Differences on how many kids to have when you come from a small family and marry someone from a big family?

[Rau]

Yes, that experience seems not infrequent in quiverfull families.

Quiverfull families are few and far between. I cannot reconcile their philosophy with the obligations of responsible parenthood. I think your observation here supports the earlier remarks that in many cases, poor parenting (though not always parental fault) is the culprit when children are robbed of their childhood, rather than a large family.

 

[ThePCWife]

My RL experiences of this are with generically large (7+) families of Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox persuasion, not with any quiverfull specifically families. And the homeschool girls reporting this don’t come exclusively or even mostly from quiverfull households. That’s just a way to blow off the very real issue of a mother being constantly pregnant and having no ability to do childcare for numerous small children without relying on the older kids (nearly always girls, things get pretty feral IME when the older kids are boys).

It’s academic though. The OP isn’t married right now and by the time it happens, biology will be in play, so there’s that. It’s hard to rack em up when you marry after age 25.

 

[Rau]

…the very real issue of a mother being constantly pregnant and having no ability to do childcare for numerous small children without relying on the older kids (nearly always girls…

Of the parents that are not of the quiverfull movement, why are they “constantly pregnant”? I think most parents (other than quiverfull) are mindful of the situation of the entire family when considering family additions, including capacity to manage, availability and willingness of older children to contribute, capacity to engage nanny etc. In my experience some people are simply brilliant at managing in a large family environment (or have access to assistance) and no one feels “robbed” of anything, be it childhood, education, etc. There are other cases where poor decisions have been made, and still others where despite other intentions nature seems to have different ideas. Bottom line is I don’t think any generic relationship can be established between family size and ‘quality’ of childhood, independent of parenting quality.

 

[AClaire11]

My RL experiences of this are with generically large (7+) families of Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox persuasion, not with any quiverfull specifically families. And the homeschool girls reporting this don’t come exclusively or even mostly from quiverfull households. That’s just a way to blow off the very real issue of a mother being constantly pregnant and having no ability to do childcare for numerous small children without relying on the older kids (nearly always girls, things get pretty feral IME when the older kids are boys).

It’s academic though. The OP isn’t married right now and by the time it happens, biology will be in play, so there’s that. It’s hard to rack em up when you marry after age 25.

Sorry, I didn’t mean to imply that it was only a quiverfull problem. I’ve just been doing a lot of reading lately of blogs by children who were raised by parents in that movement and that seems to be a recurring theme.

 

[nodito]

Bottom line is I don’t think any generic relationship can be established between family size and ‘quality’ of childhood, independent of parenting quality.

I agree.

The big families I know in real life - my husband is one of seven and I have several aunts and uncles with five and six kids - are all happy and well-adjusted. I’ve often felt jealous of one family in particular because their house, although messy and disorganized, is always full of laughter and activity. The five daughters (now mostly young adults) are hilarious, thoughtful, intelligent, and so fun to be around. They’re also very good with kids, if you can imagine. When you ask them about their childhoods, they describe rich memories and inside jokes, not resentment.

 

[bitterhope]

This is the common type of prejudice shown to mothers of large families in society as a whole. It just stings more when it is repeatedly allowed to be posted on a Catholic website.

 

[Hoosier_Daddy]

This is the common type of prejudice shown to mothers of large families in society as a whole. It just stings more when it is repeatedly allowed to be posted on a Catholic website.

Yeah. Phrases like a zillion kids, gestates endlessly, unending stream of children, robbed childhood, etc. are distasteful. Sadly, I’ve come to expect it.
I do agree that parenting skills are probably more to blame for childhood experiences ( whatever that means) being burgled.

 

[EnglishTeacher]

A lot of people in my church community have come from fairly large families and by fairly large, I mean four siblings or more. I myself come from a small family with just two siblings, me being the oldest. When it comes time to start a family, can you have an ideal number of children or will there be a conflict between the two spouses if say one wants a smaller family and the other wants a bigger family because of how big or small their families are.

For myself, I want three kids because my dad came from a family of four siblings and I come from a family of just two so the best scenario would be three. Three’s a middle of the road family anything more and I would start to wonder where the money for these kids would come from. I’m getting a little side tracked here. **My question is: for those of you who come from small or smaller families and married someone from a big or bigger family, is there any disagreement as to how many kids you want do to your own family **background.

I have several siblings and my husband has none. I would have liked to have several kids (4 or more) if God would give that many to us. My husband’s ideal size was more like 2, but we both were willing to take it one child at a time and be open to God’s will for our family.

As it turns out, though, we have not been able to have any children (yet, anyway), so it is a non-issue. We would be thrilled even to have one child. Infertility really changes your perspective. I think many people get married taking their fertility for granted and assuming they will have a dozen kids unless they “prevent” it somehow. While that may be the case for some couples, it is actually more likely that you won’t have as many children as you would like.

The bottom line is that you can’t really know or plan in advance how many children you will have–and of course that number depends on your spouse’s fertility or lack thereof, too, and not just yours, as well as any number of other factors life may throw in.

See also this article: Dear Newlywed, You’re Probably Worried about the Wrong Thing

 

[DlandFan06]

This is the common type of prejudice shown to mothers of large families in society as a whole. It just stings more when it is repeatedly allowed to be posted on a Catholic website.

I’m not bashing anyone. I’m expressing my concerns and questions over a person from a small family marrying a person from a big family and the differences that may come from when the two decide to have children.

 

[bitterhope]

I was actually referring to a few other posts not yours.

 

[BlueEyedLady]

I was actually referring to a few other posts not yours.

But, it is a pitfall in large families. It doesn’t mean it’s a problem in all, or in yours, and I can’t find anyone who says it is. But, your positive experiences don’t negate someone else’s less positive experiences.

 

[bitterhope]

But, it is a pitfall in large families. It doesn’t mean it’s a problem in all, or in yours, and I can’t find anyone who says it is. But, your positive experiences don’t negate someone else’s less positive experiences.

It also occurs in families with two children who are spaced far enough apart that older sibling is babysitting age when younger sibling is born. To single out large families while ignoring the same things occurring in small families is wrong. Those things mentioned have not a thing to do with the amount of children in a family. choices parents make that negatively affect their kids is not a large versus small family thing. Responsible parenting is necessary no matter how many children a parent has.

Of course bad things can happen where a parent or both parents die while children are young. My grandmother raised all her siblings (she was the oldest of 8) after her parents were killed. She put off marrying until the youngest was grown. If she had been from a smaller family it may have been less work and she probably would have married sooner, but she always spoke of how happy she was to have had the siblings she had. They became their own support system during such a difficult time. I’m 100% positive that if she had only had one sibling it would have been similar. Why? Their parents, while living, instilled a positive view of family life.

 

[Xantippe]

Sorry, I didn’t mean to imply that it was only a quiverfull problem. I’ve just been doing a lot of reading lately of blogs by children who were raised by parents in that movement and that seems to be a recurring theme.

Yeah–“quiverfull” tends to get used as a generic term when it’s kind of a brand name.

But yeah–there really are people who are ideological rather than pragmatic about family size and it’s not hard to find their grown children’s stories online.

I think where people go wrong is assuming that it has to work out, as opposed to monitoring the situation and making sure it is going OK.

 

[pensmama87]

Yeah–“quiverfull” tends to get used as a generic term when it’s kind of a brand name.

But yeah–there really are people who are ideological rather than pragmatic about family size and it’s not hard to find their grown children’s stories online.

I think where people go wrong is assuming that it has to work out, as opposed to monitoring the situation and making sure it is going OK.

I think, too, in those situations, the most obvious factor that sticks out in hindsight is the family size, when really, the problem is that the parents aren’t looking out for the best interest of the kids. It can be magnified as more children arrive, but as pointed out already in the thread, there are small families where older children can deeply feel this resentment, and they only had one or two siblings. But if you’re the only family with eight kids that you know (for example), and your parents treated you like dirt and it’s not immediately apparent that other children from other, smaller families were treated the same way, what are you likely to blame? The number of kids, because that’s the obvious difference. (It might also be emotionally painful to realize that regardless of number of kids, your parents were likely to not really care much about you or your suffering, so it could be easier to blame something else.)

I wouldn’t say it’s not something to watch out for. Parents should be regularly assessing that all of their children are having their needs met, and that’s not easy regardless of family size. I do think it’s a huge mistake to assume there’s some magic number above or below which every family will be great or terrible, and that the OP consider that he might very well change his mind (or realize he won’t be given what he wants anyway.)

 

[UbiCaritas]

I think, too, in those situations, the most obvious factor that sticks out in hindsight is the family size, when really, the problem is that the parents aren’t looking out for the best interest of the kids. It can be magnified as more children arrive, but as pointed out already in the thread, there are small families where older children can deeply feel this resentment, and they only had one or two siblings. But if you’re the only family with eight kids that you know (for example), and your parents treated you like dirt and it’s not immediately apparent that other children from other, smaller families were treated the same way, what are you likely to blame? The number of kids, because that’s the obvious difference. (It might also be emotionally painful to realize that regardless of number of kids, your parents were likely to not really care much about you or your suffering, so it could be easier to blame something else.)

I wouldn’t say it’s not something to watch out for. Parents should be regularly assessing that all of their children are having their needs met, and that’s not easy regardless of family size. I do think it’s a huge mistake to assume there’s some magic number above or below which every family will be great or terrible, and that the OP consider that he might very well change his mind (or realize he won’t be given what he wants anyway.)

Hearty agreement here, and I find this very insightful.

I am the oldest of only three, but I have many of the resentments about my childhood described by the older daughters of dysfunctional larger families: not having had a childhood, having much too much responsibility placed on me at an early age, and so on. I grew up in a church at which very large families were the norm, and severe neglect of girls’ education, especially that of the older girls in a family, was just about standard. It’s true that large families (I mean 8-12 kids) were one commonality between those families whose kids–again, especially the older girls who usually had to take on the rearing of younger children while their mothers were pregnant or recovering–but it was not the only one.

More fundamentally, there was an attitude in those neglectful families, both in my rather small one and in the larger ones, that things like education and vocations would all sort themselves out without any real effort on the part of anyone. In my family’s case, substance abuse was partly to blame, as well as a culture of dysfunction and general laziness. In their cases, it seemed to be more a strong concern for appearances in their particular and quite extreme Catholic circle in the pursuit of an ever-bigger family: Good Catholic Families ™ all are, the implication was, supposed to have very large families, and it was seen as worldly in some way to ask, “Well, and is it fair to ask a 14-year-old to get up at all hours to care for her younger siblings, make dinner every night, and be in charge of the vast majority of the housework so that we can have the twelve children we think Everyone ™ ought to have?” I was the only girl, my sister who left home at 15 excepted, who I knew who both grew up in that church and went on to get a college degree.

Someone above mentioned a situation in which the oldest kids were boys. I knew one such family fairly closely. When I left, they had eleven kids. To make things more difficult, Dad travelled for work and would be gone for a week at a time. Now, the house was kept in apple-pie order, and the kids were very polite. Of course, they would be: how severely they were beaten when Dad got home depended on their mom’s report to him on their behavior. I wish I were making that up.

TLDR version: in deciding about any sort of family planning, whether it be NFP, total abstinence, or let’s-just-see-what-happens, the wise couple looks at the family as a whole and reevaluates from time to time to ensure that needs are generally being met for its members. That applies whether the couple has no kids, or already has a dozen, or anywhere in between. DH is one of eight, and they all got plenty of attention and no one had their emotional, spiritual, physical or educational needs neglected at all. It is entirely possible to have a large family and take good care of them! That, however, is up to the couple to discern gradually over time; it’s just silly to make such a decision without knowing the factors involved, which you won’t until you’re actually in a position to do so.

 

[ThePCWife]

Under modern conditions of being nowhere near relatives, of having no support from neighbors or church/parish, of losing friends because you had kids at all, it’s just more difficult to have a large family and meet everyone’s needs reasonably. All things are possible in Christ, but there’s a lot of reasons the number of large families is a tiny fraction of what it was even 30 years ago.

And just going in with eyes open is worthwhile. But here is a tip if you want to be around a lot of people with larger families or have one of your own-- join the military or move near a base. Those are where most of the families with 5+ children are concentrated outside the very few Amish and Mennonite enclaves.

 

[AClaire11]

Under modern conditions of being nowhere near relatives, of having no support from neighbors or church/parish, of losing friends because you had kids at all, it’s just more difficult to have a large family and meet everyone’s needs reasonably. All things are possible in Christ, but there’s a lot of reasons the number of large families is a tiny fraction of what it was even 30 years ago.

And just going in with eyes open is worthwhile. But here is a tip if you want to be around a lot of people with larger families or have one of your own-- join the military or move near a base. Those are where most of the families with 5+ children are concentrated outside the very few Amish and Mennonite enclaves.

Well, join the military if that’s something you want to do anyway. Joining purely to have the taxpayers subsidize you having a huge family seems a bit ignoble.

 

[gardenswithkids]

A lot of people in my church community have come from fairly large families and by fairly large, I mean four siblings or more. I myself come from a small family with just two siblings, me being the oldest. When it comes time to start a family, can you have an ideal number of children or will there be a conflict between the two spouses if say one wants a smaller family and the other wants a bigger family because of how big or small their families are.

For myself, I want three kids because my dad came from a family of four siblings and I come from a family of just two so the best scenario would be three. Three’s a middle of the road family anything more and I would start to wonder where the money for these kids would come from. I’m getting a little side tracked here. My question is: for those of you who come from small or smaller families and married someone from a big or bigger family, is there any disagreement as to how many kids you want do to your own family background.

Hi DIandFan-
I come from a family with just two children and my husband comes from a family with three children. For a couple of years, we just had one child. Then we had two, then three…so on and so forth…now we have eight.

In my experience, large families start small. You want three children, which is considered a large family in some circles, and your definition of “large” is four, which is regarded as a small family in some circles. Most families grow one child at a time. We found that first “one” child was the hardest adjustment. By the time we reached three and were outnumbered by children, we had already adjusted to parenting and had experience to draw on. That made parenting easier for me, and adding subsequent children wasn’t quite as scary as you might think. Along the way, we’ve learned more about trusting in God. We grow and change as our children grow and change. Right now, you can’t imagine being the father of a large family, but at this point in your life God has not called you to be the father of a large family. If you ever get to that point, you will be in a different place at that time, and in all likelihood you will have had several years of parenting experience before you have three, four or more children.

I think it’s wonderful that you imagine a future that involves marriage and children. When I was growing up, I expected to get married and have two daughters like y mother had. :kiss4you::curtsey:My husband and I were dating, we discussed having two or three children. For a few years in our earlier years of marriage, we had two or three children-all boys. :thankyou:shaw::Those three oldest boys are now men. Eventually, children grow up. As our children get older (and as we get old) my husband and I are once again imagining what our life might look like in our future when we have just two or three children at home. We’re beginning to think about selling our home because we won’t need a home this big in a few years when the number of children living with us is smaller again. Maybe we’ll move some place warmer, or maybe we’ll stick near to where we currently. We’ll see. It can be fun to imagine what the future might look like–and occasionally the future bears a slight resemblance to what we imagined.

As you picture your future family life, keep an open mind and an open heart. Even if you and the woman you marry agree on what number of children to have, God might have a different number in His mind for you. Your future will unfold in time.

 

[DlandFan06]

Hi DIandFan-
I come from a family with just two children and my husband comes from a family with three children. For a couple of years, we just had one child. Then we had two, then three…so on and so forth…now we have eight.

In my experience, large families start small. You want three children, which is considered a large family in some circles, and your definition of “large” is four, which is regarded as a small family in some circles. Most families grow one child at a time. We found that first “one” child was the hardest adjustment. By the time we reached three and were outnumbered by children, we had already adjusted to parenting and had experience to draw on. That made parenting easier for me, and adding subsequent children wasn’t quite as scary as you might think. Along the way, we’ve learned more about trusting in God. We grow and change as our children grow and change. Right now, you can’t imagine being the father of a large family, but at this point in your life God has not called you to be the father of a large family. If you ever get to that point, you will be in a different place at that time, and in all likelihood you will have had several years of parenting experience before you have three, four or more children.

I think it’s wonderful that you imagine a future that involves marriage and children. When I was growing up, I expected to get married and have two daughters like y mother had. :kiss4you::curtsey:My husband and I were dating, we discussed having two or three children. For a few years in our earlier years of marriage, we had two or three children-all boys. :thankyou:shaw::Those three oldest boys are now men. Eventually, children grow up. As our children get older (and as we get old) my husband and I are once again imagining what our life might look like in our future when we have just two or three children at home. We’re beginning to think about selling our home because we won’t need a home this big in a few years when the number of children living with us is smaller again. Maybe we’ll move some place warmer, or maybe we’ll stick near to where we currently. We’ll see. It can be fun to imagine what the future might look like–and occasionally the future bears a slight resemblance to what we imagined.

As you picture your future family life, keep an open mind and an open heart. Even if you and the woman you marry agree on what number of children to have, God might have a different number in His mind for you. Your future will unfold in time.

True. It is fun to imagine what if but I think one has to pump the brakes in that regard. Don’t go off into lala-land. Things rarely play out like in a movie. If it does happen that I get a big family then I’ll proceed from there but as of right now, my plan is for three.

 

[AdamP88]

A lot of people in my church community have come from fairly large families and by fairly large, I mean four siblings or more. I myself come from a small family with just two siblings, me being the oldest. When it comes time to start a family, can you have an ideal number of children or will there be a conflict between the two spouses if say one wants a smaller family and the other wants a bigger family because of how big or small their families are.

For myself, I want three kids because my dad came from a family of four siblings and I come from a family of just two so the best scenario would be three. Three’s a middle of the road family anything more and I would start to wonder where the money for these kids would come from. I’m getting a little side tracked here. My question is: for those of you who come from small or smaller families and married someone from a big or bigger family, is there any disagreement as to how many kids you want do to your own family background.

I am the eldest of six. My wife only has one sibling. We don’t disagree because we are both happy to deal with whatever God gives us.