Large Families

[elizabeth09]

Trying to save the world from becoming two family homes.



Boy, if I get married, I know that I want a lot of children, maybe like 12, like in Cheaper By the Dozen (1950).

[VoTeckam]

Wow. I thought I had a large family until I read this thread. I have 43 first cousins. I know all of their names and know all of them very well.

I think trying to say large families can't be close is a useless blanket statement. My family is split between two cities about 400 miles apart. We get together weekly with the families that are also residing int he city and we all make regualr trips to visit the rest of the family. I love each of my parents, aunts, uncles, siblings and cousins as intensely as people in small family love their parents and only sibling.

It is certianly much more work to remain close when in a big family but I can imagine it is much more rewarding as well. My fiance is the only child of an only child and he is sometimes overwhelmed by my enormous family but he has commented many times that we are the the big family he always wanted. We celebrate all holidays together, vacation together (we get a few houses that sleep 20-30 people close to eachother at a beach) every year. In fact, if any of you go to Nags Head in July, you have met someone related to me. haha. Between my family and the familes that have married into my family (gasp... I even know those 75+ names) I would imagine it is statistically impossible to go to the =Outer Banks the same weeks we are there without encountering us.

Anyway... after that long and rather pointless rant. large families are wonderful. They add so much richness to your life. There are so many people to learn from and love. I, for one, would not be as complete a person without each of them.

[Sojourner]

nm

Edited April 1, 2009 by Terra Firma

[lilCook009]

[quote name='eagle_eye222001' post='1781758' date='Feb 15 2009, 04:31 PM']Basically your opening the debate to overpopulation and aiming to justify how many kids you have. Although many countries are beginning or will soon be seeing a negative population curve if they are not careful.....France, China has a lot of guys...US gets immigriants which is really keeping our numbers up.




Je suis d'accord.

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Related to that I know in Japan, because they have negative population growth, people who have children get a big check.

[eagle_eye222001]

[quote name='lilCook009' post='1822535' date='Apr 2 2009, 01:26 AM']Related to that I know in Japan, because they have negative population growth, people who have children get a big check.[/quote]

Exactly. You don't hear much reporting being done on that though. You see a lot more reports and scare stuff on overpopulation and then you realize there are many governments providing financial incentives for kids......governments must be more scared of a negative population growth than overpopulation
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[Thomist-in-Training]

Another thing that people often don't think about is that [ignoring the octuplet case] people don't have a bunch of infants at one time. You do see some harassed mothers with three kids under five, but then after that the children start taking care of each other, even when they're quite small--I know, not always, but at least a little bit! And then much more so as they get older towards 10, 14 and so on.

[elizabeth09]

My mom is the only sister of four brother and sisters that had the most children. That will be true for my dad too (out of five, sister and brothers)