Before I get into the challenges of raising a large family (my wife and I have six kids). I want to emphasize that there are a lot of benefits too. That being said, it is for some reason always easier to put your attention on the negative rather than just appreciate the positive. And since I like doing things that are easy, that’s exactly what I’m going to do here.
This is not a scientific review of raising a large family; just my personal views.
Challenge #1: We’re not farmers anymore.
My dad grew up in a family of six children–4 boys, 2 girls. They grew up in what was then mostly a farming community of Pleasant Grove, Utah. They had space where there raised turkeys, grew a garden, and had pasture.
Since they had a lot of things to take care of, they had work for the kids to do. They had to go out and feed the turkeys or milk the cow. It had to be done. So, having a lot of children gave you farmhands to get this work done.
Everyone had a responsibility around the farm.
Today, however, we don’t have that type of labor for kids to do. We don’t have chickens to feed (my HOA doesn’t even allow it). There’s no pasture to tend to or hay to haul.
Challenge #2: We’re not in small towns anymore.
Kids used to be able to tromp around town and get into mischief. They could wander around the fields and explore. They just had to be home by sundown or at the ring of the dinner bell.
I’m thinking of Little Rascals or the Sandlot–just a bunch of kids doing their thing. For instance, in the Sandlot, the kids all decide to go to the community pool on a hot day.
We can’t do that anymore.
Today, people aren’t comfortable letting kids wander around town. Kids have to be supervised. If your kids are not with an adult, you’ll get the cops called on you or CPS after you. Kids can’t even get into the public pool without a parent. In fact, in my neighborhood pool, you actually need to be in the pool with your kids for them to swim (at least in the deep end).
To sum up these first two challenges, our kids don’t have duties outside of the house and they mostly can’t be outside of the house without adult supervision.
This means parents have to find things for their kids to do and take them to do those things. It just puts more on the parents.
Challenge #3: Costs
It is expensive to raise kids. Inflation doesn’t help. You have to clothe them, feed them, educate them, and take them to other activities. Do your kids want to play sports? Take music or dance lessons? That’s all costly.
For example, let’s say you want to go out for Blizzards from DQ, which happens to be my favorite ice cream treat. If I go by myself, I may spend $5. If I take my whole family, that $5 now becomes $40. It’s the same with going out to eat. A sit-down restaurant is going to be about $20 per person. If I’m on a date with my wife, $20/person is not too bad. But taking the whole family is going to be something like $120 (because kids’ meals are cheaper).
Same goes for transportation. You are limited in your choice of vehicle based on seating capacity. This means you need a big vehicle, which is expensive. You also have more people to get to various places, which means more wear-and-tear on the vehicle and more gas, which is expensive.
Although I could go on and on, the last thing I’ll gripe about in this section is housing. Yes, you could put a bunch of kids in each bedroom and get by with whatever-sized house. Or you could put kids in the garage (my wife’s family did that growing up). But we decided not to do that. We upgraded for more space as our family and income grew. So for us, our increases in expenses have largely kept pace with our increases in income. I meant to be more careful about that, but…oh well.
All of these costs add up. And then there’s college, braces, etc…
Challenge #4: Keeping up with Joneses
Along with costs comes comparison. My kids all know the phrase “Comparison is the thief of joy.” But people notice when their friends are wearing new clothes and they have hand-me-downs. They notice when their friends are going on another summer cruise and we are having a staycation.
As a parent, I notice these things as well.
I know I shouldn’t play the comparison game, but I do.
I don’t want my kids to think that their dad can’t afford stuff that other people get to enjoy. And that’s a bummer because there are definitely a lot of things I can’t afford–even though I make a good income.
It’s hard to compete with the spending power of a family of two working parents and two kids. There are also people that just make more money. We have one income-generating person for eight people. It just doesn’t stretch as far.
If you are trying to keep up with others, even if you know you shouldn’t, it can be challenging.
Challenge #5: Emotional Limitations
You only have so much emotional bandwidth.
As a parent, you want your kids to be prepared to take on life. You want to eliminate unnecessary pains and point them in a direction where hopefully they can be better off than you in the future.
It is very challenging to navigate these issues for yourself, let alone for someone else. This is particularly the case if you are tired or cranky.
Emotional drain is one thing my wife and I watch for in each other. Sometimes my wife will ask me, “Do you need a nap?” That’s when I know I’m being too cranky.
It’s also true. Sometimes you need a little nap so you can wake up refreshed and ready to not lose your cool. As much as you always want to help your kids, you sometimes reach your emotional limit and need a break.
While any sized family will require emotional bandwidth, I noticed as my family grew, that emotional availability became more of an issue. Your emotional availability needs to cover more people, which is more challenging.
My same friend that made that list also used to say that he wanted to have as many kids as he was able to love. My thought to that was, “You can love any number of kids.” But now I think he was right–although it’s not so much a question of love, but of emotional availability.
Challenge #6: Time Limitations
This goes somewhat hand-in-hand with emotional availability. It takes time to think about and plan for each child’s needs. The more kids you have, the less time you have to devote to this type of consideration on a per-person basis.
For example, let’s say I want to spend an hour per week with each child just to have one-on-one time together. That’s six hours a week. That doesn’t count planning and preparation.
Six hours may not sound like that much, but there’s always a lot going on.
In addition, it also takes time to get kids ready or to places where they need to be. There are days during the school year when either my wife or I (or both) are literally driving kids around from place to place after school and into the evening. Sometimes I can use all of my emotional energy and time just getting people from point A to point B.
Time is a finite resource and there is just less of it on a per-person basis as your family grows.
Challenge #7: Noise and mess
It’s almost always noisy and messy.
One year for Christmas my daughter gave me a little pack of earplugs because I sometimes get “noised out.” It was great gift!
As for the mess, it’s almost always there. I call it “lived in.” Using this term helps me feel better in between times when we can tidy things up (which only last for about 15 minutes).
Challenge #8: People Aren’t Used to It
If you have a large family, I’m sure you’ve heard things like this:
“You sure have your hands full!”
“You’re too young to have that many kids!”
“Ever heard of birth control?” or “You know what causes that, right?” or “Your poor wife.”
“It’s irresponsible to have that many children.”
“Are all these yours?! You could almost have a baseball team!”
These types of comments are in addition to the staring you get in public.
Obviously, you shouldn’t really care what strangers have to say or think about you, but it can get annoying.
Challenge #9: Emotional Damage?
I went to a “business” seminar once–and I’m using the term “business” very loosely here–that turned out to be a large group pseudo-therapy session. The point was that we all have some sort of internal trauma that prevents us from becoming the type of person we want to be. Once we figure out why that is, we can overcome it and then there is nothing in our way to business success.
Well, I was there mostly to get practical tips. The main tip I got was that you are supposed to dig deep to find the reason why your parents, and specifically your father, messed up your life.
I didn’t really want to play that blame game. I tried it, but it just felt icky. (As an aside, maybe they were right because I’m still not a mega-millionaire entrepreneur. I did eventually start my own business and ran it for about 5 years before I decided that being on a payroll is actually a pretty sweet gig).
My point here is that anyone can find a way to blame their parents for all of their emotional problems. I’m sure some of it is earned, but there is literally no one that is without emotional issues. It comes with being human. Since there are no perfect humans, there are no perfect parents.
I am of course concerned that I may say something out of line that causes emotional scarring (and I probably have). I’m concerned that if I try too hard to get my kids to do what I think they should do, they will be scarred because I was too controlling. On the other hand, if I don’t campaign for what I think is best, they will be scarred because I didn’t care enough.
Sometimes I think parenting is a darned-if-you-do, darned-if-you-don’t type of challenge.
Challenge #10: It’s expensive.
Yes, I know I already said that, but I’m saying it again because it makes me feel better.
Large Family Challenges: Conclusion
Despite these challenges, there is no way I would change having a large family. Because doing so would mean getting rid of some of the people. And my wife says that would be wrong. So we’ll keep it the way it is.
All joking aside, while having a large family has its challenges, these challenges are manageable. I do think it would be more manageable if the kids had more free reign to get out and explore the world around them and get into some kid mischief away from the home, but that’s not the world we have today.
Now that I’ve covered some of the challenges, don’t forget to also check out some of the benefits of having a large family. It’s not all gloomy!
If you think I missed any challenges or have thoughts on this, let me know in the comments.
