Large Families on Purpose

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jmjZelie

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I have been trying to figure out how to frame my question for weeks now, and decided to just start a thread, inviting CAF members to contribute to the conversation.

I would like to converse with people who are from large families, or who have had large families. Especially people who have foregone the use of NFP or used it in very limited circumstances, perhaps because they decided they didn’t like practicing NFP or it didn’t work for them or they didn’t feel like they had serious enough reasons, etc.

Whatever the personal reasons, I would just like to hear some general thoughts on having larger families, regarding family culture and logistics and perspectives and philosophies. I already have five kids, and our baby is just over a year now, and predictably we are thinking another baby would be nice to add to our family, but I already have the largest family of anybody that I know, and I have no one to learn from or talk to about large family life, or about just leaving the “family planning” up to God.

Is there anyone who would like to talk about their experience? God bless!
 
I did not start off planning on a large family but I’m so glad God had that in His plans. Does that count as a big family on purpose? I really think all babies are planned by God and He purposely sends then when He sees fit.
 
My parents practiced NFP after I, (the oldest) was born. I am now one of eight.

Obviously, my parents got along very well.
 
Well, it goes all ways. WE were a “large family on purpose” for eight years. That got us one baby in heaven. 😦 We have nothing to “show” for that openness and desire of our hearts for a large “as God will’s it” family. Most people think we didn’t want children, or were on contraception. Now we have to end our journey with a hysterectomy for severe medical reasons. You just never know where that openness will take you. Everyone just presumes it will end with a big family. 🤷
 
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Antegin:
Obviously, my parents got along very well.
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Lol! :rotfl:
 
When we talked about children prior to marriage, we came up with a number like we were instructed to do. I said 5, DH said 3, we agreed to 4. We both felt like we were filling out a registry list, like how many place settings do you want, etc. I never dreamed I’d hit double digits. The women in my life suffered infertility, so I just never dreamed of more than 5. I’m glad God’s dreams are bigger than what we can dream. As you see in my signature, we are expecting #11 and everyone is thrilled. The only sadness comes from the two oldest who will be out of state and may not be here the day I go into labor. 😛
 
Convert_in_99 said:
Well, it goes all ways. WE were a “large family on purpose” for eight years. That got us one baby in heaven. 😦 We have nothing to “show” for that openness and desire of our hearts for a large “as God will’s it” family. Most people think we didn’t want children, or were on contraception. Now we have to end our journey with a hysterectomy for severe medical reasons. You just never know where that openness will take you. Everyone just presumes it will end with a big family. 🤷
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I do cringe when young couples plan and plan with the assumption of fertility. I know so many who struggle to have one or two. 😦 As with all, life’s lessons are hard to teach without experiencing life itself.

You are in my prayers convert
 
jmjZelie said:
I would like to converse with people who are from large families, or who have had large families. Especially people who have foregone the use of NFP or used it in very limited circumstances, perhaps because they decided they didn’t like practicing NFP or it didn’t work for them or they didn’t feel like they had serious enough reasons, etc.
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From personal observation, I see a trap in choosing a large family by default because they ‘don’t like NFP’ or it ‘didn’t work for them’. One of the school mums I was friends with had adopted a similar approach ie. transposed a quiverfull approach over a failure of periodic abstinence. They have 8 children, my daughter being friends with the 2nd youngest.

My friend in latter years became impatient to get on with her calling (she is a psychologist and a very good one) and ended up letting the younger ones raise themselves in many ways. This has resulted in some resentment in those younger ones that the older ones don’t experience. My friend had ended up having a hysterectomy when she was miscarrying the 9th child from an unstable womb, which she was privately relieved about. But the failure to master periodic abstinence had been a bit of a curse in those years when she would naturally have chosen to finish the family.

Large families chosen as a primary vocation though and not by default of some other failure… are enviable examples of family life though.
 
LongingSoul said:
From personal observation, I see a trap in choosing a large family by default because they ‘don’t like NFP’ or it ‘didn’t work for them’. One of the school mums I was friends with had adopted a similar approach ie. transposed a quiverfull approach over a failure of periodic abstinence. They have 8 children, my daughter being friends with the 2nd youngest.

My friend in latter years became impatient to get on with her calling (she is a psychologist and a very good one) and ended up letting the younger ones raise themselves in many ways. This has resulted in some resentment in those younger ones that the older ones don’t experience. My friend had ended up having a hysterectomy when she was miscarrying the 9th child from an unstable womb, which she was privately relieved about. But the failure to master periodic abstinence had been a bit of a curse in those years when she would naturally have chosen to finish the family.

Large families chosen as a primary vocation though and not by default of some other failure… are enviable examples of family life though.
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What do you suggest for those of us that NFP does not work for then? The church doesn’t give us many options. We can’t use birth control other than NFP or abstinence. As someone living in a celibate marriage I can honestly tell you it is not a good situation for a married couple. NFP is not fool proof. I am glad you and some others on here use it successfully year after year, but not all female bodies work in the way instructors and books say they are supposed to. Most NFP couples I have net in real life have multiple unplanned babies of switch to other forms of birth control or sterilization instead. What other options are out there? Become bitter and miserable? Neglect our kids? Take other routes to prevent children? Are those things better than accepting that God may have hand picked our families for us? Maybe learning to align our wills to God’s will isn’t the best option in Catholicism according to some, but according to most priests that us exactly what we are supposed to do.
 
LongingSoul said:
From personal observation, I see a trap in choosing a large family by default because they ‘don’t like NFP’ or it ‘didn’t work for them’. One of the school mums I was friends with had adopted a similar approach ie. transposed a quiverfull approach over a failure of periodic abstinence. They have 8 children, my daughter being friends with the 2nd youngest.

My friend in latter years became impatient to get on with her calling (she is a psychologist and a very good one) and ended up letting the younger ones raise themselves in many ways. This has resulted in some resentment in those younger ones that the older ones don’t experience. My friend had ended up having a hysterectomy when she was miscarrying the 9th child from an unstable womb, which she was privately relieved about. But the failure to master periodic abstinence had been a bit of a curse in those years when she would naturally have chosen to finish the family.

Large families chosen as a primary vocation though and not by default of some other failure… are enviable examples of family life though.
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I think that trouble can start substantially earlier than people expect.

As I’ve mentioned before, my mom was an excellent mother of two, but the wheels seemed to come off her parenting when my parents simultaneously a) moved us out to the country (20+ minutes from the grocery store) b) started building a house while living in it and c) had a third child all while the family was on very rocky economic ground. (We never had medical insurance when I was a kid and my dad never worked at one job a whole year that I can recall when I was growing up.)

We were widely spaced kids (I’m 3.5 years older than my sister and almost 9 years older than my brother), but now that I have children of roughly the same spacing, it’s cleared up a bunch of things I didn’t understand at the time or many years after. For instance, my 4th grade year was academically a huge disaster. It’s only been since I had my third child and was struggling to keep up with my school age kids’ academic stuff that the lightbulb went on and I realized that the exact same thing must have happened with my mom–but way worse for a variety of different reasons, both logistical and economic. The school stuff was a temporary setback (I bounced back by about 6th grade), but there were much more serious long-term relational effects. Our sibling relationships were fine, but as I now understand, my mom was so overwhelmed by the new situation that she just didn’t have the wherewithal to keep up her relationship with me. (My sister recalls that she was expected to fry lunch on the stove as a preschooler–and I believe that’s correct–we were frying eggs and toast on the stove when I was a school age child and my sister would have been around 5 at the time. Presumably, my mom was busy with the baby.) My relationship with my mom deteriorated into a lot of “do this do that” from my mom to me and a lot of shirking and procrastination from me. That was around the time that my mom started seriously hitting us and breaking kitchen implements on us big kids. It took 20+ years for my relationship with my mom to recover from the stuff she did then.

I have a 13-year-old daughter and two younger children now, and I see exactly what the issues are that my mom was up against so many years ago. It’s so easy to let my relationship with my daughter degenerate into just telling her what to do and skimp on relationship-building activities. But my daughter isn’t just “staff” and shouldn’t be treated as staff–she needs a lot of parenting, too, at this point, and I need to protect our relationship. I’m realizing now that I needed a lot more mothering than I got when I was that age.

Also, I have a lot of side-eye to give any parenting approach that focuses on figuring out how little one can get away with giving children in terms of time, attention and family resources.
 
bitterhope said:
What do you suggest for those of us that NFP does not work for then? The church doesn’t give us many options. We can’t use birth control other than NFP or abstinence. As someone living in a celibate marriage I can honestly tell you it is not a good situation for a married couple. NFP is not fool proof. I am glad you and some others on here use it successfully year after year, but not all female bodies work in the way instructors and books say they are supposed to. Most NFP couples I have net in real life have multiple unplanned babies of switch to other forms of birth control or sterilization instead. What other options are out there? Become bitter and miserable? Neglect our kids? Take other routes to prevent children? Are those things better than accepting that God may have hand picked our families for us? Maybe learning to align our wills to God’s will isn’t the best option in Catholicism according to some, but according to most priests that us exactly what we are supposed to do.
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I suspect LongingSoul is talking about families where “NFP doesn’t work for us” is code for “my husband gets mean if we don’t have sex for two whole weeks” or something along those lines.
 
Xantippe said:
I suspect LongingSoul is talking about families where “NFP doesn’t work for us” is code for “my husband gets mean if we don’t have sex for two whole weeks” or something along those lines.
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Even then, what is a Catholic couple supposed to do? The Church doesn’t give many options.

And no, my husband is not like that even though I’m 100% positive many people think he is. Maybe a lot of other couples have similar assumptions made about them that also aren’t true
 
My husband came from a family of seven, and I had two sisters, but the extended family consisted of seven aunts and uncles and lots of cousins.

We both wanted a large family. We had four boys and four girls. Because of all the wonderful family gatherings, especially at Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year, and Easter, I wanted the same thing when I got married.

Most of us lived in four family apartments, or down the block, or a few blocks away. Grandma and Grandpa’s basement was where we got together for holiday meals. And, it wasn’t a fancy basement at all, but we didn’t notice that. I don’t remember every being cold or hungry, and we did use some hand-me-down clothes, but my Mom sewed beautifully and started out making our baptismal gown. All the special dresses she made with Simplicity patterns…she sewed for us till we were eighteen years old. I never had a new bicycle, but certainly enjoyed the used ones given by others.

I noticed that at times there were tensions among relatives over some things, but they didn’t last. Thanks be to the Lord there was no alcoholism.

As my children got older they learned how to earn some money from delivering newspapers, pennysavers, shoveling snow in the winter, and some baby sitting for the girls.

We had no savings to speak of…I remember we saved about $225. once, and then something went wrong with the car. What a blessing that my husband’s job came with good medical coverage. We always caught up with bills when we got our tax return.

Now my children and grandchildren are spread out all over the U.S. My youngest daughter and her husband and their two sons live about 5 miles from me. The rest keep in touch at times with family visits,
e-mail, Skype or telephone calls. There are twelve grandchildren now.

The Lord got us through the tough times, and still does.
 
A couple might find that NFP does not work for them and decide to have a large family instead. I see this is one of the few possible excellent choices. I don’t think their inability to practice NFP to avoid pregnancy is a moral failing. I see their decision as a generous one.

Another couple might intend to have a large family and act accordingly. I see that as a generous choice as well, whether God blesses them with abundant fertility or not.

Another couple might not really know how to discern whether or not they are being called to a large family. They might have serious reasons that would lead certain couples to practice NFP to avoid pregnancy, and yet decide that those reasons are not sufficient in their own marriage. They might be capable of practicing NFP, but simply don’t want to. So they muddle their way along, baby after baby, until they have a truly large family that surprises even themselves. I see their decision as a generous one, too.

I hope that explains now the reason why I briefly mentioned NFP in my OP. I wanted to include every possible way of arriving at a large family.

What I am asking about is the philosophy and perspective and logistics. I want to learn from other veteran large family parents and benefit from your wisdom. I admire you deeply, however you arrived at your large family size, and I wish I could take you out for coffee and just listen to you talk about your family culture, because I know no one with a family larger than my own, which is already quite large at 5, but which might possibly grow soon enough, because my husband and I are like that third couple I described.
 
bitterhope said:
Even then, what is a Catholic couple supposed to do? The Church doesn’t give many options.

And no, my husband is not like that even though I’m 100% positive many people think he is. Maybe a lot of other couples have similar assumptions made about them that also aren’t true
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I have seen a number of internet postings (including on CAF) talking first-hand about the mean abstaining husband problem, so it’s not just people making an unfair assumption–there are guys out there that aren’t blessed with the gift of continence.

Longing Soul, what situations did you have in mind?
 
bitterhope said:
I did not start off planning on a large family but I’m so glad God had that in His plans. Does that count as a big family on purpose? I really think all babies are planned by God and He purposely sends then when He sees fit.
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Yes, that counts!

Please share your perspective on large family culture! I would love to read it.
 
bitterhope said:
What do you suggest for those of us that NFP does not work for then? The church doesn’t give us many options. We can’t use birth control other than NFP or abstinence. As someone living in a celibate marriage I can honestly tell you it is not a good situation for a married couple. NFP is not fool proof. I am glad you and some others on here use it successfully year after year, but not all female bodies work in the way instructors and books say they are supposed to. Most NFP couples I have net in real life have multiple unplanned babies of switch to other forms of birth control or sterilization instead. What other options are out there? Become bitter and miserable? Neglect our kids? Take other routes to prevent children? Are those things better than accepting that God may have hand picked our families for us? Maybe learning to align our wills to God’s will isn’t the best option in Catholicism according to some, but according to most priests that us exactly what we are supposed to do.
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There is a lot of wisdom in what I have bolded.

My husband is a good guy and never treated me as a gate keeper of when we could or could not have sex. He accepted me as a very fertile woman and respected that part of me, as well as the rest of me. Not all men resent their wives fertility.

Couples who are faced with having a large family are blessed in a very different way with joys and crosses that cannot be compared to the crosses and joys of those who struggle with infertility or the hardship of not being able to give in to their natural fertility for a miriad of reasons. Can this thread be for those who’d like to share our experiences, what has worked, what hasn’t, etc? We do not need to drag out every sad story of every couple that resents their child or neglects them because of lack of parenting abilities. Let’s help each other to live the vocation they were called to. I have been called to be a mother of a large family. I’m blessed to be doing so. I know the struggles and the joys and I’d like to help those just beginning the journey. I can’t help those with infertility. I’ll never know that cross. This is where I can help. Let us help each other. Please.
 
Xantippe said:
I have seen a number of internet postings (including on CAF) talking first-hand about the mean abstaining husband problem, so it’s not just people making an unfair assumption–there are guys out there that aren’t blessed with the gift of continence.

Longing Soul, what situations did you have in mind?
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There are also several women like that too. I’m pretty sure it’s a fairly even split. Regardless, it is still an unfair assumption and gives no real solution.

I am very glad that I NFP doesn’t work for me. I have more children than I ever thought possible for me and I have grown spiritually with each one. God knows what he is doing.
 
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