When I was a kid, we would sing a song in church called “Count Your Many Blessings.” One day, a friend of mine came up to me and said, “Hey, friend, you know what’s pretty interesting?”
“What?” I said.
“I made a list of things in my life that are not that great.”
“Cool.” I responded.
For some reason, it seemed like a funny idea. So I did it too.
I ended up making this huge list of every little tiny thing that bugged me.
Although I thought I was being pretty funny when I was making this list, I did find myself a little down afterward.
I thought I could counteract the depression by creating a list “counting my blessings.”
Well, that didn’t work. I was still bummed out.
So the lesson I learned from that experience was that it is not a good idea to dwell on things that bug you. It’s totally a downer.
Now I will go ahead and not take my own advice because I am going to share both the benefits and challenges of raising a large family (my wife and I have 6 kids). This post will be about the positive things and the next post will touch on the negatives. I hope that this will not end up being a depressing exercise, but we’ll see. It seems like a fun idea at the moment (just like last time).
Benefit #1: Lots of People to Love
All of my kids were born with different personalities. I have one kid that’s pretty much always upbeat and seems unflappable. I have another that is usually pretty cynical (which can be funny at times) and thinks most things are annoying. I have one that’s very stalwart and funny. Another is more on the loud and wacky side. I have a really sensitive kid and one who can just go with the flow no matter what we’re doing. Of course, there is a lot of overlap in all of that and that’s an overgeneralization of personalities. But they certainly all have different ones.
As your kids develop, it’s both fascinating and (to use a word my wife likes) magical to see what type of people they become.
Even though being a parent can be frustrating at times, I love each of my kids and I’m happy they are in my life.
Benefit #2: It can be fun
There is almost always something going on. And if there’s not, there are almost always people around who are up for something.
When we have downtime (mostly Sunday afternoons), we might whip out a board game or a card game.
On a couple’s level, it’s fun to have a mix of older and younger kids because we have free babysitters. In fact, a lot of times my kids push us out the door because when they babysit, we let them have more TV or video game time.
When my kids got old enough to stay home by themselves, I felt like my wife and I got some of our life back. We now have the best of both worlds it seems: kid time and alone time.
Benefit #3: Babies are great!
I do have to say that one of my favorite times in my kids’ lives is the baby stage. Yes, babies poop, spit up, and cry at night. But I do those same things from time to time; only I’m not as cute. Babies mostly just sit there looking cute and they are fun to cuddle.
Weirdly, having a baby is like having a little human pet.
I also think their chubby thighs are like stress balls.
My wife and I are done having more kids and my youngest is now four, so we have no more babies in the house.
Benefit #4: Many hands make light work
In our household, each kid gets a night to do dishes, Monday through Friday. This means that each person only has to do the dishes every once in a while.
They also help do weeding in an assigned area.
Once a week, we have job assignments. Someone will clean out the van and various spaces in the house. Yes, sometimes the job is not done to a professional standard, but “C’s get degrees.” I guess. A little bit of subpar vacuuming is better than none at all.
Benefit #5: Cultural Badge of Honor
Having a big family is also a virtue in my religious circles. This means having a big family makes it look like you are a safe person.
For instance, my grandma had 6 kids. She will often say how proud of me she is because I’m “doing it right.”
For sure, when I was younger, I felt that I was living life the correct way. Now that I’m a little more seasoned, I don’t think there is a “correct” way to approach family rearing. There are pros and cons to raising a large family (which I’m reviewing in these posts) and there’s nothing wrong with making an informed decision about what type of family structure you want to create.
Benefit #6: Kids have automatic friends
My kids can hang out with themselves. As I’m writing this, my boys are tinkering around with Nerf gel blasters. They are making targets out of who-knows-what and discussing battle strategies.
If someone wants to play a game or make something, there is a good chance they can find someone to do it with.
Of course, they are not always friendly to each other, but I think as they age they will at least always have a sibling to rub elbows with.
That’s been true for me and for my wife. Our siblings have been our most enduring friends.
I hope my kids with have that with each other. I think they will.
Benefit #7: Learning to Compromise
One song I have played for my family from my Spotify list is “You can’t always get what you want” by the Rolling Stones. As an aside, I’m one of those people that when I listen to music I don’t really process the lyrics. I hear the vocal track as basically an instrument. So I only catch some of lyrics in songs. The reason I say this is because I don’t actually know what this song is about. I just know the lyrics “You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes you just might find you get what you need.”
Part of being in a large family is navigating how to compromise based on other people’s wants and needs.
It seems like any meal you make or outing you plan has at least one strong dissent. I have a kid that will not eat French toast and one that will not eat oatmeal. Everyone else wants those things. In our house, we don’t make kids their own special meal, so every once in a while, you have to learn to eat a meal you don’t particularly like.
Same goes for outings, we’ll have a mandatory family hike. People learn to navigate their feelings and emotions. Usually everyone ends up having a good time.
And that’s true for parents too. For example, I don’t necessarily want to spend all of my Saturday driving across town for different lacrosse games. And I don’t want to eat macaroni and cheese or those dinosaur nuggets. But I’ll do it because I have to compromise too.
It’s a good skill to learn and having a large family makes you learn it.
Benefit #8: Overcoming challenges together
This kind of goes with “many hands make light work,” but kids can help you identify and troubleshoot issues.
Here are a couple of examples that come to mind.
We moved from Idaho to the Seattle area in November 2022. This meant that my kids had to change schools mid-year, which was a challenge.
What made a challenging situation even more challenging was the schedule. In Idaho, everyone started school at about the same time. Here, the high school, middle school, and elementary schools all start at different times and about an hour apart.
At first, we were driving our kids because we didn’t want to make them ride the bus. But after a month of this, my wife found that she was spending hours and hours in the car just dropping off kids and waiting in line to pick them up. It was not workable.
So we explained to the kids that they would have to start taking the bus (which stopped about two houses down from us). They were not excited about it but rose to the challenge and ended up having a fine time. It helped us and I think it helped them feel a little more independent.
Another example is allowances, we have a family meeting once a week. One week, my kids aired grievances about how we were so inconsistent about allowances. My wife and I knew that we never really had a solid plan about that, but it was always on the back burner. Since my kids explained their frustration, we were able to find a solution that works for everyone.
It’s rewarding to come together to take on challenges.
Benefit #9: More people available to care for you
When my wife and I were talking about getting married, we discussed how many kids we wanted. We agreed on six kids. The only reason I thought of that was from picturing myself as an old man. I envisioned myself having a big family around me at Christmas. I thought it would be fun to have my kids’ families coming and going during the summer. Or I thought it would be cool to have an RV and putter around driving to visit kids in a bunch of different places.
In this vision (as in forward-looking; not supernatural), four kids seemed like too little, an odd number didn’t seem right, so I went with six. As an aside, my parents have four kids and my wife’s parents have 13 (not a typo).
So six kids seemed like a good number to me.
I also thought that I need at least one kid to make beaucoup bucks. Then they can help pay for my nursing home when I’m old, frail, and have no cash because I blew it puttering around in an RV all summer long. The more kids we have, the more we increase our chances of getting one that will rake in the dough. Right?…right…?
Benefit #10: It’s interesting
For many of the reasons I’ve already stated, there is always something that keeps being a parent in a large family interesting. There is always a challenge to figure out and overcome. There is always at least something going on. And there are a lot of people you love to learn about.
It keeps life interesting and keeps you on your toes.
Bonus Benefit: Taxes
Having a lot of kids gives you a pretty good amount of tax credit. I’ll be sad to see that go when they all move along.
In Conclusion…
Having a large family has a lot of good things about it. Of course, it is not all sunshine and roses. There are also challenges that come with having a large family. But whether you have a large or a small family, there’s always something to learn from being a part of it.
Did I miss any benefits? If so, sound off in the comments.
