Big families: another look

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waterdog

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I have been watching large Catholic families for a number of years now. At first all I saw was big happy generous families. Then as my kids got older ( I have four and am open to more but my nonCatholic husband is afraid) and as I really watched these families grow I started to see something.

I think that the more kids you have the less able you are to be really involved with each child. . I see children with emotional problems not addressed. I see small children with the same kind of grab and run mentality that you see in batches of kittens fighting for food. I see families focussing on discipline as crowd control and keeping food and clothes going, while the fussier business of emotional and mental health goes begging I see teenagers very often throwing off faith and morals and even running away from home. I look at how on the ball I have to be with my teens watching their moods and helping them through storms and knowing how much one on one they need and I wonder how a mom with four under seven keeps up with teens in her house.

I think that in this day and age physical danger is not as present as is emotional and social danger and that kind of protection takes a lot of emotional energy that isn’t always in huge supply when a mom is physically constantly on the move with her little ones.

Now I will stand back and allow you do beat me with a big stick, and humbly so. But I would also like to hear from people who have had similar ponderings.
 
Feeling inadequate today, are you?:hug3:

I am willing to bet you are starting those dreaded teen years, where they come up one on the other. I won’t lie to you, they can be nasty, esp. girls.

Members of big families also grow up to share, to be willing to see a job through, to handle stress well…

I am the eldest of seven. I’m still here at 51. It was NOT being raised in a group of six (youngest is a bonus baby) that ever screwed up my life.
 
Sadly, there are dysfunctional families on this planet.

They come in all sizes.

If you are ever around, I’ll be happy to introduce you to some amazing beautiful loving large families.
 
The families you see are not necessarily representative of all large Catholic families.

You may be misinterpreting what you are seeing.

Only children and small families face the same difficulties, and that stems from the parents not putting a priority on parenting.

Children sometimes have massive difficulties IN SPITE of having good, involved parents, due to the disordered use of their own free will, which they have like any other human being.

I will agree with you, though, that there is difficulty in meeting the emotional health needs of many children by just two adults, no matter how loving, invested, and involved. That is a big part of the reason we decided to stop at five, along with financial reasons. We are worried about doing a good job as parents and meeting our obligations to them.
 
I counter your purely anecdotal, unscientific observations with my own: I’ve been teaching for about 12 years. The worst behaved, lowest functioning, most therapist-seeing children I’ve encountered have been either only children or only one of two children.

– Mark L. Chance.
 
The question is why you want to attribute the dysfunction you are observing to that of having a large family (I suppose by large you mean more than 4 kids???)

Have you pondered that for awhile?
 
I am one of seven children. Our age ranges are between 35 to 48 years old. All of us kids are practicing Catholics.

I also know of small Catholic families (anything less than seven LOL) that have remained faithful to Catholicism.

But I also know of both large and small Catholic families that have drifted from the faith. I guess my point is that a large family does not corelated to a poor faith upbringing.
 
By big families I really mean like eight or more. And I do want to keep the sense of humor here. I am certainly not universally bashing big families. I just see some problems. Perhaps these issues need to be considered seriously when discussing family size. I think one or two children families have their own problems but by that I wouldn’t be bashing small families either The fact is that some good Catholics can;t have more through no fault of their own.

Anyway, I have followed a few families because we meet on a yearly basis adn I love them dearly but my heart aches for how they are losing their kids

Only four kid families are healthy. As long as they eat spinach and spiney sea urchin salads on Thursday evenings in the dark of the moon. There I feel adequate. Joke.🙂
 
What was tough about being in a big family for me was that my parents had NO time to help me with school. If I didn’t get a subject on my own, forget it, and we didn’t have the money for tutoring. Quiet study time could be REALLY hard to come by in our house too, so during finals and such I’d go hide in the public library so I could get my work done.

Plus it can be hard being one of the older daughters, because you really end up holding down a job as a caregiver in addition to the usual schoolwork, etc. Some of the bitterest fights I’ve ever had with my mother were when she complained that I never, ever, EVER did enough to help her and I said that she treated me like the maid. (She got really mad at me for not doing this or that a few times and I said that I thought she’d rather have a Molly Maid gift certificate than a daughter. My mother told me later that she was upset about that for weeks.)

But I’d get home from school and she’d put a baby in my arms from the second I got there and give me a list of what I was supposed to do around the house. I used to be so jealous of girls at school who didn’t have to babysit all day every day.

Both my older sister and I got married young – surprise!!! I wonder if that happens a lot with oldest girls in big families.

I never really wanted a big family myself. I thought we’d space our children to three at most (and please God let at least ONE be a girl!!!) but as it turns out God seems to have only seen fit to give us our son. If we go ten more years without having another child we’re thinking about adopting a little girl though. I think having a son and a daughter would be great!
 
waterdog said:
By big families I really mean like eight or more. And I do want to keep the sense of humor here. I am certainly not universally bashing big families. I just see some problems. Perhaps these issues need to be considered seriously when discussing family size. I think one or two children families have their own problems but by that I wouldn’t be bashing small families either The fact is that some good Catholics can;t have more through no fault of their own.

Anyway, I have followed a few families because we meet on a yearly basis adn I love them dearly but my heart aches for how they are losing their kids

Only four kid families are healthy. As long as they eat spinach and spiney sea urchin salads on Thursday evenings in the dark of the moon. There I feel adequate. Joke.🙂
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I can think of a few adults with many children (and to specify I am thinking 9 kids, 11 kids, 13 kids and 14 kids) who have children with problems. I can think of a few parents who I personally feel never should have married let alone had kids.

But I can’t bring myself to attribute family size to individual behavior no matter how many or how few kids are in the family.

It’s awfully easy to sit back and analyze what a particular parent/family is doing to screw up their kids. But once kids hit the teen years (and oftentimes earlier) those kids are making their own choices. Someone who reaches 18-19 years of age and decides to renounce the family faith probably isn’t doing so because mommy and daddy had 7 other siblings, or none.

With four children, do you feel that you ignore #2 and only love #1 #3 and #4? Is one child left alone and forgotten, with emotional needs ignored and behavioral problems gone wild? If this is true, do you believe it is because you had four children, or because of some other issue?
 
mlchance said:
I counter your purely anecdotal, unscientific observations with my own: I’ve been teaching for about 12 years. The worst behaved, lowest functioning, most therapist-seeing children I’ve encountered have been either only children or only one of two children.

– Mark L. Chance.
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That could also be because parents with one or two children are more likely to be able to afford to take their kids to therapists. Just because a kid ISN’T seeing a therapist doesn’t mean that everything’s all right with him or her!
 
mlchance said:
I counter your purely anecdotal, unscientific observations with my own: I’ve been teaching for about 12 years. The worst behaved, lowest functioning, most therapist-seeing children I’ve encountered have been either only children or only one of two children.

– Mark L. Chance.
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This happens to be my experience as well from working at a Catholic School… spoiled whiny kids are almost always from only child or 2 child homes… Of course there are plenty of only children and 2 child families that are perfectly fine… just the difficult children always seemed to be from the smaller families. There was one kid that had 2 siblings… which I thought was strange until I found out that his oldest sibling was over 10 yrs older and was out of the house before he started school…
 
Jaden(name removed by moderator) said:
What was tough about being in a big family for me was that my parents had NO time to help me with school. If I didn’t get a subject on my own, forget it, and we didn’t have the money for tutoring. Quiet study time could be REALLY hard to come by in our house too, so during finals and such I’d go hide in the public library so I could get my work done. Now see, if you had been my little sister, I would have taught you how to read. I taught my first sibling how to read when I was 6 3/4;) . I just taught her what I learned in school that day. I was always helping out with homework, even my brothers who tended to drift off and were sluggish when it came to homework.

Plus it can be hard being one of the older daughters, because you really end up holding down a job as a caregiver in addition to the usual schoolwork, etc…But my mother did not do that, and I am a lot older than you (I think), when the eldest daughter was expected to be a second mother. There were times my mother insisted that I was a separate entity, and had to develop my own personality, without one kid or another in tow. It really comes down to the parents’ attitude on such things. I’ve also heard it said that siblings are sometimes more important than the parents.
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I believe part of the problem is not big families but rather our American culture.

The problems you state are true for some families I’m sure, but what extraneous variables are you leaving out? What is missing from those large families that aren’t successful and those that are?

My guess, and no I haven’t done any research on this to prove it, would be that the successful ones have close extended families.

Do you really think that a mother in 1900 out on a farm with 10 kids had time to teach and spend time with each one of them? She got up probably at 4 AM and crashed about 9 after cooking all day, feeding the animals, sewing the clothes etc… However back then many families had at least one set of grandparents close by to help.

The Grandparents had the wisdom and the patience to help the parents teach the kids what was needed AND the kids learned to respect and revere their elders.

Now many people in American don’t have time for a sick parent, or one that is “annoying” because they are in “their business” etc… and their children miss out. Sadly those are usually the same people that are too busy to spend time with their kids themselves though too… but just think, even if they were THAT busy, how much help and knowledge could one of their parents provide for their children?

The loss of extended families will eventually been seen a huge detrament to our society, at least IMHO.

Joe
 
I come from the other end of the spectrum, my 28 year son is our only child through no fault of our own, it was HIS will, *not *ours. Hey, we did OUR part to make it happen, 😉 but it was NOT in the cards He dealt us.

You make some valid points in your OP.
 
waterdog said:
By big families I really mean like eight or more. And I do want to keep the sense of humor here…
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I guess my family barely missed the cutoff. :rotfl:
waredog:
…Only four kid families are healthy. As long as they eat spinach and spiney sea urchin salads on Thursday evenings in the dark of the moon. There I feel adequate. Joke.🙂
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My wife and I have four kids. 👍 All girls! :eek: Wish me luck during the teenage years when they will be aged 13, 15, 17, & 19. :bigyikes:
 
In a word: poppy-cock. How easy to blame large families as some abstract thing and not take individual parents to task. This is an example of lazy logic. I have a lot of kids, by almost anyone’s measure. They are all doing fantastic. Each of them succeeds in an amazing way. We don’t have teenage issues, we don’t “do” teenagers. We raise young men and women. Here’s a little (brag) list of my large family of failures:

Daughter 25 - married. Has a Master’s Degree in Computer Science.

Daughter 23 - Grad Student with a full ride in a very prestigious state university. She is currently touring Scotland and England and will be presenting a paper at an internation conference.

Daughter 21 - Just graduated with a 4.0 GPA. Got a 2 year “full-ride” academic scholarship in the process. Has a young man who has been courting her for the last two years.

Son 19 - Currently in Army Advanced training. He will be returning in August and resuming his studies in Computer and Electrical Engineering. He is an ROTC student.

Son 15 - Wants to be an Army chaplin. Currently conducting Civil War battles in my woods. Wrote his third novel this year which we publish on LuLu.com for internal use.

Son 14 - Not sure of his future plans. Good student with excellent mechanical aptitude. “Published” his first novel this year on LuLu.

Son 12 - Special needs son with mental retardation. Doing amazing things in school and is both the most difficult child we’ve ever dealt with and the most loving.

Foster Daughter 2 - Ah, the delights of a girl again after so many boys. We hope that we can eventually adopt her.

Foster Daughter 7 months - the delight of my soul.

Each of these children is an individual who is nurtured in a manner that most benefits them. The number of children is not the issue here. What a broadly painted brush the OP uses to slap people with.
 
Ok, I’ll admit, I don’t know enough large families really well to make a scientific study. But I do know a few, and I do see some of the problems you mention. However, I also know a few smaller (like 3 kids) families pretty well, and they have similar problems. The common thread I see is the attitude of the parents. Large or small families, these parents seem to either not be concerned much at all with their children’s mental well being, or they seem to be seriously confused about how to recognize or help their kids - maybe even in denial. I do agree that the busy-ness of a large family can be a great way to bury your head in the sand. But like I said, I’ve seen small families in the same sort of denial, so I’m not sure it is really the family size that makes a difference. One could say that there are some who don’t prioritize mental health, and who are irresponsible about having large families. But you could find as many parents of 2, where mom irresponsibly goes to work and uses that busy-ness to neglect the needs of her teens.

I don’t mean to completely discount the OP’s observation. I do believe that the mental health needs of your children should be an important factor to consider when discerning open-ness to life. I do see people who I think are clueless about this, to their childrens’ detriment. I just think the bigger factor here is the attitude/knowledge/awareness/competency of the parent.
 
I am the oldest of 10 kids(would have been more, but mom had to have a hysterectomy. My family also was friends with tons of other huge Catholic (mostly homeschooling) families. Yes, we all had to be extremely competitive with each other when it came to anything we needed or wanted. No, we didn’t get individual attention. Yes, I was a second mother to the younger kids. Yes, i spent most of my time cleaning and cooking for the family. Yes, there was severe mental illness (multiple children) that my parents didn’t notice at all. But I think the problem with mental illness in a large family is that the parents are sometimes very hesitant to let a secular outsider know about what goes on in the family. A lot of parents don’t want some outsider questioning the decision to have a huge family or things like , in my family, being homeschooled.Some parents are suspicious of psychology and its conflicts with Catholicism. Some parents see these type of issues as something a priest can deal with. They see mental illness as a spiritual problem. Also, treatment for mental illness is expensive.If money is tight already therapy, psychiatric drugs, or possibly stays in psychiatric hospitals just aren’t as high priority as food. My parents had to cancel me and my sisters’ therapy appointments all the time because they didn’t have the money. They couldn’t fill out our prescriptions for the same reason.A completely separate question is the mental health of the parents and whether they have mental illnesses that they are passing down to their children, and whether or not they consider their mental health when making the decision to have another child.
 
ug, first time i’ve left my sick bed in over a week and this is the topic I choose…

**two questions: **

what the heck is wrong with this generation of people that their kids need so much coddling and mental help?! is it something in the water or food? really folks I know some may have unusual circumstances requiring special care, but to claim an entire population needs “mental health” needs doesn’t point to a problem with the size family, imho. it points to a major problem in how dysfunctional society is in general.

secondly, it’s serious hubris to presume your kids will turn out any better because of course you think you are a better parent (might even be better for that matter). part of growing up, esp in the teens years, is doing stupid, new, or simply weird things and having to suck up the consequences. MANY kids from awesome devoted faithful parents leave their faith. Many return to it years later. Sadly some don’t for whatever reason. Frankly, I came from fairly useless disinterested non-religious parents who didn’t want me. Now I’m a catholic sah hs-ing mom of 8 married for 15 years. Go figure. Even I couldn’t explain how the heck I ended up here. (not that I’d change it - I wouldn’t!)

There’s a presumption here that “if only” the parents had done what you think they should have, their kids would be better off. better off as in more like your kids usually.

Fact is, you don’t know that. I can say from what I’ve seen it’s about 50/50. I’ve seen just as many kids from cruddy families turn out amazing as I have those wonderful christian parents turn out dope heads and atheists.

Parenting is only part of the equation folks.
Those bouncing bundle of joys we bring into the world come with their own mess of free will to contend with.
And then there’s the whole messed up society thing to contend with every time we parents wake up in the morning.

All that aside, for all any of us know, those children who have wandered off the path may return to it stronger than those seem to never have left it. Keep in mind, although some kids may be obvious in how far they wander, many more probably do so in a much quieter way. For example, my dh comes from an active baptist family. He’s 35 and they still don’t know that he doesn’t really believe Christ was the Son of God! He didn’t rebel or anything particuliarly crazy. Well other than marry me, if you talk my mil.

My point, for all you know, what makes those parents great isn’t whether their kid keeps his faith, but whether they endure the heartache until he returns to it.

**Is great parenting only evident if the kid grows up to not break their hearts?🤷 **

**Are we seriously going to sit here and say those kids would have been better off if their parents had chosen to just not have them?:confused: 🤷 **
 
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