Now here is a heart warming story

[MicroBalrog]

They know what causes it.  They have the moolah to handle it.  In the absence of any evidence that it is harming anyone else, it's their business.

I am not sure that is the best way to raise a family. However, I respect the right of other people to raise their children as their wish, and I am sure these people are upstanding citizens and their children will also turn out as such, and therefore I do not wish to criticize them and what they do.

[Perd Hapley]

Their children might turn out to be heinous thugs and crack-addicted welfare mothers.  But that would have nothing to do with the quantity of young-uns. 

[MicroBalrog]

I wouldn't even want my son to be taught in a class this size. Children are individuals. They need individual attention and care.

Yes, more money may help with having more children, if only through helping you take care of their physical needs and hiring tutors and governesses that help you watch over the little ones. But all the money in the world can't buy you a 26-hour day, and at some point you're just not going to be able to give those children all the individual attention, and love, and mother-daughter talks they need.

There is a maximum number. I do not know what it is, and I suspect strongly it is individual for every family and every person. I am not God, nor am I a liberal academic, and I do not claim to know what's best for other people, but that's not the way I would do things.

[Viking]

Show is boring as drying paint.  And who cares, as long as they don't live off welfare?  Its her uterus.

Pretty much everything that has to be said about it.

[BlueStarLizzard]

Show is boring as drying paint.  And who cares, as long as they don't live off welfare?  Its her uterus.

Pretty much everything that has to be said about it.

nobody is saying they can't have that many kids. i think the question that boggles the mind is why someone would want to and is it really, in your opinion, a brilliant thing to do?

personally, i think that 18 is over the top and i have a feeling that (considering some of the things said by folks who know more about these people then i) some of those kids arn't gonna turn out as the happiest adults.

just 'cause she has the right to mass produce children doesn't mean she is right, and nobody on this board would even think about taking away her right.
 
but we are entilited to our right to think (and say) what we will about it.

[Tallpine]

i think that 18 is over the top

We only had three (two survived, at least so far) and sometimes I wonder if that was too many

Right now we have 3 dogs, 3 cats, 3 horses, and 2 rabbits.  Planning to get a bunch of chickens in a couple months. 

My father, grandfather, etc all came from big families: ~12-15 though of course some did not survive childhood.  Odd that my dad is the younger son of a younger son of a younger son ... making just a few generations removed from me dating back to the mid-1700's.  My great-grandfather was born about 1840.

[freedom lover]

Speaking of which, four of my great uncles died in the Civil War.

My great, great grandfather was an herb doctor who fathered my great- grandfather by a young wife in the 1890's (he was in his 80's at the time).

His sons by that wife fought in WWI.

[Tallpine]

One of my great uncles was a Doctor, too.

He didn't even have to go to school for it.  My great-great-grandparents named him "Doctor" 

I think Doctor was about 20 years older than my great-grandfather, which gives an idea of how big the family was.

[Gewehr98]

Well, if there's anything to learn about this, it's that if your kids are too old to nurse, just have another one...

"What really works for me is swaddling a baby and snuggling up," Michelle told PEOPLE in an interview last year. "I love that time of just bonding and nursing a little baby. And, with a new baby, I realize that I don't need as much sleep as I used to think I did. You learn. This time goes by so quickly. I look at my older children and wonder where the time went."

[Perd Hapley]

i think the question that boggles the mind is why someone would want to and is it really, in your opinion, a brilliant thing to do?

Well, that's the perspective of a twentieth/twenty-first century first-worlder.  From another perspective, one might ask why on Earth anyone would NOT want to have as many kids as possible.  Why?  Life, children, reproduction, fecundity, passing on the name, and the lineage, the heritage, the genes, etc. - these are extremely important to most humans, so why would anyone limit themselves to two or three or ten or fifteen kids? 

That's not my perspective, but that seems to be the way many people have looked at it.  Why not?  It doesn't appeal to me, but can you honestly presume to know how many children another person is capable of raising?  I'm not saying you'd want to outlaw big families, but what's so crazy about having that many kids?   

 

[MicroBalrog]

I'm not saying you'd want to outlaw big families, but what's so crazy about having that many kids?   

There's nothing CRAZY about having that many things. I've outlined the reasons I don't want to have that many kids above, but let me give you an example.

My father does not know English in any meaningful way. Yet, when I was in primary school, he decided that the Israeli schools start children too late on English.  He started me on it a year earlier, and  would make sure I did English exercises every day, and checked them with me using schoolbooks he had ordered from Russia. That took two, three hours every day. As I mentioned earlier on this forum, my father is very unpleasant when angered. So I did my part.

He'd also have long conversations with me about the university he went to in Russia, about the academic world, about various topics related to literature and history, and he made sure I read the right books right.

He held a full-time job while doing this.

Could he have done this if he had eight kids? With all eight of them? Ten? Eighteen?

Raising a child is not about transferring your genes to him. It's about passing on your values and your outlook of life.

Me and 2swap are in agreement that we will do our level best to ensure any future child we will have will be homeschooled. This is because we both think that the values we pass on to our child (or children) are important. The way we raise and teach our child is important.

Raising a child is not, IMHO, about the emotional satisfaction I will probably feel when he is born, nor about the emotional satisfaction that his mother will feel from nursing him or holding him in her arms. It is supposed to be about the child and about him growing up to be a decent human being and individual, a free man (or woman) and having some success in life. It's not about me, it's about him or her.

[Hutch]

There was a TV show about this family on a coupla years ago.  It showed them building and moving into their new home.  By consensus of the kids, it had a master bedroom and nursery, a girls dorm room, and a boys dorm room.  They WANTED to live in such an arrangement.  Daily life was portrayed.  Older kids helping younger ones with schoolwork.  Older kids helping manage younger sibs, apparently without the kind of rancor one would imagine.  The kids were apparently very bright, well behaved, responsible and energetic.

The show that followed showed a "Super-Nanny" coming in to show a couple (maybe a single mom, I disremember) how to deal with and discipline their unruly pair of kids.  Tantrums, lying, misbehavior caught on hidden cameras, the classic "reality show".

The comparison could NOT have been more stark.

[Ben]

Well, if there's anything to learn about this, it's that if your kids are too old to nurse, just have another one...

Or join La Leche. An ex-girlfriend lived next door to a family of four -- two boys, about 8 and 2.  The wife was big into La Leche She breast fed both of the boys AND her husband. She would talk about the "health and bonding" benefits when she was over visiting my girlfriend. I would have to just cover my ears (and keep from asking if I could have a go myself). 

[Perd Hapley]

Raising a child is not, IMHO, about the emotional satisfaction I will probably feel when he is born, nor about the emotional satisfaction that his mother will feel from nursing him or holding him in her arms. It is supposed to be about the child and about him growing up to be a decent human being and individual, a free man (or woman) and having some success in life. It's not about me, it's about him or her.

Raising a child is not about transferring your genes to him. It's about passing on your values and your outlook of life.

Yes, of course.  Like I said, passing on your heritage.  Someone having kids for all the wrong reasons is just as likely (or more likely) to have one kid, as to have 20.  In fact, a lot of people seem to think that small families result from the self-centeredness of modern parents, who want to spend their money and time on nice cars or going to all the best parties, instead of bringing more lives into the world.  Again, that's not my point of view, but it makes just as much sense as anything you're saying. 
 

Could he have done this if he had eight kids? With all eight of them? Ten? Eighteen?

Like you said, he had a full-time job.  And maybe most parents can't handle that many kids today, in our modern economy.  When large families were more common, children often worked alongside their parents. 

But even beside that, you are looking at this as if parents have to spend hours each day with every child, in one-on-one instruction.  Maybe there are other ways of raising children, that work just as well, or better.  In larger families, older kids can help in raising younger ones. 

[BlueStarLizzard]

Well, that's the perspective of a twentieth/twenty-first century first-worlder.  From another perspective, one might ask why on Earth anyone would NOT want to have as many kids as possible.  Why?  Life, children, reproduction, fecundity, passing on the name, and the lineage, the heritage, the genes, etc. - these are extremely important to most humans, so why would anyone limit themselves to two or three or ten or fifteen kids? 

That's not my perspective, but that seems to be the way many people have looked at it.  Why not?  It doesn't appeal to me, but can you honestly presume to know how many children another person is capable of raising?  I'm not saying you'd want to outlaw big families, but what's so crazy about having that many kids?  

 

it does depend on perspective, so i will add the current contect. we live in a country that has a large population, we have good medicine and child mortality rates are not extreme, and our society focuses on quality of child raising, not quantiy.

its one thing if this was a socialogical norm in our country, but its not, for many reasons.

and for the record it doesn't matter if they have lots of kids, but i'm still gonna think they may be a little on the nutterbutter side of the fence. that just happens to be my opinion.

[MicroBalrog]

But even beside that, you are looking at this as if parents have to spend hours each day with every child, in one-on-one instruction.  Maybe there are other ways of raising children, that work just as well, or better.  In larger families, older kids can help in raising younger ones.

A valid point, and I'm not saying bigger families are inherently wrong. As I said in other threads, on other issues, the current definition of family is socially forged.

[Headless Thompson Gunner]

It's certainly unconventional, but that doesn't make it weird, wrong, or stoopid.

By all accounts, they're all happy, well-adjusted, and productive.  They like their life this way.  Maybe it's the fact that they're not particularly dysfunctional that makes 'em so weird?

[Perd Hapley]

For the record, I can't imagine having more than two, maybe three kids.  I'm glad my wife agrees with that. 

But maybe that's just because we come from 2-child families. 

[BridgeRunner]

By all accounts, they're all happy, well-adjusted, and productive.  They like their life this way.  Maybe it's the fact that they're not particularly dysfunctional that makes 'em so weird?

If I was making a tv show about my family's private life, we would probably all look happy and well-adjusted.

[Gewehr98]

BridgeWalker for the win.

It's whatever the TV producers want it to be, period. 

[Headless Thompson Gunner]

Absent any new information, I see no reason to believe that the way they're portrayed is a complete lie.

So, do either of you have any knowledge of them being unhappy or maladjusted?  I mean, besides the fact that you can't imagine them being anything but unhappy and maladjusted?

[BlueStarLizzard]

Absent any new information, I see no reason to believe that the way they're portrayed is a complete lie.

So, do either of you have any knowledge of them being unhappy or maladjusted?  I mean, besides the fact that you can't imagine them being anything but unhappy and maladjusted?

who said they were unhappy and maladjusted? i just said their a little nutterbutter. i could reason that everyone on this board is a little nutterbutter. i know i am.

[Headless Thompson Gunner]

Gewehr and Bridgewalker seem to think their happiness is all a fabrication of the TV producers, or some such.

[MicroBalrog]

I don't think, to be fair, that they meant it that way - unless I'm way off course, and they can correct me, they merely say we can't know either way from this show. This being TV, they're probably right.

[Gewehr98]

Thanks for putting words in my mouth, HTG.   :|