you should have it. She seems to have some sort of deep need to have children, and I’m not sure that is reason enough to have 14 children without a full-blown support system already in place. To just have that many children and hope it will all work out is not something I could do.
So, playing upon the theme of larger families, I just read an article in the NY Times about how larger families are falling out of fashion, and how some parents of larger families feel they are being unfairly judged.
I believe that they are, and I think that’s sad. I think that as long as you have the means to care for as many children as you want to have, go right ahead. I was glad to see that this article was sympathetic to large families, and I’d like to echo the fact that large families often ARE greener… many that I know have a large vegetable garden or even their own farm (at that point they need that many children to help with the work) and thus are in many ways self-supporting.
One of the reasons larger families are falling out of fashion (actually seem to be an anachronism) is that people are marrying later in life, and deferring having children, which normally puts a ceiling on how many you can have. When you don’t start reproducing until you’re thirty-five, having ten children just becomes something of a pipe dream.
I was watching The Man Who Knew Too Much the other night; it was filmed between the World Wars, the mother was about thirty, and her daughter was fourteen or so. It looked so very strange to me, although it used to be the norm. When you start that early, it’s naturally going to be more normal that families would be larger, because everyone who wants to keep having babies will have more time in which to do it.
I definitely agree, raincoaster. I also think it may have something to do with the fact that, as family planning techniques have become easier to procure people start assuming that anyone who has more than a couple of kids is too stupid to know that there is such a thing as the pill. I myself have gotten some negative comments for thinking I’d like to have up to 4 kids (not strictly negative towards me, but towards the idea of that many children).
Also, many people who are against family planning feel that way because of religious beliefs, and I do think that there is some bias out there against anyone who dedicates themselves that much to a religious principle. (I mean this in the same way that someone’s decision to become a nun might meet with curiosity, or even to keep a kosher house.)
Are supersized families going out of style? I think so and for my part, I’m grateful. I’m not talking about people having 4 kids or 6, but in order for a woman to have 12 or more children before menopause, she has to start reproducing in her mid to late teens. Then she is likely to be pregnant or breastfeeding until she runs out of eggs. This is, of course, wearing to the body (the leading cause of death in women until the 2nd half of the 20th century was childbirth) and also tends to lead to defining women by their reproductive capacity rather than their intellectual, spiritual or creative capacities. To my mind, the ability to have a small family or none at all makes me very grateful to live in the 21st century. I love my two girls dearly and treasure the time I had at home with them as babies and toddlers, but I also love working outside of the home and leading a life that isn’t completely circumscribed by my biological functions – as it would more likely have been if they were the first two of 12 (Lillian Moller Gilbreth I am not.) What’s more, the same advances that led to the reduction in infant mortality, maternal mortality, birth control and even anyone having a prayer of delivering 8 healthy babies at once who survive, have also led to an explosion in the world’s population, making the decision to have a dozen kids questionable from the point of view of overpopulation, at least to my mind.
It’s worth pointing out that Prince Philip, never the most diplomatic of men, has been lecturing people for years to have only one or two children. Prince Philip, of course, has four.
I think that everybody here has made excellent points. One particular reason why large families have probably fallen out of fashion is because the entire style of parenting has changed as well. Back in our grandparents’ generation, nobody put their kids in “activities”. They simply went out and played, and if they were good at something, they might join a team. Now, so many families have their kids involved in two or three activities each, all of which have registration fees, equipment costs, etc. etc. So it’s hard for most people to fathom being able to AFFORD more than a couple of kids. And speaking only for myself, the only large families that I know are the ones who really struggled to provide for their kids. It was impossible to keep myself from thinking: “They can’t afford anything beyond bare survival for their kids. Why wouldn’t they have had fewer kids, so that they could give them more?”
Larger families have been out of fashion for quite some time. The break point seems to be at three. Three or fewer is just dandy, but when you cross over to four, well look out. We have four and there is no end of comments.