17 September 2009

Go for it!

Big thanks to My Own Brother-in-law for sending me this article:

No, you are probably not RISKING YOUR PRECIOUS, PRECIOUS HEALTH!!! by having more than 2 kids.

10 comments:

Katy said...

“Having that many children isn’t an oddity" is the best summary of this article.

I have French-Canadian ancestors (at least 3) with over 15 children. I started researching my husbands side and he has 5 or 6 families in his background(mostly the Gaelic-Kentucky sort)with over 18 kids. Our "uptight" Presbyterian and Methodist Northern clans (from PA, OH, IN)"limited" their families to 8 or 10.

Really, the oddity of history is the family with fewer than 4 children, and usually that is due to early death of one of the parents, miscarriages, or a late marriage.

Before I married I really worried I would be barren, but my husband and I are expecting our third (in three years) in January. I guess we will continue our families' irresponsible tradition of using up the earth's resources.

One last note: I think three of the saddest results of our contracepting culture is how the infertile couple will often be accused of willingly causing their own sorrow (instead of before, when barrenness and not bc was the status quo); how contraception makes a perverse mockery of barren wombs; and how it creates gross pride in the couple who do not contracept, as if they opened and closed the womb. I don't think my gggggrandmother was too self-righteous when she was 26 and had 7 kids already, probably because her mother and mother-in-law and any number of siblings already had done it (and maybe with better results)

mz said...

Mrs. Vassileyev, I salute you. Nostrovia.

lisa said...

Why do I ever bother to read these articles' comments? It ruins my night :( Someone pass me some ice cream. Really - people hate large families THAT much? I mean I had inklings, but...Well, that settles it. I'm staying in the vortex and never coming out.

If someone can really say that pregnancy within a marriage is "knocking up" a wife???

Oy.

Rebekah said...

Katy, my feeble brain has also been pondering the implications of the normalization of contraception for the infertile. In addition to observing the problems you cite, I've had the weird experience of being led by people to believe they're using contraception so others won't realize they're having fertility trouble. What a world, what a world.

Lisa, my husband recently explained to a parishioner that I couldn't have a drink because I was knocked up again. Another parishioner in the vicinity almost died laughing.

Dakotapam said...

It is sad that people hate large families so much. AS for quality time, I feel like my kids get just as much time with me now that there are four, soon to be five, of them as when there were fewer. My time just changes.

MooreMama said...

Wasn't there something in there about giving your body 18 months between pregnancies? Sounds like extended breastfeeding, no?

(Not that it worked for me or anything...)

"Before I married I really worried I would be barren, but my husband and I are expecting our third (in three years) in January."
and this ^^^ except that we've had three positive pregnancy tests in two years (one m/c, one toddler, one gestating) :)

Susan K said...

I agree with Lisa. Great article, depressingly angering comment thread. Some of these people need to look up "selfish" in the dictionary and repeat fourth grade math for a basic grasp of economics!

Marie said...

I agree with those of you mourning from the comments! Why do they care so much? I laughed out loud reading the comment about not being able to spend quality time with 18 children... um, don't most of these commenters send their children to school with one teacher and a classroom of 25 students for 8 hours a day????

Joshua Palmer said...

Katy said: I started researching my husbands side and he has 5 or 6 families in his background(mostly the Gaelic-Kentucky sort)with over 18 kids.

Hahahaha...My new de facto ethnic group for all examples will be "the Gaelic-Kentucky sort." Wow. I may also start referring to myself as the Briton-Ohioan type or the Sephardic Jewish-Mexican type.

Heavens to Betsy. Hardest I've laughed in days.

Rebekah said...

I have also found the public vitriol aimed at the Duggars stunning. Tolerance only goes so far.