NotSheep

Several people have added comments to this post about family size being an issue of personal choice. In case it’s not clear from my post - I agree. The purpose of my post was not to encourage people to have more children, nor even to complain about people’s attitudes towards larger-than-average families, but to talk about the odd (in my opinion) fact that people seem to be fairly accepting of families with four children, but unable to cope with the existence of families with five!

I’ve been meaning to write about a certain phenomena for a while, and a recent post on Katie’s blog reminded me about it.

When we had four children, I would get comments on the size of our family regularly, but most were reasonably positive, or at least not outright negative. Things like “oh you have your hands full!” (my response: “yes, isn’t it great!”) or “wow, you must be busy!” (my response: “yes, and I love it”). The occasional “sooner you than me!” (my response to that, sometimes, depending on the person’s attitude, was: “yes, probably better that way”). I sometimes heard comments about them all being boys too - which partly annoyed me, because we have never “tried for a girl”, and partly didn’t, because I love my boys to bits and think it’s fantastic having lots of boys.

But when Toby was born, and four turned into five, something changed. There is a very distinct difference between the reactions I used to get, and the reactions I get now.

“Now” being when I’m out with all five, of course. At the minute, with Barney in France, I’m only ever out with four - and the reactions have been more positive again. So the difference is definitely not because people’s attitudes happened to change around 2005, or because I look older or more tired than I used to, or because my children’s behaviour in public has deteriorated. It’s definitely about the number.

When I’m out with five, people don’t seem to say much. Instead, they look. I don’t mean they stare - although maybe they do: when you’re out and about with five children, you’re generally too busy to pay a lot of attention to whether other people are looking at you. What I mean is, they say “are these all yours?” or “five children?” and when I reply in the affirmative, they just… look. As if they can’t think of anything to say.

Is that what it is? That they just don’t know what to say? Maybe they assume we can’t really want five children, that we must have them for some other reason. Maybe they think we must have a religious objection to contraception and they’re afraid of saying anything else in case they offend me. Or maybe they think we must not be intelligent enough to handle family-planning and they don’t see the point in talking to someone so obviously stupid. But they’d be wrong: we wanted, and planned, every one of our children.

A few months ago, I mentioned an article which had appeared in the Tuscaloosa News, in which the (slight) trend towards having (slightly) larger families was discussed. One of the mothers interviewed for that article offered her reason for having more children: “Why not?” That was our reason for having a fourth and fifth child too. But it was also our reason for having a first child, and a second and third: we wanted to, and there was no good reason why not.

I never understood how people could, before they had children, say “we want two” or “we want three” - because how do you know what having two, or three, is like, until you’re there? I suppose I always felt that I’d like more than two, and worried about the one-left-out syndrome that often seems to accompany three, so I was going for four - but I never, in my mind, limited it to four. When I had four, I knew I loved it and I’d like more. But I didn’t know I was going to feel that way until I got to four, if you see what I mean. I always figured that when I felt it was right to not have any more children, I’d stop, whether it was because of the number I already had, or my age, or whatever.

Maybe the reason people react differently when you have five is that they can imagine having four children, but not five. I suppose that makes sense, if they have three - most of the women I know do occasionally harbour moments of thinking that it would be nice to have another baby. And even people who don’t have three probably know lots of people who do - since three is quite a common number of children - so they can imagine one extra child in those families.

A sociologist quoted in the article said, “No matter how much money the parents have, most think each of their kids should have their own place and time,” he said. “More than four — that’s when people start thinking you’re crazy, that you’re shortchanging the ones you already have.”

Maybe people do think that. Those of you reading who have one or two or three - do you think that? (I promise not to be offended ;-)) I don’t feel that way, any more than I feel that having a second child means the first will be short-changed. I remember a conversation with Scratchy, when Barney was only a few months old, in which he expressed doubts about having a second child, and said “I just don’t know if I’d love another child as much as I love him.” He got over those doubts - obviously - and although I haven’t asked him, I’ve seen him with all the others, and I know the amount of love isn’t an issue. Love isn’t something you get a finite amount of, as any parent with two children knows.

It’s different with time and money, of course - you don’t get more of either just because you have more children - but you get better at managing both. You find ways to save money - and in some ways it’s no more expensive to have five than it is to have four anyway. We’d still drive a seven-seater vehicle if we had four (and we know lots of families who do even though they have three or two children, or even just one). We wouldn’t live in a smaller house if we only had four - most of our neighbours live in houses similar in size to ours, and most of them have just one or two children - so we wouldn’t be saving on housing costs. When it comes to time, you prioritise differently and drop some of the non-important things from your life. I do notice, however, that it’s very often the parents who have more children who are the ones who volunteer to help out with things like Scouts - so it would seem it’s about attitude, rather than the amount of time available.

And how could you ever even start to factor in the extra time and attention a child gets from his or her siblings. Toby gets masses of both - and of love - from his brothers, and they get a huge amount out of his company too. Maybe there’s another blog-post in that.

The Tuscaloosa News article said that in some American suburbs, a large family is a status symbol. One of the mothers interviewed for that article said she was aware of that notion, but that “I thought it was kind of funny…most people who have a lot of kids don’t have the time or energy to care what about others think.”

She’s right, but alongside not having the time or energy, I suspect most of us with more-than-four also don’t have the inclination to care about what others think. If we did, we probably wouldn’t have more-than-four in the first place.

I don’t want to leave the impression that I only ever get negative reactions to having five children. What I do find interesting, however, is where the positive reactions come from. They are nearly always from women whose children are older and who then tell me that they had four, five, six, seven children - and they always say how glad they are that they did. I’ve yet to meet anyone who said they wished they’d had fewer children - which, I suppose, is as good a reason as any for having more