A Changed Norm

There was a time--only a generation or two ago--when large families were admired and desired.There must always have been an undercurrent of dismay over “too many babies,” especially in poor families, but that was not the norm.  My mother quoted a sister-in-law saying that child number five was just one more.  The father of a friend of mine said something similar regarding his seven children.  When my third and youngest was born I felt that although the mothering role had become longer for me, it was not harder.  In fact, in some ways it was easier.  Children form their own society, and the last was born into a going concern whereas with the first everything was new.  With my youngest, I had the older children to take up her attention and amuse her.  If I'd had more and more, would it have become easier and easier?

I remember reading something years ago about a Harvard class having its 50^th reunion.  The writer was surprised—and appalled—to discover that having ten children and taking them on a cross country camping trip was what many of the men were most proud of.  The Kennedys and the Buckleys and other prominent families made big seem ideal.  They filled a whole pew at church.  Even people who wouldn’t have wanted ten were pleased to have four, five or six.  Couples with only one or two children were to be pitied.  A single child was to be especially pitied.  It was only when I got to college that I noticed that some of the singletons were among the happiest and the most well adjusted—good at making friends, too, because they hadn’t had siblings to fall back on.
 

A Mormon couple my husband and I met waiting for the bus in Portland have seven children and 13 grandchildren.  The wife, a convert to Mormonism, said that she and her husband had not expected to have as many children as his parents had had, but they did.  The couple are farmers as were his parents, but the next generation have gone into the professions.  She doesn’t expect any of them to have as many children as she did.  She mentioned how expensive children are now.  The couple talked happily about their large family, but for their children they see a new norm.  They reminded me of Roman Catholics a generation back.

Of course, not everyone follows the current norm.  I'd like this blog to reflect attitudes of people who wanted large families as well as ones who didn’t.  I also want to include people who use or have used natural methods.  And people who let nature take its course.