Comments on: The American Prejudice Against Big Families

By: Shannon

Shannon — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 01:28:00 +0000

Your business. Period. I am tired of people judging women for having too many or too few children. The fact is, you can’t get it “right,” so please yourself and do what will make your family the happiest.

By: Sarah Buttenwieser

Sarah Buttenwieser — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 13:45:00 +0000

Jennifer, I too am mother to four (14, 11, 7, 20 months) & recently wrote about that experience on my blog. Hope people will read !

http://www.valleyadvocate.com/blogs/home.cfm?aid=10664

By: Jennifer Margulis

Jennifer Margulis — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 13:17:07 +0000

Meagan’s comments made me realize that I wanted to do a shout out to her Web site about larger families. Some of the writers over there have loads of kids (my midwife, who has 11 children, never tells people the exact number. She usually just says, “I’ve got a bundle,” or something like that). For readers interested in learning more from the p.o.v. of moms with lots of children (Meagan Francis, who wrote TABLE FOR EIGHT: RAISING A LARGER FAMILY IN A SMALLER FAMILY WORLD) included, check out: http://largerfamilies.com/

By: olga vladimirsky

olga vladimirsky — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 01:52:20 +0000

Interesting post.
I am not sure if it is possible to rationalize it all. But one can always take a lighter attitude – some people want a lot of children, some want only one or two and some do not want any children at all. It should even out at the end.
Olga

By: Alexandra

Alexandra — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 12:53:05 +0000

I really enjoyed pregnancy and had to laugh at your comment that it was like being a rock star. I was pregnant in France, and overnight, when people noticed, they treated me differently. I had three children by 1975, and folks back home in America criticized this choice. France was encouraging births with “allocations familles nombreuses”, an allocation, ie. monthly check after birth of a third child, so the French saw me a hero for producing more than two. Very different behavioral pattern, to say the least.

By: Meagan Francis

Meagan Francis — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 23:47:21 +0000

Five KIDS, that is. Though honestly, I started getting comments when I “only” had three!

By: Meagan Francis

Meagan Francis — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 23:46:45 +0000

Jennifer, you know I’m right there with you. Having written a lot about raising big families I’m amazed sometimes at the hate mail (and hate comments) I get about my family of five. I think we’ve become so accustomed to a certain parenting style (one that’s very big on expensive experiences and lots of activity) that it really seems impossible to do a good job raising more than, say, two kids. But you absolutely can do a good job of it…you just have to subscribe to a slower parenting pace.

Also, I do understand the environmental concerns, but the fact is that in the United States we’re hovering right around replacement fertility rates. That’s not likely to change even if a handful of families have 7 or 10 or 12 kids, and in the meanwhile, we as a society have a long way to go toward changing our lifestyles before we start pointing fingers at people with lots of kids.

By: Jasper Pismo

Jasper Pismo — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 19:23:11 +0000

I agree about polluting ourselves out of existence–though technically, the cyanobacteria are still around. When Earth was young and oxygen scanty, the archaebacteria that excreted oxygen did kill most of themselves off, by excreting until the atmosphere was poisonous to them! That kicked off oxygen-breathers like us animals, but the oxygen-shy bacteria still found niches to survive in. Doubt that strategy will work for us, though.

By: Jennifer Margulis

Jennifer Margulis — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 16:19:17 +0000

Cindy, I think there is also the reverse judgment that you are mentioning here — as if it’s a bad thing to have just one child and there is something “wrong.” I don’t understand why people are so judgmental in general about how big or small our families decide to be.

And Cynthia, I totally agree with you about how it’s the lifestyle choices we make not the number of children we have. My family lived in Niger where many many people have 8 or more children and it is a country where a tiny fraction of resources is used. People take showers with half a bucket of water (and get clean), recycle absolutely everything (except the plastic imported from China which is polluting the landscape), and generate almost NO greenhouse gasses.

By: Cindy L

Cindy L — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 14:00:23 +0000

Thank you for this post. Interesting! Now in my 50s, I am an only child and am the mother of an only child. I grew up in a Catholic neighborhood brimming with very large families — the norm back then in the Midwest. It wasn’t unusual for me to play with kids who were one of 7 or 8 children in a family. I was constantly judged for being an only, and other moms would ask me why my parents didn’t have more kids! (As if there was anything I could do about it …)

Even today, when new friends discover that I am an only child, they react with surprise, because I tend to be very generous. Many people still cling to the outdated notion that all only children are “spoiled and selfish, etc.” People are also surprised when I tell them I was basically happy, had lots of friends and support, loads of creative time, and was rarely lonely. My friends became family to me in many ways. (I loved hanging out with the bigger families, who welcomed me.) My son’s experience as an only child has been much the same.

My family and I live in Catholic neighborhood again today, and while families in our hood are a bit smaller, we have many friends (young and middle-aged) who have no fewer than four kids. We’ve never noticed any bias against them — and we’ve always loved having all the kids around! Because we have a small family, ours has always been the hang-out house. We love it.

My hope is that all people will stop judging others on the size of their families. We all have our reasons — some of the medical or physical — for the choices we make. There are many ways to be a family!