8 things to know about large families

There have been a spate of books about trad wife influencers that have been published recently. I read them, though I'm not sure I should because I find myself being incredibly annoyed even if I am enjoying the overall story. Earlier this year I read Yesteryear and this week's iteration is Everyone is Lying to You by Jo Piazza. 

In the most cursory way, the trad wife influencer characters are very similar to each other, but the course of each book is vastly different. In both books this character has multiple children, homeschools, and bakes their own bread while sharing details their life with the wider world. In its barest outline it feels as though it hits a bit close to the bone.

I've already written about why I am not (and never have been) a "trad wife", so I won't go into that here. What has been causing me to grind my teeth a bit in this most recent book is the author's take on large families. Large families being six children or more. So to get my brain to let it go, I need to address it here.

The story is told from the point of view of two different women. One has two children and the other (the influencer) has six. There are a lot of back handed comments about family size and how no one person can take care of that many children without help made by the narrator with two children. Of course the influencer's life is all a pack of lies because no one could do that. 

I pause to take a deep breath every time I come across one of these statements. It feels a little bit as though the character in the book is calling me a liar. It's not a good feeling. 

Here's the deal. If I were trying to convince people that our house is always spotless, we only eat all homemade food from organic and freshly grown or locally sourced ingredients, that my children are always dressed in beautiful clothing with their hair perfectly styled (snort), and I floated through my days appreciating the peace filled harmony of my family, well then, yes, I would be lying. Anyone who gives this impression is lying. Life, especially life with children, doesn't work like that. It is an impossible expectation that is just going to make you miserable. 

Or rich if you happen to be dealing in this type of fantasy. And be sure to buy my ____ so your life can look just like mine. 

But the reality also is that it is possible to raise six or more children without a staff. Really. Even if you absolutely cannot imagine that such a thing is possible. 

I have had the 'I don't know how you do it' conversation with parents with one or two children enough times to know that it can be very difficult to wrap ones head around the fact that large families can actually work and be healthy. 

Some basic facts about raising many children.

1. Especially when everyone was young, I couldn't have done it if I worked outside the home. (I still worked teaching piano and doing freelance writing remember.) The sheer logistics of keeping the house lovable and everyone alive required this. I'm not sure it would have been possible if I went away for work each day. The childcare costs alone would have done us in.

2. Our house was livable, but hardly pristine. It's all about ones expectations. I was fine with welcoming others into a less than perfect house. I would often ask guests to just pretend that things were pristine. 

3. If two children take X amount of work, many people assume that 12 children must take 12X amount of work. But things don't scale that way. For instance, tripling a meal is not that much more work than making a single recipe. It's just more groceries. I can read to multiple children as easily as one, though we had to work out a system of who got to sit next to me. 

4. You realize fairly quickly that you just can't do (or afford) everything. We had to limit how many outside activities children could participate in. With the current mindset being that you must be driving all of your children to multiple and different activity each week or you're a bad parent, I realize that this doesn't seem to be a positive. But I think it is. It is not bad for children to have unstructured free time, to experience boredom, to figure out how to entertain themselves (without screens). And it is certainly not a bad thing for children to not be living with incredibly stressed out parents because they are spending every minute of free time driving children around. 

5. On the heels of that idea, children do not actually need their parents to do every single thing for them or to fill their every moment. Many children meant that I couldn't have done this even if I wanted to. Sometimes people would ask W. and B. if they minded having so many younger siblings that they had to share their parents with. They both reacted strongly, assuring the person they didn't mind at all because the thought of being the two sole recipients to all of my parenting attentions felt incredibly overwhelming. They felt it was best if those attentions were diluted somewhat. 

6. Love is not a limited commodity. You cannot run out of it. With one child it is easy to think that there is no way you could love another child as much. But then you do and it doesn't diluted you love for your first child. We so often treat love as if it is something we can use up. 

7. Life with many children looks different from life with one or two children. Different is not better or worse, just different. Figuring out how to parent many children is a skill that is learned and developed. Most people add one child at a time, you aren't suddenly handed twelve. With each addition, you hone your skills, figure out better ways to function, learn to let go of what isn't really important. And then let go of more things again. It changes you. 

8. The best functioning large families that I know (and I know a few and none of them are culty influencers), function well because both parents are involved and share the parenting load. So in s sense, no, I'm not doing this alone because J. is an equal partner. I don't get the sense that the fathers of the culty influencers do much in terms of parenting other than sperm donation. 

I don't think everyone should have a large family. The number of children a couple has is a very personal decision and will be unique to them. But also know that many of us who do have larger than average families really are functional and not that different from anyone else.