Starting when we had three very little kids we noticed the looks. It increased quite a bit with four boys and so did the many opportunities to talk to people. Now that there is a girl in the mix, too, it’s even greater. When my family goes in public, we get stares, we get people visibly counting our kids with their lips, we are a conversation starter of our own. We get to talk to lots of people about it. Sometimes their looks even warrant me starting the conversation with something like: “Yes, we have a lot of fun; Yes, we’re really tired.”
We don’t experience contempt like this story below accounts, and I think he is too harsh. But we do cause people to wonder and stare, usually in happy awe, usually with compliments.
But still, much of this article below is too true…deplorably so. God didn’t dictate a universally-applicable number of children each family should have. But the proud desire for more ease , the condition of the world, and even probably finances are not reasons to stop having kids.
How strange to live in a world where loving children casts one in infamy. Having a family with many children implies a backwardness and primitivism that is deemed unbecoming in the developed countries of the West. Large families, it is thought, exist only among religious weirdoes or the teeming hovels of the Third World.
Read the whole article: The Contempt Shown to Parents of Large Families
HT: Dennis and Mistin Wilkinson
Ryan, I appreciate your insight here. I have been astonished at the negative comments I received when we first announced the pregnancy w/ our fourth child. I’ve thought of asking people what I should do about it but have been afraid of the response! Instead I try to steer the conversation toward eternal perspective. The only thing we can take from this life into the next is the eternal soul – what a great way to invest the present days – into more little people. I also cannot get over the joy this latest little girl has brought to each member of our family! She is truly a delight! I can see from facebook that you feel the same way w/ Claire’s addition. How much we would be missing out if we didn’t have them! I also really appreciate your positive approach to folks’ stares and comments. Thanks for the little boost today! The picture is a riot!!
I’d love to have a lot of kids, but will probably not have more than two… I am a single parent who is going to adopt and the expenses are too high
If I could somehow win the lottery (I don’t enter so the chances are quite slim…) I would definitely do the “Stay at Home” thing and adopt more than 2 (though probably not at once)
I do know a lot of larger families with 4-9 kids.
Someone linked to this article a few wks. ago on fb and I really enjoyed it. Society as a whole (and not just in the U.S.) is having less and less children. In Slovakia the average family size is 3.1, which is actually high for Europeans. The U.S. average is even lower – around 2.5 or 2.6. This figure isn’t children per household, it is the entire household.
We get the most looks when we do something with Jason’s brother, who now has 4 boys. We went camping two yrs. ago (w/6) and we sure got the stares! Now in a few wks. we’re going to do it with 7 boys and although we’ll all be worn out by the end of the weekend, we wouldn’t trade our boys for anything!
I must say I have great respect for those with 4, 5, and more. I often struggle with patience and organization with just three, so I look up to mothers who can manage even more with such grace!
Ryan & Chrissy – you keep having them, we’ll keep loving them!
I just read this guy’s article. We have three kids and a German Shepherd. Oddly enough, we always get remarks about how beautiful our dog is while our children get ignored. I might add that our first two were a set of twins who frequently were decked out in a really cool double stroller. They often got completely ignored – but not the dog!