forced me to go to the "new blogger" - we'll see. I haven't heard much good about it, hopefully my experience will be different.
I really was coming on to vent about large families. Now I understand it is your right to have as many children as you want, but after coming from a large family, I don't think it's a good idea.
I was reading on a message board about this famous family who is on number 19 or something like that. Somebody posted how awesome that was and how excited they were for her. I'm not excited for the lady, I'm not in awe of the lady, I personally think the lady is stupid. It's been proven that after a certain number of pregnancies your risk of having a baby with learning disabilities goes up and continues to rise. Even though God made our bodies to have babies, I just don't think it's healthy for your body to give birth that many times.
Then there's the issues I have with having to live in that family. What they have brought on these poor kids - everyone looking at them funny whenever they all go some place together. I remember the stares we use to get as kids, it was horrible. Then there's the "the older ones help take care of the younger ones" philosophy that I think I hear every mother of big families say. I just don't think that's right or fair. YOU gave birth to those children, YOU take care of them. Don't make your other offspring babysit, change diapers, and be the second mother. Let them be kids. I think having a large family makes the older kids grow up way too fast.
I'm sure if there's anybody out there actually reading this blog who has a large family they are going to be annoyed with this post. (If there is even anybody out there reaidng it at all! ;-) ) Well, I am entitled to my opinion the same way they are entitled to give birth to umpteen children.
The trouble comes with "where do you draw the line?" I don't know. How many is too many - 5, 7, 8, 19? I've got 2 and in some countries that's too many. Heck, in this house some days that's too many! LOL! I guess my issue comes more with how the kids are reared. If you can rear 19 children and not make the older ones grow up too fast, more power to you. I've yet to see a family though where this happens. Where the Mom is truly responsible for all of the children all of the time rather than making the older ones responsible for the younger ones a lot of the time. Even in my family of 2 I can tell you that my #1 child had to grow up a little bit when #2 was born, and at the time that made me kind of sad. Even today there are days it makes me sad that I had to take that away from him.
I would love to talk to those kids in that family of 19 - one on one with just me where they know no one is listening and where they would be able to tell me really what they thought of the way they were living. I wonder how many of them would really say they love having all those siblings.
Don't get me wrong, I love my siblings, and it's different now that we're grown and each have our own lives. And I guess I really wouldn't trade growing up with those siblings because it taught me some things about life that I needed to know. But I will still say I certainly didn't like growing up with them. And that's not something I can change.
