That was a phrase I heard countless times, ad nauseam, growing up as a child.  As the oldest of five, then six, and eventually seven children – you grew used to hearing comments of incredulousness and awe from people over the copious amounts of offspring your parents have produced.

 

Other common phrases were “Wow, they are all so well-behaved!”, “I don’t know how you keep it all together!” and my favorite: “You are such a saint”.  My mother accepted all of these compliments with grace and, I truly believe, sometimes felt she had earned them.  Perhaps she had, raising children no matter the number is no easy feat.

 

I was inspired to write this blog after happening upon another mom’s post recently on a site devoted to inspirational stories, that I currently follow on Instagram. This mother had six children, and was writing in glowing terms about the joys of raising a large family, and also with some sarcasm on what she perceived to be various rude comments received by strangers on how many children she was rearing.  Most of the responses on this page those agreeing with the concept of having large families is the absolute best, and that strangers should keep their snide remarks firmly to themselves.

 

And I realized all of the commentators, as well as the original poster, had one thing in common:  they were all the mothers.  Not one comment was from a CHILD that had grown up under the burden of a large family.

 

Well – I am going to be that child.  And I can tell you from firsthand experience, it is not all sunshine and roses like they want to portray.  Especially for the oldest child to be born and raised in such an environment.

 

What do I remember of my childhood?  Well, first of all, that after the age of nine, I didn’t have much of one.  Between the ages of nine and seventeen, my mom was pregnant every two years.  I was homeschooled, so I didn’t get the normal seven-hour daily break from my family and home.  My days were spent primarily teaching myself my schoolwork, and struggling through it the best I could, because my mom typically didn’t have much time to assist me. I remember days upon end of a mother sitting by a toilet, vomiting until she had nothing left to vomit, because morning sickness would give her no relief.  I remember a mother too exhausted to pay attention to my studies, because she was up all night again with a baby.  I remember a mother that alternately retreated to her room, slept, and cried.  While I didn’t understand why at the time, I believe now my mother was suffering from severe post-partum depression. This required me to spend much of my free time taking care of my younger siblings, from changing diapers to cleaning dirty bathrooms to babysitting to cooking food.  I still hate cooking to this day, and I blame my childhood for that one mostly.

 

I was very familiar from a young age on what kind of food you could and couldn’t feed an infant; much less with how to relate to my peers.  I took this all in-stride, because I didn’t know any better – this was normal life for me.  I knew other people didn’t have babies every two years, or large families; but it was all I knew, and I wanted to be a good kid, so I helped however I could and did what was needed of me for the most part.  I didn’t matter if my parents had no money for toys, or new clothes for us, or that we had to eat stir-fry and oatmeal every day for a week till my dad got paid.  It didn’t matter that my mother would beat us with a paddle when we got out of line, sometimes for the slightest infraction, because to the outside world we “were so well behaved!” and we were that image for why large families are so awesome and so wonderful and don’t you want to be like us?

 

By the time I was a teenager, my parents had no energy and no time and frankly no desire help me navigate those turbulent years.  I was given a curfew, a strict set up rules (including basically be perfect and don’t fuck up, ever), and when I refused to be that obedient and acquiescent child they had grown accustomed to dealing with, they had no idea how to proceed.  Nor did they even have the ability to – because guess who had five little children, including an infant and a toddler, to preoccupy their time?  They did not have the capacity to listen, to empathize, to understand.  I was also the oldest, and very precocious, so I needed to be engaged and reasoned with and understood.  They were utterly incapable of giving me any of that.  Their ultimate decision was to kick me out at 17 to fend for myself against the world.  A homeschooled, sheltered, and extremely naïve child with zero preparation for life’s intricacies and monstrosities.  Oh, but I did know how to change a diaper – which came in handy when I predictably became pregnant and a mother at 19 years of age myself.

 

So – next time you see a large family, and are tempted to say “wow, they are so well behaved!” or – “I don’t know how you do it!” just realize…they probably aren’t “doing it”.  There is probably an enormous amount of suffering and possibly even neglect going on that you will never see.  Because large families are under a lot of pressure to present themselves are happy and perfect to the world – after all, they do have an image to uphold.

 

And to all you mothers out there currently raising scores of offspring and refusing to utilize birth control for its rightfully-designed purpose:  just realize, while this may all feel wonderful to you, your children did not choose to be parents.  Especially for your older ones, you are probably stripping them of a much-needed childhood.  And you won’t even realize it until they are grown and it is much too late.  So, my advice to you is:  stop being such selfish cunts, seeking praise and glory for your self-sacrifice of motherhood, and fucking pop a birth control pill. The kids you’ve already produced will thank you for it later.  And you will too, I promise.

 

 

EDIT: These are strictly speaking to my own personal experiences, during childhood. Now that my siblings and I are all adults (except one), I thoroughly enjoy my relationships with all my adult siblings.  And I couldn’t imagine not having them in my life.  But this doesn’t change the fact that, as the oldest of seven, there was much I had to endure growing up that most children should not be subjected to, and certainly not at the expense of parents who won’t stop having more babies than they are truly capable of financially, emotionally, mentally, and physically supporting.